Perceived Autonomy in Physical Education: A Comparative Research Between Male and Female Primary Students of Greek and European Schools

Abstract

In contemporary education, in a changing multicultural education environment, exploring ways to enhance students’ perceived autonomy supported by educators is considered as an imperative educational need for a lifetime learning process. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of different educational context (typical Greek system, European school system) and gender on primary school students’ perceived autonomy. The study sample consisted of 320 primary school students (263 from typical schools and 57 from European schools) with collaboration of 7 physical education (PE) teachers. The self-reported questionnaires were a) Demographic Characteristics Questionnaire, to identify the demographic characteristics of the sample, and b) the Perceived Autonomy Support in Physical Education Questionnaire (PAS in PE, Hagger, Chatzisarantis, Barkoukis, Wang, & Baranowski, 2005) to assess students’ perceived autonomy support in physical education (PE). The results showed similar levels of perceived autonomy in different educational contexts (Greek, European) in primary education. However, as far as the gender is concerned, significant gender differences in the indexes of perceived autonomy were found, with the girls displaying higher levels of perceived autonomy rather than boys. The findings of this study concur to better utilization of teaching and learning methods by PE teachers, in order to enhance the autonomy of primary school pupils for a lifelong engagement with physical activity.