Teachers’ Attitudes about Physical Activity and the Goals of Physical Education in Relation with their Previous Experience of this Lesson when they were Students

Abstract

The purpose of the study, was to examine teachers’ attitudes and aspects in primary schools, regarding the purposes of Physical Education (PE) that is based on current approaches in curriculum planning and their relationship to the attitudes of exercise and entertainment they derived from the PE as long as they were students. The study included 207 teachers of primary schools (160 women and 47 men). The following questionnaires were used: a) the Teacher’s Attitudes Toward Curriculum in Physical Education (TATCPE) of Kulinna and Silverman (1999) to measure attitudes and aspects of teachers, in relation to the promotion of physical activity (PA), b) the teachers’ attitudes and aspects questionnaire in relation to the importance of the purposes of PE (Gorozidis et al., 2012), c) a scale of attitudes towards exercise (Theodorakis, 1994), and d) a recreational recall scale of entertainment in PE (adapted from the Ιntrinsic Μotivation Ιnventory of McAuley et al., 1989), All scales had acceptable internal cohesion indicators (από .62 έως .93). The correlation analysis showed high positive correlation indices between the factors of TATCPE. Also, there was a positive high correlation between the TATCPE factors and the importance of the six PE goals (Gorozidis et al., 2012), and between these and teachers' attitudes towards exercise. The enjoyment experienced in PE as students was positively related to most of the PE goals and attitudes towards exercise. Α standard regression analysis showed that teachers’ self-actualization, views on the importance of goals 1 and 4 of the new PE curriculum and the enjoyment they experienced in PE as students had a statistically significant contribution in predicting their attitudes towards exercise. Finally, statistically significant differences were found in some of the examined variables due to gender, age, and PA levels. Based on the above results, it seems that teachers’ current attitudes and aspects of the new PE curriculum are significantly influenced by their attitudes towards exercise and their experiences as students in PE.

Key words: education, Physical Education, curriculum