Middle School Students Self-Perceptions and Physical Education Activity Preferences

Purpose: Perceptions have been shown to effect motivation, persistence, and affect in physical education (PE). Providing student's choice over curricular offerings in PE has been promoted as a way to enhance motivation and physical activity. However, there is little information regarding how perceptions influence curricular preferences. The purpose of this study was to determine if perceptions (i.e. liking PE, perceived fitness) influenced middle school student's preferences for PE curricular offerings. Methods: Participants included 881 students enrolled in PE at two middle schools in one district. Students completed a survey that included a demographic section, a self-perceptions scale (Treanor, Graber, Housner, & Weigand, 1998), and a list of 33 activities pertinent to middle school PE. One teacher from each school administered all of the surveys for their school. For the self-perceptions scale students were asked to circle the response which most closely matched their feelings. Responses ranged from strongly disagree and disagree to agree and strongly agree. In addition, the students were asked to place check marks next to each activity they would like to have as part of their PE curriculum. Analysis/Results: Chi-square analysis was used to examine differences in perceptions and curricular choice (á = .01). In order to assure adequate cell size the responses of strongly agree and agree were summed into one category. The same procedure was used for strongly disagree and disagree. The following is a list of the questions and number of activities with significant differences found: I like PE – (9); I try hard in PE – (6); I follow rules and behave well in PE – (5); I have good sport skills in PE – (7); I have a good level of muscular strength – (7); I have a good level of endurance –(11); I have good flexibility – (6); and I am overweight (2). The data indicates that students who tend to like PE, try hard, have good sport skills, muscular strength, and endurance are significantly more attracted to competitive team sports (i.e., football, basketball) and activities with fitness demands (i.e., jogging, track). Students who identified themselves as overweight had significantly lower preferences for jogging and track, while students who indicated poor flexibility tended to avoid activities such as swing dance, yoga, and gymnastics. Conclusions: Results of this study have implications for making curricular decisions in PE and suggest that a balanced curriculum which allows for student choice may best fit the preferences of most students regardless of perceptions.