Physical education teachers can play an important role in promoting physical activity and fitness of children through their work in school. They should have appropriate levels of content knowledge of physical activity and health-related fitness in order to provide high quality and effective instruction to their students. Thus it is desirable to investigate the physical activity and health-related fitness content knowledge of in-service physical education teachers. The purpose of this study was to compare the physical activity and health-related fitness content knowledge of teachers as it relates to gender, years of teaching experience and level of education.
Method
Sixty-four female and twenty-four male in-service elementary physical education teachers from an urban school district in southeast Texas completed the Appropriate Physical Activity and Health-Related Fitness (APAHRF) test. In a previous study this test was found to have content validity by a group of experts. K-R 20 reliability coefficient was 0.68.
Analysis/Results
One-way ANOVA revealed significant differences between years of teaching experience (F 2, 84) = 5.17, p = .00). No differences where found for gender or level of education. Teachers with more than 6 and less than 19 years scored (M = 25.64, SD = 3.87) slightly higher than teachers with less than 6 years of teaching experience (M = 23.46, SD = 4.61). Teachers with less than 6 years of experience scored (M = 23.46, SD = 4.61) slightly higher than teachers with greater than 19 years of teaching experience (M = 22.00, SD = 4.89). Scheffé post hoc test revealed that physical education teachers with greater than 6 years and less than 19 years scored significantly higher than those physical education teachers with greater than 19 years of teaching experience
Conclusions
These findings suggest that there are differences in level of knowledge for teachers based on their years of experience. This is consistent with literature stating that it takes some time for new teachers to become experts in their field (Chen & Rovegno, 2000). Based on previous investigations, the overall mean score (57.68%) for the APAHRF test indicated deficiencies on teacher content knowledge, which could relate to their instructional effectiveness in achieving the desirable standards. The small sample size and the unequal number of participants in the ANOVA model may have also contributed to the lack of significance in gender and level of education. These findings suggest the need for on-going professional development activities for in-service physical education teachers.