Teaching for Character: Student Perceptions of Secondary Physical Education Teachers

Background/Purpose: Standard 5 of the national content standards for physical education indicates that students should learn personal and social responsibility and sportspersonship behaviors in physical activity settings. If students are to learn these behaviors, teachers are, of course, responsible for teaching them. Recently, Bolter and Weiss (2012, 2013) identified the mechanisms by which coaches teach athletes about sportspersonship in youth sport settings. They found that coaches who reinforce good sportsmanship, model good sportsmanship, teach good sportsmanship, and do not prioritize winning over good sportsmanship were associated with adolescent athletes who showed more prosocial and less antisocial behaviors towards their teammates and opponents. Coaches and physical education teachers occupy similar roles in that they have a powerful influence on the experiences of their participants and specifically their character development. The purpose of this study was to examine student perceptions of how their physical education teachers teach sportspersonship.

Method: Participants included 837 middle school physical education students (410 girls, 424 boys; 3 did not report gender) ages 11-15 (M = 12.87). Youth were recruited from 7 different schools and 27 independent classrooms in either 6^th grade (n = 358) or 8^th grade (n= 479). Participants completed a quantitative survey by rating (a) their teacher’s use of instructional behaviors focused on sportspersonship, (b) their own prosocial and antisocial behaviors in physical education class, and (c) their own levels of personal and social responsibility. 

Analysis/Results: Mean scores showed that physical education students perceive their teachers often model, teach, and have high expectations for good sportsmanship, sometimes reinforce good sportsmanship and punish poor sportsmanship, and rarely prioritize winning over being a good sport. Multivariate analyses also revealed significant relationships between students’ perceptions of their teachers’ behavior and their own prosocial and responsibility behaviors.

Conclusions: Results from the present study show that middle school students perceive sportspersonship is emphasized, valued, and taught in secondary physical education programs.