Background/Purpose: As students continually become disinterested in the repetitive learning tasks often associated with physical education (Ennis, 2007; Roslow Research Group, 2009) there is an inherent need to reappraise the types of activities offered in order to promote widespread evolution of the field. The conservative nature of the field has seen the traditional multi-activity unit plan design used as the predominant approach since it's inception. The purpose was to study the impact of novel activities and a variety-centered curriculum on Situational Interest (SI) and it's individual measures.
Method: 101 seventh and eighth grade students from three separate classes participated. To further understand the influence of novelty and variety on SI twelve students of varying activity levels were randomly selected to participate in one-on-one interviews. The study employed a convergent mixed methods design using triangulation from multiple sources to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. Multiple sources included the Situational Interest Scale (Chen et al., 2001), interviews, and observations.
Analysis/Results: MANOVA and Post Hoc analysis revealed that the actualizing measures of SI (Instant enjoyment and Attention Demand) were positively influenced by the novelty offered by an activity and the exploratory opportunities provided by a learning task. Interviews found that the variety-centered curriculum was important to students and was directly linked to the individual measures of SI.
Conclusions: While traditional multi-activity designs are most often found in physical education the results suggest that designing curriculum that emphasizes novelty and variety may have a unique and direct impact on the development of SI.
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