Sport Education (SE) is an instructional model within physical education (PE) that promotes competent, literate, and enthusiastic sports persons (Siedentop, Hastie, & van der Mars, 2011). The results of research on prosocial behavior within SE are mixed, with Alexander and Luckman (2001) reporting positive outcomes while Brock, Rovegno, and Oliver (2009) suggest that student social status strongly influences students’ power within the season regarding whose opinions are heard. Vidoni and Ward (2009) theorize that student prosocial behaviors can be manipulated through an intervention with a PE teacher. The current study examined a fair play intervention on middle school students’ prosocial behaviors during a unit of SE taught by a pre-service teacher (PT).
Method:
A female PT enrolled in a PETE program at a large public research university and three eighth grade students (2 males, 1 female) in one intact PE class at a middle school participated in the study. Student participants were purposefully selected with the assistance of a PE teacher based on the following criteria: highly disruptive, disruptive and not disruptive.
Data were collected through direct observation across 16 SE lessons and coded using a modified instrument on helpful and harmful behaviors (Vidoni & Ward, 2009). Interobserver (IOA) agreement was conducted on over 33% of lessons and exceeded the recommended 80% mark.
Analysis/Results:
A single subject ABA design (Sharpe & Koperwas, 2003) was used across two behaviors. The intervention consisted of a sustained on-site research-based workshop addressing the promotion of prosocial behavior through: 1) Prompt/praise, 2) Positive pinpointing, 3) Student task cards, 4) Discussion. Data analysis included visual inspection of the number of occurrences of helpful and harmful behaviors plotted on a graph.
Results indicated that participants increased their helpful behaviors as a result of the intervention, and two participants continued to increase their helpful behavior after intervention. Two participants decreased harmful behaviors during the intervention while one continued to decrease harmful behaviors following the intervention.
Conclusions:
Implementing a research-based and sustained intervention program aimed at improving prosocial behavior did appear to be effective. SE is a flexible curriculum (Siedentop et al., 2011), thus its iterations may vary in their implementations (Curtner-Smith, Hastie, & Kinchin, 2008). Consequently, some SE seasons may not innately promote prosocial behaviors (Brock et al., 2009), yet our findings demonstrated that it was feasible even with the most disruptive students. Future SE seasons should include a continued emphasis on prosocial goals from the teacher.