Effects of Physical Activity on Physical ‎Fitness, Cognition and Self-Concept

Background/Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of instructed physical activity using the reciprocal and the command teaching styles on three developmental domains namely: psychomotor, cognitive and emotional domains in middle schools ‎students.

Method: The subjects were 240 students that were randomly selected from junior high schools. ‎They were randomly assigned to an experimental group consisted of 121 ‎students and a control group consisted of 119 students. A physical education program consisted of two teaching units‎: soccer and long jump was conducted on both groups. The program lasted ten weeks. The experimental group was taught using the reciprocal teaching style and the control group was taught using the command teaching style. The variables consisted of nine measures; six for the psychomotor domain ‎included: Body Mass Index, strength, muscular ‎endurance, cardiovascular fitness measured by 1600 meter run, ‎soccer skills test and long jump test. The cognitive domain was measured by soccer and athletic knowledge tests. The emotional domain was measured by a self-concept scale. Data were collected before and after conducting the teaching program. The grouped t-test was used to examine the equivalence of the experimental and control groups in the pre-program measures, and to examine the differences between the two groups in the post-program measures. ANCOVA was conducted on the variables that were showed significance difference between the two groups at the pre-program measures. The percent of changes from pre to post program were calculated.

Analysis/Results: The results revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups in the favor of the experimental group in all measures except for: the BMI, strength, and cognitive soccer measure. This indicates that the reciprocal teaching physical education style was more effective than the command style in improving endurance, cardiovascular fitness, soccer‎‎ skills, athletic skills, cognitive athletic, and emotion measures. While the improving in the BMI, strength, and cognitive soccer measures were convergent in using either the reciprocal or the command teaching physical education styles. The mean percentage changes of the experimental group ranged between 1.19 % for the emotion measure and 34.98 % for the cognition measure, while the mean percentage changes of the control group ranged between 0.21 % for the emotion measure and 15.53 % for the cognition measure.

Conclusions: The results indicated that the pattern of changes for both groups was the same; however the changes for the experimental group were obviously more than the control group.