Perceived physical education ability and worth – an Australian case study

ABSTRACT

Predisposing factors of perceived Physical Education (PE) Ability and perceived PE Worth within the Youth Physical Activity Promotion Model are positively associated with young people’s daily physical activity. Given the importance of the HPE curriculum (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2017). In promoting physical activity and its associated knowledge, skills and understandings, we sought to qualitatively examine origins of student’s perceived PE Ability (perceived competence and self-esteem) and perceived PE Worth (attitude and enjoyment). Three focus-group interviews with 12 students in Years 7 and 10 as part of the first author’s Honours project, were recorded, transcribed, and analysed inductively and deductively and represented as pen profiles. Analysis revealed higher order themes relating to PE Ability as perceptions of (in)competence and comparison against peers. Themes for PE Worth were traditional team sports, skills, physical activity (PA), competition and fun/love/enjoyment. A strength of this research study is that it further confirms the conceptual and theoretical work conducted by Welk (1999) and Hilland et al. (2009). The qualitative findings further demonstrate the complexity of factors related to the motivational predispositions of perceived PE Ability and perceived PE Worth of students during physical education in this case study school.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical Education
• attitudes
• competence
• PE Ability
• PE Worth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kate Watkins was an Honours student supervised by Toni Hilland and Trent Brown. She is seeking opportunities to pursue doctoral studies in this area.

Toni A. Hilland, PhD., is a Senior Lecturer within the College of Design and Social Context, School of Education at RMIT University. She is primarily interested in children’s physical activity and health, and in particular PE and the promotion of physically active youth.

Trent D. Brown, PhD., FACHPER, is a Senior Lecturer within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His interests are children’s fundamental movement skills and physical activity behaviour, physical education curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

Notes

1 See Table 2 for further descriptions of these terms.