Association between Self-Perceived Physical Fitness of Pupils and their Attitude to Physical Education Lessons: Use of Pedometers
Responsibility
Mgr. Jana Vašíčková, Ph.D.
Mgr. Filip Neuls, Ph.D.
Research team
Bc. Lucie Hauptmannová; Bc. Daniel Moškoř; Bc. Adam Šimůnek; Bc. Lucie Vysloužilová
Financial support
Palacky University, Internal university grant (IGA: FTK_2013_010)
Duration of the project
2013–2014
Aims
The project aims to clarify the relationship between self-assessment of students' performance, their relationship to the Physical Education lessons with different content and the amount of physical activity expressed as the total number of steps per lesson.
Realization
Differences in the level of performance and the relationship of students to P.E. lesson will be assessed by a questionnaire "Diagnostics of P.E. lessons" among respondents in primary and secondary schools. We assume that in one year 800-1000 students will be involved in the project, either as part of P.E. students' practice teaching or in detailed investigation. Physical activity in Physical Education lessons will be calculated as the number of steps performed in a given time adjusted to time unit (minutes). Schools that will cooperate for a more detailed investigation will be selected near the place of residence of the P.E. students involved as co-researchers in the project. In agreement with the P.E. teacher we will visit a particular lesson. During the break, students become familiar with pedometers and set their personal data about body weight. The device will be reset and a researcher will write down the exact initiation time of measurement. At the end of monitoring he/she will again record the time of termination. At the end of the lesson students will receive questionnaires to be completed within 5 minutes and returned back. The teacher also fills in the questionnaire with detailed information about realized P.E. lesson. This measurement will be performed twice where the difference in P.E. lessons will be only in the level of intensity of physical activity (not the content). Co-researchers will enter the collected data into the prepared software and data analysis will be carried out according to research problems. The expected contribution of the project is to clarify the associations based on self-determination theory, which enters and affects the behavior of respondents also in Physical Education. Another benefit will be the involvement of students of the master program in the research project from the beginning, after implementation, data entry, research issues and solutions of final thesis or writing a manuscript for a journal. The practical outcome should be findings how different content in P.E. can influence the participation in the educational process, but also the attitude of students to physical activity that should be part of their healthy lifestyle in the future. Another benefit could be the quantification of lessons in terms of the number of steps, depending on the content of Physical Education, age and gender of the pupils.
