Children's Attitudes Toward Physical Activity in Classes Taught by Specialist Versus Nonspecialist P.E. Teachers

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1 JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 1990, 9, Children's Attitudes Toward Physical Activity in Classes Taught by Specialist Versus Nonspecialist P.E. Teachers Patricia Patterson and Nell Faucette San Diego State University The purpose of the study was to determine if there were differences in attitudes toward physical activity for children in classes taught by specialists versus those taught by nonspecialists. Fourth- and fifth-grade children (N=414) from four schools participated in the study. Two schools had P.E. specialists teaching the P.E. classes while the other two schools had classroom teachers teaching the classes. Attitudes were assessed by employing the Children's Attitude Toward Physical Activity (CATPA) inventory (Simon & Smoll, 1974). Although discriminant function analysis resulted in a significant difference between the attitudes of both groups of children, only 57.48% of the cases were correctly classified. These results suggest that teachers play a minimal role in children's attitudes toward physical activity. It was recommended that additional studies be conducted that examine and control for multiple factors influencing attitude formation. Researchers and practitioners alike would agree that appropriate educational outcomes for an elementary physical education program would include meeting objectives in the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains. Furthermore, researchers have been interested in determining whether different kinds of teachers have better success in achieving these objectives. In particular, much research over the past 20 years has focused on determining whether there are differences in the performances of children taught by specialists from those taught by nonspecialists (classroom teachers). For example, a large body of literature has demonstrated that children taught by specialists were superior to those taught by nonspecialists in terms of motor performance (Clarke, 1971; Hallstrom, 1965; Nestroy, 1978; Smith, 1981; Yeatts & Gordon, 1968; Zimmerman, 1959). These studies focused on fitness and/or skill acquisition. While assessment in these areas is important, teachers may argue that there are other dimensions of the child that deserve attention. Much less research has been done to evaluate achievement in affective components of children, perhaps not because this area is less important but because it is more difficult to assess. Work by Simon and Smoll (1974), however, has The authors are with the Department of Physical Education, College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA

2 CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD ACTIVITY 325 allowed the examination of attitudes due to the development of a psychometrically sound inventory for the assessment of children's attitudes toward physical activity (CATPA). The instrument has been refined (Schutz & Smoll, 1977; Schutz, Smoll, Carre, & Mosher, 1985; Schutz, Smoll, &Wood, 1981a, 1981b) and additional work with attitudes has examined the relationship between attitudes, involvement in activity, and motor performance (Smoll, Schutz, & Keeney, 1976) and the stability of children's attitudes (Smoll & Schutz, 1980). However, no one has compared the attitudes of children toward physical activity when taught by specialists versus nonspecialists. Figley (1985) reported that the teacher plays an important role in the attitudes of students toward physical education. Through a critical incident report, % of the students interviewed cited the teacher as a significant determinant for positive attitudes. Because of the difference in the professional preparation of specialists versus nonspecialists toward teaching physical education, it was of interest to examine the impact of type of teacher on attitude formation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine whether there were differences in attitudes toward physical activity between children in classes taught by specialists versus nonspecialists. This study should be viewed as a preliminary step in the exploration of attitude formation, since it examines only one possible mediating factor, the teacher. Other influences such as the curriculum could not be controlled and thus cannot be ruled out as competing influences. Subjects Methods A total of 414 fourth- and fifth-grade children from four southern California schools participated in the study. Two schools had physical education specialists (n =4 teachers) teaching the physical education classes while the other two schools had classroom teachers (n=7 teachers) teaching the classes. The principals and teachers of all the schools gave consent for the CATPA inventory to be administered. Instructional Contexl The fourth- and fifth-grade physical education classes taught by both specialists and nonspecialists ranged in size from 27 to 32 students. The classes taught by specialists lasted 40 minutes each and followed a consistent daily schedule. The attitudes of the children were assessed in the classroom during a 30-minute session held in the spring of The teachers of these students were observed at least weekly during May and June in order to provide a description of the curricular activities taking place when the attitudes were assessed. Although classes taught by nonspecialists were not held consistently at the same time of day and varied in length, they usually lasted approximately 30 minutes. Most of the seven nonspecialists were observed every 2 to 3 weeks over a 3-month period during March, April, and May. The four schools featured similar indoor and outdoor teaching facilities. None of the schools had a gymnasium but each had some form of indoor open floor space for use during physical education classes (e.g., multipurpose room, auditorium, cafeteria). In the schools with specialists, these areas were more developed specifically for physical education and were used for activities such

3 326 PATTERSON AND FAUCETTE as gymnastics. Additionally, each school had a paved asphalt area and grassy fields. The two schools with specialists enjoyed greater amounts of equipment as well as specialized apparatus for classes. Specialists used specific activity units to guide their programs. At the site with only one specialist, students were taught basic gymnastic skills such as techniques for safe falls (collapsing) and various rolls. At the other site, students were taught to compete in a variety of track and field events. These lessons culminated in an Olympic-style field day competition. During these observed classes the three specialists were responsible for teaching one event each at a station. Students rotated to the stations where teachers described the event and the skills required. The activity at each station continued until all students completed the tasks. Nonspecialists did not teach activity units but instead selected different game activities that did not require or include skill progression. At one site three nonspecialists taught the same game activity (teamball) during 8 of the 12 observed classes. In these classes students were divided into two equal teams and played dodgeball until the end of the period. During the remaining 4 classes students were directed to practice different fitness items for an upcoming test. In the other school where physical education was taught by nonspecialists, teachers introduced new activities every day. Although they were asked to conduct classes as they normally would, it became apparent that they were varying somewhat from their traditional routine. One teacher commented, "We would normally play more kickball, but we wanted to show you some different activities." Another teacher said that she was "running out of things to do. " Their activity selections did not focus on any consistent skill theme or progression but instead represented a cafeteria approach to curriculum planning. Attitude Assessment Attitudes were assessed by employing the Children's Attitudes Toward Physical Activity (CATPA) inventory (Simon & Smoll, 1974). This inventory was developed from the same theoretical construct as Kenyon's (1968) Attitude Toward Physical Activity (ATPA) inventory which viewed physical activity as multidimensional. The validity of the instrument has been demonstrated with maximum likelihood factor analysis (Schutz et al., 1981b), which verified that physical activity is indeed multidimensional and consists of eight subdomains: social growth, social continuation, fitness for value, fitness for enjoyment, vertigo, catharsis, aestheticism, and asceticism. Listed below is a brief description of each subdomain. 0 Social growth: Participation in physical activities that give you a chance to meet people; Social continuation: Participation in physical activities that give you a chance to be with friends; Health and fitness: Participation in physical activities that improve your health and get you into better condition; Vertigo: Participation in physical activities that could be dangerous and require you to move quickly and change directions; Aesthetic: Participation in physical activities that have beautiful, graceful movements;

4 CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD ACTIVITY 327 Catharsis: Participation in physical activities that reduce stress; Ascetic: Participation in physical activities that have long, hard practices requiring you to give up other things. The reliability of the subdomains of the CATPA has consistently ranged from.80 to -90 (Schutz et al., 1981a; Schutz & Smoll, 1977; Simon & Smoll, 1974; Smoll & Schutz, 1980). Thus the CATPA has been shown to be a valid and reliable measure of the disposition of children toward the construct of physical activity. The CATPA inventory was administered in the classroom by one of the investigators or a trained assistant during the spring of Instructions were read aloud and an example was given to clarify how the students were to fill out the form. Each page represented a subdomain of the construct of physical activity. The eight subdomains were social growth, social continuation, fitness as value, fitness as enjoyment, catharsis, aestheticism, vertigo, and asceticism. A 5-point semantic differential scale with five bipolar adjectives was used to assess the child's attitude toward a brief description of each subdomain. For example, one adjective pair was godbad. Each pair was presented as follows: good bad The child placed a mark in the space that best reflected the expressed attitude toward that pair. Scoring for each pair ranged from 1 to 5 points, with 5 points always associated with the more favorable attitude. Thus, the maximum score for each subdomain was 25 points. An exception to this was the fitness domain. The five word pairs were presented on one page, but previous research (Schutz et al., 1981b) has suggested that the first two word pairs be assigned to "fitness as value" and the last three word pairs be assigned to "fitness as enjoyment." Thus, in order to equate these two subdomains with the others, a multiplication factor was used to arrive at a possible 25 points. (For a complete explanation of the administration and scoring of CATPA, see Schutz et al., 1985.) Statistical Analysis Descriptive statistics were calculated for each of the eight subdomains. T tests between the two schools with specialists indicated no differences in attitudes, so the data from both schools were combined to form the specialist group. Similar results occurred between the two schools employing nonspecialists, which allowed data from both schools to be combined to form the nonspecialist group. Discriminant function analysis using the method of Wilks' lambda was employed to determine which combination of the eight subdomains of the CATPA best discriminated between attitudes of children taught by specialists versus those taught by nonspecialists. Practical significance indicators including the eigenvalue, canonical correlation, and percent of correct classifications were examined to elucidate the statistical findings. Additionally, the reliability of each subdomain was calculated using coefficient alpha. Results Table 1 displays the reliability coefficients for the eight subdomains of the CATPA inventory for children in classes taught by specialists and those taught

5 PATTERSON AND FAUCETTE Table 1 Cronbach's Alpha Reliability Coefficients for CATPA Inventory Subdomain Specialist Nonspecialist Social growth Social continuation Fitness as value Fitness as enjoyment Vertigo Aesthetic Cathartic Ascetic Sample size by nonspecialists. The coefficients generally ranged from.76 to.90 except for the "fitness as value" domain, which had values as low as.58. This drop in reliability is probably due to the fact that the domain only contains two items while the other domains contain five items. Considering the short length of each domain, the obtained reliability coefficients are quite high and corroborate the results of other studies that have found reliability coefficients ranging from.80 to.90 (Schutz et al., 1981a; Schutz & Smoll, 1977; Simon & Smoll, 1974; Smoll & Schutz, 1980). The means and standard deviations for each subdomain of the CATPA inventory can be found in Table 2. In general, the children in this study exhibited quite positive attitudes toward the fitness and social subdomains of the CATPA inventory, with mean values ranging from to out of 25 possible points. On the other hand the children were less attracted to the vertigo and ascetic subdomains. Consequently, the children in this study viewed the risk-taking and hard training aspects of activity less favorably. Each subdomain was ranked (see Table 3) by using the mean attitudes from Table 2. As shown in Table 3, there were only slight differences between children in classes taught by specialists versus nonspecialists for the rankings of the subdomains. Children in classes taught by nonspecialists ranked "fitness as value" first, followed by social continuation, social growth, and fitness as enjoyment. The cathartic domain was ranked fifth, the aesthetic domain sixth, the ascetic domain seventh, and the vertigo domain eighth. Children in classes taught by specialists also ranked "fitness as value" first and social continuation second, but interchanged fitness as enjoyment and social growth. The other difference occurred with the aesthetic and cathartic subdomains. The aesthetic subdomain was ranked fifth and the cathartic subdomain was ranked sixth by children taught by specialists. Discriminant function analysis resulted in a significant difference between the attitudes of children taught by specialists versus nonspecialists (x2= ; p=.0016). The subdomains that contributed to the discriminant score were fitness as enjoyment, aestheticism, vertigo, and catharsis, with the latter being the best predictor. However, examination of practical indicators suggests that the

6 CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD ACTIVITY Table 2 Means and Standard Deviations for CATPA Inventory - Subdomain Specialist Nonspecialist Social growth Social continuation Fitness as value Fitness as enjoyment Vertigo Aesthetic Cathartic Ascetic Sample size Table 3 Rankings of Subdomains for CATPA Inventory Subdomain Specialist Nonspecialist Social growth Social continuation Fitness as value Fitness as enjoyment Vertigo Aesthetic Cathartic Ascetic discriminant score is of little value. For example, the eigenvalue, which is the proportion of variance explained by group membership, was.043. Consequently, the kind of teacher a child has explains only 4% of the variance of attitude scores. Additionally, the canonical correlation, which is the association between the discriminant score and the type of teacher, was.203. And finally, only % of the cases were correctly classified, which is just slightly better than chance classification. Discussion This study examined the attitudes toward physical activity of children in classes taught by specialists versus nonspecialists using the CATPA inventory. The study incorporated the most recent psychometric considerations in the CAT- PA inventory as suggested by Schutz et al. (1985). Consequently, no direct comparisons can be made regarding mean attitudes with work prior to the 1985

7 330 PATTERSON AND FAUCETTE study, since the inventory has undergone extensive revision and point totals for each subdomain have changed. However, rankings of the various subdomains can still be compared. The high rankings for the fitness and social subdomains in the present study corroborate the findings of other studies using an older version of the CATPA (Schutz et al., 1981a; Simon & Smoll, 1974; Smoll & Schutz, 1980). Discriminant function analysis resulted in a significant difference in the attitudes of children in classes taught by specialists versus those taught by nonspecialists, with scores on the cathartic domain being the best predictor. However, despite this significant difference, examination of the practical indices suggests that the discriminant function was not very effective. This finding implies that the attitudes toward physical activity were similar for the children in this study regardless of the type of teacher. These results conflict with those expressed by Figley (1985), who found that students rated teachers as the most important determinant of attitudes toward physical education. Perhaps the conflict is a result of using physical activity as the attitude target rather than physical education. The lack of practical significance in the role of the teacher in attitudes toward physical activity suggests a couple of directions for future research. First, attitude formation is clearly mediated by several factors and this study attempted to examine just one, the teacher. Studies that control physical education curricular experiences and factors external to the school environment may help clarify this complex issue. Second, because attitude is a construct, it is nearly impossible to determine whether the children's expressed target for attitude was truly physical activity in general or some specific familiar activity. For example, in the study by Schutz et al. (1981a), it was found that attitudes toward physical activity expressed by young athletes were perceived to be associated with the sport in which they were currently involved rather than with the more general construct of activity. Perhaps the use of qualitative analyses such as interviews with children would enable researchers to clarify children's perceptions of expressed attitudes. References Clarke, M.S. (1971). Muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness of elementary school children taught by specialist and by classroom teachers. Dissertation Abstracts International, 32, 13 19A. (University Microfilms No ) Figley, G.E. (1985). Determinants of attitudes toward physical education. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 4, Hallstrom, T. (1965). An exploratory study of the effect of special teacher, combination special-classroom teacher, and classroom teacher instruction upon certain aspects of physical fitness and motor skill development. Dissertation Abstracts Intematioml, 26, (University Microfilms No ) Kenyon, G.S. (1968). A conceptual model for characterizing physical activity. Research Quarterly, 39, Nestroy, J. (1978). Fitness levels of children taught by the physical education specialist and classroom teachers. Unpublished master's thesis, Texas Woman's University. Schutz, R.W., & Smoll, F.L. (1977). Equivalence of two inventories for assessing attitudes toward physical activity. Psychological Reports, 40,

8 CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD ACTIVITY 331 Schutz, R.W., Smoll, F.L., Carre, A., & Mosher, R.E. (1985). Inventories and norms for children's attitudes toward physical activity. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 56, Schutz, R.W., Smoll, F.L., & Wood, T.M. (1981a). Physical activity and sport: Attitudes and perceptions of young Canadian athletes. Canadian Journal of Applied Sport Science, 6, Schutz, R.W., Smoll, F.L., & Wood, T.M. (1981b). A psychometric analysis of an inventory for assessing children's attitudes toward physical activity. Journal of Sport Psychology, 4, Simon, J.A., & Smoll, F.L. (1974). An instrument for assessing children's attitudes toward physical activity. Research Quarterly, 45, Smith, E. (1981). A comparison ofjifth grade stdents with a professionalphysical education teacher and a regular teacher. Unpublished master's thesis, Brigham Young University. Smoll, F.L., & Schutz, R.W. (1980). Children's attitudes toward physical activity: A longitudinal study. Journal of Sport Psychology, 2, Smoll, F.L., Schutz, R.W., & Keeney, J.K. (1976). Relationships among children's attitudes, involvement, and proficiency in physical activities. Research Quarterly, 47, Yeatts, P., & Gordon, J. (1968). Effects of physical education taught by a specialist on physical fitness and self-image. Research Quarterly, 39, Zimmerman, H. (1959). Physical performance of children taught by special teachers and classroom teachers. Research Quarterly, 30,