Differences between sport education and traditional teaching in developing students’ engagement and responsibility

Abstract

Physical education not only provides conditions for the development of motor skill competence and the adoption of healthy lifestyles, but it is also valued for its influence on students’ personal and social development. In particular, the ability to develop personal and social responsibility and engagement fostered in physical education provides skills that can contribute to a student’s inclusion in society and a successful transition to adulthood. Nevertheless, different teaching approaches adopted by teachers may lead to different outcomes. The purpose of this study was to verify and compare the effects of two different teaching approaches, Traditional Teaching and the Sport Education model, on students’ responsibility and engagement in high school Physical Education classes. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used across eighteen classes from eight different schools in northern Portugal. The participants were 430 high-school students (66.7% male), aged between 14 and 21 years (M =16.22, SD =1.03) enrolled in 10th, 11th and 12th grades.All classes met twice a week across 8 weeks, for a total of twenty-four 45-min lessons. Two hundred and twenty-six students participated in a 24 lesson unit following the Traditional Teaching, while 204 students were taught using the Sport Education model. Students’ personal and social responsibility was assessed with the Personal-social Responsibility Questionnaire, and the Athlete Engagement Questionnaire was administered to assess students’ engagement. Results showed that participation in the SE season significantly improved the students’ levels of personal and social responsibility. In contrast, the perceptions of personal responsibility of students in the Traditional Teaching unit decreased. No significant difference was found in student engagement when the two teaching approaches were compared. These results suggest the suitability of the Sport Education in physical education classes, and particularly on its positive impact on students’ personal and social responsibility and engagement.