The physical education lesson in Turkish primary schools: Affective entry characteristics and gender

Abstract

In the study students' affective entry characteristics related to Physical Education lessons were examined based on three dimensions: interest towards the lesson, level of motivation in the lesson and educational gains. The study further aimed to investigate how these three dimensions were affected by the gender factor. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire developed by Yoncalik in 2006. A total of 1089 seventh grade pupils (530 girls; 559 boys) from 22 state primary schools in Konya and Ankara city centres participated in the study. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences 11.0 (SPSS) was used for the statistical analysis of the data. The t-test for independent groups was utilised to compare the participants' responses in terms of gender. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. The research findings revealed that boys were more interested, more motivated and had more educational gains than girls in the Physical Education lesson.