Exploring Principals’ Physical Education Perceptions and Views from Elementary and Middle Schools of Shanghai

Abstract

This study examined the status of principals' physical education (PE) perceptions, the differences between gender and school-levels of these principals' PE perceptions; and what they have to say about the opportunities, challenges and solutions on their school PE. Participants were 92 principals (37 Males, 55 Females) from 12 different school districts of Shanghai. The Adapt Principal Perception on PE Questionnaire Chinese Version (APPPEQ C.V.) was employed for data collection; this questionnaire consists of sixteen items with a 5-points Likert like scale. Key data analyses technich  technique was a 2 x 2 (Gender x School-levels) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Findings included: The principals' PE perceptions appear to be very positive evident by scored high on the APPPEQ C.V. E.g. Item 5, "Without PE in our school curricula, our students will not be fully developed"; Item 11, "Once PE and daily PA are valued and supported, children will gradually form their active and healthy lifestyle". The MANOVA discovered that: no significant difference in the 'Gender' factor; however, significant differences were found in the 'School-levels' factor: Elementary-school principals scored higher than middle-school principals in 5 items; e.g. Item 3, "PE is an academic discipline and just as important as English, Math and Sciences to our students". While principals at middle-school scored higher than those of the elementary-school in other 5 items; e.g. Items 14, "Safe environment, necessary facilities and equipment is the key for kids to. . ." The challenges, opportunities and solutions in their school PE do existed and were analyzed and discussed.

Principals’ Intentions to Promote Physical Education

“…These results support the findings of others (Amis et al, 2012;Bechtel & O'Sullivan, 2007;Faucette & Graham, 1986;Lounsbery, McKenzie, Trost, & Smith, 2011;Meredeth & Curtner-Smith, 2017;Sallis et al, 1996;Zeng & Wang, 2015) and emphasize the significant role principals can have on PE programs. Apart from the constraints of facilities, tight budgets, public policies, a lack of proper facilities, and so on, there is HOPE (Sallis et al, 2012) that we can achieve the many benefits of quality PE with the support of principals, colleagues, and students (Bechtel & O'Sullivan, 2007).…”

“…The perception of principals (Zeng & Wang, 2015) complicates matters for physical educators. Few consider teaching PE a badge of distinction or a subject matter that will make a difference to students.…”

“…Beliefs comprise basis of attitudes that drive intention and behavior (Ajzen, 1991(Ajzen, , 2019. Recognizing the role of beliefs on attitudes, researchers (Zeng & Wang, 2015) recently assessed principals' perceptions about PE. They found principals respecting the value of PE and the challenges associated with teaching PE, but principals viewed PE as a marginal subject in the school curriculum.…”

School physical education courses: A study on challenges and on restoring their functions

“…Looking through Schlecty's (2015) preachment, practice, pretests framework, our results point out much preachment, very strong pretests and minimal practice because in narrative neither administrators nor teachers question and deny the significance of the physical education course. This finding is supported by previous studies (e.g., Varol, 2014;Zeng & Wang, 2015) that found that school principals' self-reported perceptions are very positive. It is understandable that selfreports confirm the preachments.…”

“…Also, while much research focuses on PE courses at higher education and teacher education programs (Hayes, Capel, Katene, & Cook, 2008;Kim, Cardinal, & Cardinal, 2015;Engstrom, 1999), there remains a paucity of evidence on K-12 PE courses. Studies on attitudes towards PE courses are focused on teachers' perspectives (Bozoglu & Göktürk, 2016;Gordon, Dyson, Cowan, McKenzie, & Shulruf, 2016;Marinsek & Kovac, 2019;Simmons & MacLean, 2018), students' perspective (Mercier, Donovan, Gibbone, & Rozga, 2017;Mohammed & Mohammad, 2012;Phillips & Silverman, 2015), administrators' perspective (Oh & Graber, 2019;Zeng & Wang, 2015) or parents' (Nisskaya, 2018). However, there has been no study to date that presents an in-depth comprehensive exploration of PE courses at K-12 level through a consolidation of perspectives of various stakeholders (teachers, academics, athletes, coaches).…”