Physical Fitness in Counseling and Teaching

Abstract

It has been a rather recent and significant development for counselors and teachers to include physical authorities in prominent roles in our professional activities. For example, Counselor Education and Supervision published only one article related to counselor physical health between 1971 and 1976. In 1977, 161 humanistic educational activities were analyzed for their emphasis on physical, intellectual, or emotional domains and their focus on goals involving the production of effectiveness for people, programs, or organizations . It was found that only 1.2% of those activities emphasized the physical domain (see Table 1). Recently, however, a survey of 19 professional journals in education and counseling yielded a total of 21 articles related to physical fitness published during the period from 1977 to 1981, with 5 of those articles having been published during 1981. The recency of interest in this area is surprising because the interrelatedness of physical functioning and other dimensions of performance has long been abundantly clear. It seems that we have yet to respond fully to the theoretical challenge of Maslow (1962) and Prescott (1958) who posited that physical wellbeing was the cornerstone of self-fulfillment.

Tomorrow's Resources are in Today's classroom

“…This pattern was examined using 105 teachers at Northeast Louisiana University. It was found that those who maintained a physical fitness program were twice as likely to maintain facilitative interpersonal functioning (3.0 and above) as those who did not do so (Aspy, Roebuck, & Aspy, 1983).…”

The Journal of Humanistic Education and Development: Research Implications for Psychoeducational Development

“…Smith (1981) made some additional comparisons of male and female teachers and found that male teachers were significantly more sexist than female teachers. Other studies in the journal from 1981 to 1985 found that teachers who require orderly, well-structured, and predictable classroom environments are the most likely to identify students falsely as candidates for special education (Logan, 1984) and that low levels of physical fitness among teachers have negative educational effects on students (Aspy, Roebuck, & Aspy, 1983).…”