Primary Physical Education : the perspective of the class teachers

Abstract

Primary PE is an issue which is currently widely discussed due to the alarming obese figure according the European Commission (2011). According to the European Commission, children are not getting enough exercise and this is one of the contributions towards an increase in obesity each year. Children spend half of their waking hours at school and consequently schools should contribute significantly towards the daily Physical Activity. In this study the perceptions, attitudes and ideas of non specialized teachers together with their pre-deposition, their physical activity background and the training received was investigated. To gather more detailed overview of the research questions a mixed research method approach was used. Self-report questionnaires were distributed to teachers of both early and junior years cycle while semi-structured interviews were carried out with key stakeholders in the educational sphere. Through this study it was noted that Maltese primary class teachers are not that aware of the benefits that PE has while it highlighted that although the NCF (2012) establishes different outcomes and outputs within the different cycles, the study showed that there is no such differences. Although PE is deemed to be a subject to be taught in all schools at compulsory level a total of 11.1% stated that they do not deliver a PE lesson with the 86% of those who do not deliver a PE lesson are those respondents who stated that they are not physically active themselves. Furthermore it was noted how only the 66.6% of those who deliver a PE lesson plan their own scheme of work. In addition the main factor that influenced teachers to deliver a regular PE lesson is the stressful load of syllabi regarding other subjects and according to the respondents the ideal way forward should be that a specialized PE teacher would be stationed in every primary school..