It is well documented that elementary school children do not participate in recommended amounts of physical activity, and that elementary physical education programs generally are unable to insure that children engage in appropriate amounts of activity. One solution to this dilemma is to increase childrens activity levels through collaborative efforts such as whole school programs involving the classroom teachers. If this approach is to be successful, it is important to investigate ways that elementary classroom teachers can be actively involved in school level programs that will ultimately increase childrens physical activity levels. Elementary classroom teachers are often responsible for at least a portion of the instructional requirements in physical education, but tend to view this responsibility negatively. Self-efficacy is a powerful theoretical approach for determining and improving a persons participatory behavior and their perseverance in the face of obstacles. This study investigates self-efficacy as a framework to facilitate the involvement of classroom teachers in whole school physical activity programs. The purpose was to investigate how teachers self-efficacy influences their participatory behavior. This was an experimental design involving 148 classroom teachers and their classes from 11 elementary schools (six experimental, six control). Instruments were employed to assess and explain teachers self-efficacy strength and sources, teachers participation, and students participation in a nine-week physical activity intervention. Statistical analyses of the quantitative data confirmed support for (a) self-efficacy theorys predictive aspects of teachers participatory behavior in innovative physical activity programs, (b) a causal relationship between the level of teachers participation and their subsequent self-efficacy, (c) emerging theories of self-efficacys malleability. The themes that emerged from the analyses of the qualitative data reflected the belief that (a) environmental influence on teachers capability beliefs, though still prominent, decreases after actual participation in a program, (b) during participation, teachers shift importance away from more abstract factors to more concrete factors, (c) teachers with enhanced efficacy are more able to negotiate environmental barriers, confirming a central tenet of self-efficacy theory and explaining the findings of the quantitative part of this research project.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-03312005-151954 |
| Date | 04 April 2005 |
| Creators | Roth, James Frederick |
| Contributors | Melinda A. Solmon, Richard A. Magill, Louis Harrison, Amelia M. Lee, Kurt Svoboda |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-03312005-151954/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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