The Examination of the Attitudes of Secondary School Students Towards Physical Education Course

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes of primary education students towards physical education courses according to certain variables. 640 students from elementary schools in the city center and several counties of Sakarya participated in the study. In the designating of the students’ attitudes towards the physical education courses, the Physical Education Courses Attitude scale, which was developed by Güllü & Güçlü (2009), was used. In the statistical analysis of the acquired data as a result of the study, frequency, One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal-Wallis H analysis were conducted in SPSS 15.0 for Windows software. As a result of the study, it is concluded that a large part of the students (63.9%) have a habit of doing sports regularly and the number of students who practice sports in a sports club is considerably high (43.8%). When the attitudes of the students towards the physical education courses are examined, it is discovered that the attitudes of students towards the physical education courses are generally high. It is also concluded that the attitudes of students towards the physical education courses do not demonstrate a statistically significant difference in terms of gender and age groups (P>0.05). On the contrary, it is determined that the students’ involvement in practicing sports with a license in a sports club and attending to tournaments affected their attitude towards the physical education courses positively and this acquired result is statistically meaningful.