Preservice Physical Educators' Knowledge of Physical Activity and Health-Related Fitness

Background/Purpose: Physical education scholars have long recognized that content knowledge plays a critical role in the development and practice of teachers and have argued for the need for thorough command of physical education subject matter. Recently, due to the high incidence of obesity and physical inactivity rates among youth, both physical activity and health-related fitness content have become central foci of physical education and Physical Education Teacher Education programs (PETE) in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine preservice physical education teachers’ content knowledge of physical activity and health-related fitness.  

Method: 422 preservice physical education teachers from 10 different PETE programs in the state of Texas completed the 41-item multiple-choice Appropriate Physical Activity and Health-Related Fitness (APAHRF) test prior to their student-teaching semester.  Participants ranged from 19 to 50 years of age. In a previous study, the APAHRF test was validated and found to have KR-20 reliability coefficient of 0.67.

Analysis/Results: The total mean percentage score was 56.3% (M = 23.0, SD = 4.5).  Independent t-test, t(364) = .07, p = .940, revealed no significant difference between males and females preservice physical educators’ content knowledge. The KR-20 reliability coefficient of the test for this sample was 0.63.  The difficulty indices ranged from .12 to .97.  Discrimination indexes (point biserial) ranged from 0.07 to 0.44.

Conclusions: The generally poor performance of preservice teachers on the APAHRF test is consistent with previous investigations (Miller & Housner, 1998; Petersen, Byrne & Cruz, 2003).  Preservice teachers particularly performed poorly on test questions related to physical activity guidelines, physical activity assessments, and concepts related to body composition, muscular endurance, and exercise. These results are alarming. The ultimate goal of physical education programs is to develop the students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes to lead a physically active and healthy lifestyle. Teacher content knowledge is a sine qua non for translating this information.  It is recommended that PETE programs carefully evaluate the content of physical activity and health-related fitness taught to preservice physical educators and provide practical applications of the content throughout the program.