Students' Perceptions of the Physiques of Self and Physical Educators

Background/Purpose: Standard three of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education requires attaining and maintaining a health-enhancing level of physical fitness. The standards refer to “a physically educated person”, and educators are equally responsible to achieve these standards. Thus, it is important to consider whether this is occurring in physical education programs both at the school and collegiate level. Fitness levels and health are often interpreted by body size, and educator physique can directly impact learning. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine collegiate physical education students’ perceptions of the actual and desired physiques of themselves and physical educators.

Method: Participants were 120 (67 male, 53 female) undergraduate students enrolled in physical education, teacher education programs attending one of four state AAHPERD conferences. Participants completed a survey comprising the Contour Drawing Rating Scale and were asked to identify the actual and ideal physique of an individual in each of four categories: general population, collegiate physical educator, physical education school teacher, and physique of self.

Analysis/Results: Seven dependent t-tests revealed significant differences (p < .007) for perceived and actual physiques of all categories whereby the actual physique was reported to be significantly larger than the ideal physique. A one-way MANOVA was used to determine if there was a statistical difference between the perceptions of males versus females with regard to the 14 dependent measures.  There was a statistically significant difference based on gender [F (14, 105) = 2.46, p < .005; Wilk's Λ = 0.753, partial η²= .25].  Follow-up ANOVAs indicated that males reported significantly smaller actual and ideal female physiques of physical education school teachers. Also, males reported significantly larger actual and ideal physiques compared to the physiques reported by females.

Conclusions: It is concerning that physical educators both at the collegiate and school level were perceived to be significantly larger than they should be. This could have implications on student learning, and does little to counter the credence that the profession tolerates a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude particularly amongst its educators. Of equal alarm is that participants also viewed themselves as larger than ideal. Thus, there is no apparent effort to break the mold, and fitness testing in physical education, teacher education may not be achieving its objectives.  Lastly, differences in the perceptions of males and females should be further examined for the possibility of a double-standard.