Attitudes of primary school students toward physical education: Age and gender specifics

Abstract

The primary goal of this paper was to examine the attitudes of primary school students towards different aspects of physical education, with special emphasis on the specifics of age and gender categories. Also, the emotional relation towards physical education was examined through its ranking on the list of favorite subjects, and it was brought in connection with attitudes. The sample consisted of 6627 students (boys 3341 - 50.4%; girls 3286 - 49.6%) of primary schools in the city of Banja Luka (Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina), of which 2201 elementary school students and 4426 middle school students. Using t-tests, it was found that elementary school students in relation to the middle school students show statistically significantly higher values for the general attitude towards physical education. A comprehensive approach to the analysis of 15 separate items showed that the former express significantly higher values for most items. Girls and boys do not differ in terms of a general attitude towards physical education. Elementary school students ranked physical education better than other subjects, while girls of both age categories ranked physical education somewhat worse than boys. Better attitudes and ranking by younger students indicate the priority of this phase of life for physical education and the need to raise quality in working with this age. Declining values at an older age (middle school) require more proactive teacher action with an emphasis on the implementation of interesting content. The lack of differences between the attitudes of girls and boys calls for a renunciation of the traditional assumption that only boys have a benevolent attitude towards physical education. This implies greater support for girls and their stronger involvement in all organizational forms of physical education (sports sections, school competitions).