The effects of a three-year integrated Olympic education programme on adolescents’ prosocial behaviours

Abstract

Abstract The concept of Olympic education and its use of moral education to shape the development of personality have received insufficient empirical support. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of an integrated Olympic education programme on the development of prosocial behaviour in adolescents. A natural experimental research design was applied in this study. The pre-test sample included 411 adolescents (aged 13–14) who were randomly selected from schools that had begun to apply an integrated Olympic education programme, along with 430 adolescents from schools without an Olympic education programme. The post-test sample included 381 students from schools implementing the Olympic education programme and 402 students from schools without an Olympic education programme. The revised prosocial tendencies measure was administered to the participants at pre- and post-test time points to assess changes in prosocial behaviour and specifically on six types of prosocial behaviour: public, anonymous, dire, emotional, compliant, and altruistic. The analyses showed significant improvements in prosocial behaviour in adolescents from schools that had implemented an integrated Olympic education programme. Changes in prosocial behaviour following the implementation of an integrated Olympic education programme were observed for the compliant, altruistic, and dire types of prosocial behaviour. In conclusion, these findings suggest that an integrated Olympic education programme effectively encourages prosocial behaviour in adolescents. This study expands our understanding of the efficiency of implementing an Olympic education programme in schools. We suggest that future research should investigate the behavioural changes in students of different ages from perspective of both teachers and students.