Effect of Class Content on Practice Time in the Physical Education of Elementary and High School Students
Effect of Class Content on Practice Time in the Physical Education of Elementary and High School Students

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the efficient use of time in providing high quality physical education in schools. We explore the research base identifying effective physical education teaching in schools, in terms of academic learning time and other time-related variables in physical education lessons. We compare students’ activity levels in two types of physical education sessions which differ with regards to lesson content (technical lessons and games lessons), and to the educational level in which the sessions are given (three stages of elementary education and high school education). A total of 112 lessons involving ten class groups and 255 elementary and high school students were observed using the Placheck method (Siedentop & Tannehill, 2000). T tests were used to compare the academic learning time engagement levels of technical classes with physical education games classes. In the technical lessons, the students were active 45.6% of the time during the session, while in the games lessons the students were active 53.2% of the time. This difference is significant (p=0.002). These differences were not significant in the sessions taught in the first and second stages of elementary education.

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