The Relationship between Teacher Enthusiasm and Student Involvement During Motor Skill Activities

Abstract

Due to the presumed effects a teacher's enthusiasm (T.E.) has upon a student, and the importance of student involvement (S.I.) in an activity, this investigation studied these behaviors as they occurred in the physical education setting. Two specifically designed descriptive-analytic coding systems were developed appropriate to the target behaviors. The subjects were five physical education teachers and a randomly selected student from one of each of their classes. The subjects were video taped, with a separate camera for each teacher and student. Three coders per system were trained until at least 80% inter-coder reliability was attained. The coders then coded the video tapes and mean scores for each teacher and student were computed. Three relationships between teacher enthusiasm and student involvement were investigated (T.E. ten seconds prior to S.I.; T.E. thirty seconds prior to S.I. ; and T. E. every ten seconds during S.I.). Significant differences were not found in four of the five teacher-student pairs. A significant, negative correlation was found between T.E. and S.I. in one teacher-student pair, as they were studied in each of the three associations. It is recommended that further research be conducted to establish additional tools to study teacher and student behaviors as they occur during the teaching-learning process.