Effects of Peer Education on Attitudes of Secondary School Students Towards the Course of Physical Education and Sports

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the changes in student attitudes towards the course of Physical Education and Sports as well as in students' development of skill as a result of using Peer Education in the course of Physical Education and Sports in secondary schools.

The study was conducted with a total of 120 students, who studied in the 7th grade at Atatürk Secondary School located in the Province of Elazığ, District of Maden and at Cumhuriyet Secondary School located in the District of Sivrice, in the second term of 2015-2016 school year. The students in the sample group were divided into two 30-person groups, namely the control group and the experimental group. For heterogeneous selection of the students, the student selection was conducted by applying the Peer Educator Observation Form and the "Who is this?" Test in the classroom. The process was explained to the designated peer educators and their voluntary consent forms were obtained. "The Course of Physical Education Attitude Scale" was applied to all students before starting the process. After providing the students comprising the experimental group with the necessary information about peer education, the lessons were taught through the method of peer education. And in the control group, the course of physical education and sports was conducted through the traditional teaching methods. At the end of 4 weeks of application, "The Course of Physical Education Attitude Scale" was reapplied to both the experimental group and the control group.

The attitude scale was applied twice, before and after the education. The qualitative data were obtained from the diaries of the physical education teachers and students. In the analysis of the data, for qualitative dimension, descriptive analysis, for quantitative data, %, frequency, for repetitive measurements, t test and one-way variance analysis were used. The SPSS (22) package program was used for the analysis of the quantitative data. The quantitative data were explained through tabulation. Again, the data obtained from observation forms were presented in the form of tables with their frequency and percentage values. Themes were obtained by coding the qualitative data.

At the end of the research, the education received by the students in the experimental and control groups led to a significant difference in pre- and post-program attitude level in favor of the end-test. However, it was determined that being in different groups did not lead to a significant difference in students' attitude scores.