Socialization Into Teaching Physical Education – Acculturative Formation of Perceived Strengths

Abstract

We studied if and how gender, the histories of physical activity (PA) and success in physical education (PE) are related to pre-service class teachers’ (PCTs) perceived strengths in teaching PE (PSTPEs). Various backgrounds were considered to be environments of teacher socialization. The six data based categories of PSTPEs used in this study were: sportiness, teaching skills, positive attitude, encouragement, empathy and set no stress. The data from 386 first year Finnish PCTs were collected before their formal PE studies. Cross tabulation and binary logistic analyses were executed to expose the relationships and effects. The main findings of this study showed that pre-service teachers with more team oriented physical activity histories enter the formal teacher education perceiving to possess discipline- focused teaching skills as their asset. On the contrary, the respondents with more individually oriented PA backgrounds perceived pupil- focused set no stress as their strength. Suggestive findings, that physically active, successful and team oriented pre-service teachers perceive more discipline-focused strengths (especially sportiness) while their colleagues with opposite histories perceived pupil-focused strengths (especially empathy) were also discussed. This study adds the existing data to information of the effects of acculturative formation of perceived strengths before the influence of formal teacher education studies in PE.