Elementary Students’ Views and Experiences on Sport Education in Cyprus

Abstract

Sport education is a curriculum and instructional model designed to offer authentic, educationally rich sport experiences for girls and boys in the context of school physical education (Siedentop, 1994; Sieden-top, Hastie, & Van der Mars, 2004). The literature on sport education suggests that most of the studies examining its effectiveness are within middle or secondary schools and there are fewer studies on the perceptions or representations of the model by students in primary settings (Hastie, Ojeba, & Luquin, 2011; Kinchin, 2006; Wallhead & O'Sullivan, 2005). This study presents findings related to primary stu-dents' representations and practices of sport education. More specifically, the purpose of this study was to explore and describe Greek-Cypriot students' perceptions and experiences of a basketball season that fol-lowed a sport education format. Twenty-two (22) year—6 students (11-to 12-year-old), 12 boys and 10 girls, from a public primary school in Cyprus, participated in the sport education unit which lasted thir-teen (13) lessons. Data were collected through interviews, questionnaires, observations, and documents (unit and lesson plans) and were later analysed inductively (Patton, 2001). Results suggested that students in this study were successfully affiliated within their teams and appropriate opportunities were created for autonomous and meaningful learning. In addition, findings revealed that during the lessons there was a joyful and positive atmosphere which enabled all members to work hard as a whole in order to achieve their goals. Based on our results we have drawn the following two conclusions: first, the model of sport education enhanced the level of participation and motivation of students towards physical education; se-cond, the participants in this study encountered meaningful learning experiences during the implementa-tion of the sport education model.