Attention in physical education classes: Differences between colletive sports

Abstract

Attention is considered an important mediator variable in the teaching / learning process, because of that, the scientific community made several investigations in order to understand what students are thinking, what strategies are best to captivate their attention and the type of instructions and/or feedback to develop students' performance in achieving motor skills. In this research we tried to find differences in attentional profiles, of students during the practice of football and basketball at different moments of a Physical Education class. The sample consists of 156 students of both genders (84 females and 72 males), between 12 and 16 years old (of 3rd Primary School (7th, 8th and 9th grade) to which a questionnaire was applied, ATEST- EF (Petrica 2010). Questionnaire which students had to point out what they were thinking at certain time of the Physical Education class. This was applied in team sports (football and basketball). In descriptive terms we found that students are in general aware of the task, information and behavior, and there are a few differences between the percentages between them, but from the test Chi_Square we found no statistical differences between the different moments of the Physical Education class. We concluded that, in this sample we didn't verified the importance of attention and students focus in the different moments of team sport's practice.