Perceived Physical Literacy and Physical Education Teaching Efficacy among Hong Kong Pre-service Physical Education Teachers: A Preliminary Study

BackgroundPhysical literacy (PL) is defined as “the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life” (Whitehead,... [ view full abstract ]

Background

Physical literacy (PL) is defined as “the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life” (Whitehead, 2016). Physical education (PE) teaching efficacy is the teaching efficacy of PE teacher consisting both self-efficacy level and the efficacy belief concerning several pedagogical skills and core competencies (Humphries et al., 2012). Previous studies already put the concept of PL into teacher education programme but no study focus on their teaching effiacy nor ability. PE aims to develop children’s and adolescents’ PL journey, with the ability to facilitate teaching and learning process, it is crucial that there are some components linkage between perceived PL and PE teaching efficacy. Therefore, this study examined their relationship among Hong Kong pre-service PE teachers (PSPETs).

Methods

Demographic information, score of perceived PL and PE teaching efficacy were collected from 133 PSPETs in Hong Kong through a set of questionnaires using Perceived PL Instrument (Sum et al., 2016) and PE Teaching Efficacy Scale (Humphries et al., 2012). Pearson’s correlation and hierarchical linear regression were used to investigate the relationship between perceived PL and PE teaching efficacy.

Results

The scores of perceived PL and PE teaching efficacy were in a moderate correlation significantly (r = 0.48, p < 0.01). The attributes of perceived PL also generated significance variance towards corresponding attributes of PETE significantly (β = 0.251 – 0.37, p < 0.05).

Conclusions

This was the first study to investigate on the relationship between perceived PL and PE teaching efficacy which showed a significant prediction from the former to latter among Hong Kong PSPETs. Future study can investigate on the underlying reasons of their relationship by using individual and focus group interviews in a qualitative approach.