Life Skills Development and Assessment in Elementary Physical Education Classes

Life Skills Development and Assessment in Elementary Physical Education Classes                              Youngjoon Kim1, Unjong Lee1, Okseon Lee1                   1 Department of Physical... [ view full abstract ]

Life Skills Development and Assessment in Elementary Physical Education Classes

                             Youngjoon Kim¹, Unjong Lee¹, Okseon Lee¹  

                ¹ Department of Physical Education, Seoul National University, South Korea

The role of education is to make student change wholly and live in good life. Physical Education (PE) has been known for playing a great role in developing students’ life skills. However, there’s little evidence underpinning direct link between PE and life skills development. Assessing life skills from PE is the rising issue of Positive Youth Development (PYD).

The purpose of this study was to explore life skills development and assessment in elementary PE classes. Data were collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 6^th grade elementary students (n=6) and field notes, teacher’s reflective journals. Qualitative data were analyzed by inductive methods (Creswell, 2009).

Firstly, student-centered PE classes had positive effects on filling in their deficiency as well as maximizing their strengths. We call it life skills). Transferring authority to students from a teacher was a crucial factor in life skills development.

Secondly, the findings revealed the inconsistency between perceived life skills and behavior of participants. Participants responded that they had learned ‘confidence’ and ‘fair-play’ through PE classes. However, their real performance in PE was contrary to their statements. It was self-contradictory statements, which makes hard to distinguish what life skills was learned from students’ own statements

Thirdly, assessment of life skills was heavily dependent on students’ self-cognition, due to the lack of the systematic assessment tools. To assess thoroughly how students were changed through PE classes, adequate assessment tools are needed to develop, which are more systematic and validating.

The findings provide a deeper insight that student-centered PE classes can help students learn various life skills, and suggest the needs for developing systematic life skills assessment tools.