Browsing by Author "Suvanto, Maria"

The meaning of this study was to describe factors which affect the enjoyment of physical education from the point of view of physically active students. Physical education has an important role in making children move because physical activity among children has decreased. However, still a great part of children do sports during their free time for example in sports clubs. For this reason I wanted to focus on the ones who actively take part in activities arranged by sports clubs and presumably enjoy physical activities. Because large amount of children have sports as a hobby they also form a great part of students in physical education classes. Therefore I think it is important to know what kind of experiences they have in physical education. This study will examine which factors affect positive and negative experiences in physical education. Two primary school aged girls who play actively basketball took part in this study. Interviewees play basketball in the same team but attend in different schools, the other on the fifth grade, and the other on the sixth grade. The research material was collected by using non-active role play and group interview. Type of the interview was semi-structured. The material was analysed by data-based content analysis using thematising. The interviewees’ attitudes towards physical education were positive. The factors affecting the positive and negative experiences were found under four themes. The factors which affect the experiences in physical education were content in PE-class, competence, experiences of atmosphere and group and teacher’s action. PE-class’ content had the biggest effect for the positive experiences. Experiences of atmosphere and group and undesirable content had the biggest effect for the negative experiences. These themes were in line with self-determination theory which is used in research of motivation. Self-determination theory inhere competence, autonomy and relatedness and these attributes were found in factors which affect experiences.