Students' situational interest in co-educational and single-sex contexts in PE

Introduction The debate on the implementation of single-sex classes is pregnant in schools and in physical education (PE) classes (e.g., Hannon & Williams, 2008). PE is a traditionally male subject and the problems associated with coeducational (coed) PE have prompted some researchers to suggest that a return to single-sex may be considered (e.g., Scraton, 1993). Previous researches on single-sex or/and co-ed PE presented limitations and led to contradictory results. In line with the emerging line of research based on theoretical framework of interest (e.g., Chen, 2001), the purpose of this study was to estimate the effect of single-sex and coed PE classes on students’ situational interest. Methods The sample of the present study consisted of 177 students aged 12-16, 96 boys, and 81 girls from PE classes from Swiss secondary schools. The French 19-item situational interest scale was fulfilled after practicing a selected learning task in single-sex and coed PE contexts. A three-way repeated measures MANOVA (2*2*2) was used to examine the main and interaction effects of student gender, gender class composition and time on the five sources and the global score of situational interest. Results Results showed a student’s situational interest increase between the first and second practice of the learning task. In addition, the scores were higher in co-educational context than in the single-sex context for the total situational interest, and for three of the five sources of situational interest: instant enjoyment, exploration, and attention demand. But no significant main effect of gender and interaction effect between gender, gender class composition and time were found. Conclusions These results were discussed in relation with previous studies on situational interest and students gender, and permit to supply the debate on coed vs single-sex PE classes