The Reality of Fitness for Pre-service Teachers: What Physical Education Majors Know and Can Do

Despite the fact that fitness looms large in the profession, and the fact that there are many issues associated with teaching and testing it, little research has been done to substantiate what in-service or pre -service teachers actually know and do related to fitness. The purpose of this article is to describe the results of two types of fitness assessments on physical education majors. The results of the Fitnessgram test on all physical education majors revealed a fairly high overall rate of passing (82 % of students passed all test items); higher passing rates were apparent for specific tests. BMI was the area of greatest difficulty and concern. In addition, majors in the teacher education concentration who had completed all coursework and student teaching were given a cognitive test called FitSmart, which is a National Health-Related Fitness Knowledge Test designed for high school students. Results indicated that although the pre-service teachers scored in the 99th percentile for high school students, their mean score was 75.18 %. Results of both these assessments raise concerns for colleges and universities as fitness plays an increasingly larger role in physical education