The perception of the sport-educational process by the pupils aged between 9 and 11 from the Gorenjska region

It is very important for a teacher to know how the pupils perceive Physical Education (PE) in order for them to be able to adapt the lessons to the students' needs and thus make the lessons more interesting and motivating. For the purposes of this BA dissertation, I conducted a survey to learn more about the PE perception of students aged between 9 and 11 from various schools in the Gorenjska region. In the theoretical part, I discussed firstly the benefits of sports in terms of both spiritual and physical health, and secondly focused on how PE is organized in schools. Furthermore, I compared various previous dissertations regarding the reasons that pupils have to be excused from PE and their views on the popularity of PE. I also described the role of the PE teacher during lessons. All in all, I attempted to discuss all PE related topics as well as potential problems that arise during its realization. For the empirical part, I conducted a survey using the questionnaire method. The survey included 1043 participants from 18 schools in the Gorenjska region. The results show that in the fourth grade PE is mostly taught by the class teachers (66.9 %), whereas in the fifth grade this role is performed mostly by PE teachers (51.1 %). Only 15.5 % of pupils are taught PE by both their class and PE teacher. Furthermore, the results also indicate that PE is pupils’ favourite subject. As many as 43.5 % of the participants ranked it as number one in terms of favourites. For 21.4 % of the pupils PE is their second favourite subject and finally 12.1 % ranked is as their third favourite subject. When asked if they enjoy PE lessons, 95.2 % of participants answered in the affirmative. However, participants were of the opinion that PE is not a very important subject for life and they found Maths, Slovene and English far more important in the long run. In terms of the popularity of individual sports, football was ranked number one (40.8 %). In terms of other sports and games available, participants favoured dodgeball (71.8 %). When asked which activity they would choose themselves, 44.5 % opted for football and 45.3 % chose dodgeball. Most pupils (68.4 %) said they really liked choosing the PE activities themselves. Football was also chosen as the least favourite sport (39.2 %) and thus I assume this were mostly girls’ votes, whereas the boys chose it as their favourite sport. The least favourite activity is dance with 54.7 %. Furthermore, I also inspected various reasons why students dislike PE. The option ‘the teacher is angry with us’ was chosen the most often (66.5 %). Only 14.9 % of the pupils choose to be active during their school breaks. I also asked two further questions if they wanted to continue being active during breaks and if they wished they had this option, but the answers were not useful. During the 2010/11 school year, most of the pupils (58.3 %) received the highest grade at PE and 95.1 % of the participants said they were pleased with the grades they received. Pupils said they do not mind grades at PE. 30.6 % wish they did not receive grades at all and 20.9 % said they were worried about being graded for their PE performance