A Model Health-Related Elementary Physical Education Program for Saipan: Teachers\u27 Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was significant differences in changes of knowledge, attitudes, and practices between elementary school teachers who took part in an in-service physical education training program and those who did not take part. The in-service training program utilized a model health-related physical education program. The setting for the study was a school district on Saipan whose teachers were required to teach physical education. Teachers in five of nine public elementary schools were placed in the in-service training program. A questionnaire assessing knowledge, attitudes, and practices, was administrated as a pre- and post-test. A second post-test, utilizing only the practice section, was administrated eight weeks after the first post-test. This quantitative study utilized a treatment and control group. The treatment group took part in an eight-week in-service training program using a model health-related physical education program to provide the in-service training. The control group did not receive the in-service training. This researcher visited each of the five treatment group schools once a week for eight weeks. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the change in scores for knowledge, attitudes, practices, and total score between the independent variables, number of sessions attended for the in-service training, gender, grade level taught, number of years of teaching experience, and number of personal exercise days per week among participating teachers. The best fitting regression model was employed to estimate what relationships existed between the change of scores for the four dependent variables and the independent variables. Results showed a statistically significant, positive relationship between the number of in-service training sessions attended and change in knowledge score. The more sessions attended produced a higher knowledge score. Results also showed a weak but statistically significant relationship between grade levels taught and change in attitudes toward the teaching of physical education. However, the remaining independent variables of gender, number of years taught, and number of personal exercise days per week showed no treatment effect on any of the change of scores. In conclusion, it is evident that elementary teachers who attended an in-service training program improved their knowledge in teaching physical education. However, elementary teachers\u27 attitudes and practices toward the teaching of physical education did not improve. This implies the need for physical education pre-service and on-going in-service training programs for all elementary school teachers on Saipan