Physical education teachers‘ competences in preventing sport injuries and its need to develop them

Background: School is a place where kids spent most of their time in young age so it is crucial to maintain safety measures in its environment (Lithuanian Law on Education, 2011). In previous research (Bobrova et al., 2001; Strukčinskienė et al., 2015) scientists have discovered that pupils mostly get injured in physical education (PE) classes. Although there is no teacher who wants his student to get injured, once in a while it can happen and therefore cause long-term damage to students’ health. For this reason, it is essential to investigate sport injuries in PE classes: prevalence, cause of occurrence, type of injuries, differences in injuries among genders. The main goal is to avoid or reduce these kind of injuries and a front line of this to happen is in the hands of PE teachers. Research goal: To determine competence of PE teachers in Kaunas city for injury prevention and its need for development. Tasks: 1. To determine PE teachers knowledge in sport injury prevention. 2. To identify types of students‘ injuries that occur in PE classes. 3. To estimate PE teachers‘ need for development of sport injury prevention competencies. Hypothesis: PE teachers need competence in sport injury prevention classes. Results: PE teachers are competent in providing key knowledge of sport injury prevention to students but they do express the need for development in this particular sphere. Women are more likely to use their communication skills then men (p < 0, 05). Conclusion: Even though no significant number of severe injuries were observed in this research, but teachers expressed a demand for knowledge in sport injury prevention. PE teacher think that irrational PE curriculum organization methods and poor schools’ equipment base can be a cause of sports injuries for students