Preservice physical education teachers' beliefs about sustainable development in physical education — scale development and validation

Climate change poses a major challenge to people and ecosystems and calls for action across all areas to contribute to a sustainable transformation of society. To shape this transformation, it is crucial that teachers implement education for sustainable development (ESD) in schools for a more sustainable future generation, which also applies to physical education (PE) teachers. However, little is known about PE teachers’ beliefs, a key dimension of professional competence, regarding the implementation of ESD in PE. Hence, the goal of this study was to 1) develop a scale to capture PE teachers’ beliefs about the relevance of sustainable development generally and in the context of PE, and 2) investigate its psychometric properties and criterion validity. The analysis using exploratory structural equation modeling in a cross-sectional sample of 206 preservice teachers resulted in a 10-item instrument with good psychometric properties (comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.976; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.047; standardized root mean square residual [SRMR] = 0.057) and reliability across three factors: a) general beliefs about the relevance of sustainable development, b) positive, and c) critical subject-specific beliefs about sustainable development in PE. Based on the value-belief-norm theory, criterion validity was confirmed through associations between biospheric values and beliefs. We conclude that the newly developed scale is appropriate for assessing PE teacher’s beliefs about the implementation of ESD in PE