Attention in physical education classes: Differences between different individual modalities

Abstract

Introduction: Sport activities demand a focused and polarized attention, as necessary condition to learning process. Described as an essential condition to the learning process, attention is considered a powerful mediating variable, because we can notice its influence on the teaching-learning process, as well as its influence on the teacher’s behaviour, the student’s behaviour and the learning results. According to this fact, the focused attention arises as a fundamental condition to the learning process, since the greater the power to keep the focus on a certain object or task, the better the chance of success. Objective: We intend to know the aspects to which the students pay attention during the different moments of the Physical Education class, in individual sportive activities. Methodology: The sample consisted of 156 students from the 3rd Cycle of Basic Education, of both genders (84 female and 72 male). We applied the questionnaire ATEST-EF (Petrica 2003), in which the students signalized what they were thinking of at certain moments of the Physical Education classes, more precisely of Athletics and Gymnastics classes. The results indicate that there are no significant differences, because after the application of the test of “Chi-Square” to associate the variable “Attention” and the variable “Signal” for the individual activities, we can verify the value of (p= .373). From the analysis performed, we can infer that in relation to students' attention profile study in individual sports, athletics and gymnastics, there are no statistically significant differences.