Running Header: Motivation in Middle School PE 1

Motivation in Middle School Physical Education Students

Carmen Hewlett

Department of Educational Research, Northern Arizona University

EDR 610: Introduction to Education Research Methods

Dr. Ishmael Munene

September 20, 2020

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Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to examine motivating factors for middle school students in

physical education (P.E.) courses.

In the last decade in the United States, obesity in children has risen from 16.9 percent to

18.5 percent of children for a total of 13.7 million children qualifying as obese (CDC, 2019).

Obesity has been known to have negative effects on the learning process and overall fatigue

throughout the day for a child. The simplest way to combat obesity is for children to participate

in 60 minutes of activity a day, but many children choose not to give their all in PE courses

because they are humiliated by a poor performance leading to a low grade or cannot seem to find

the motivation to give their all to a class that will not affect their future academic plan. In

addition to the obesity epidemic being a problem, there are many lessons that can be learned

from physical education classes such as how the body functions, how physical health affects

other aspects of health, and many others. Lastly, having kids participate in PE classes can boost

energy and mental processes for future classes.

Currently there are very few studies that implement heart rate monitors for motivation,

but they are frequently used to understand how much effort someone is giving in PE as it is a

personal measurement for exertion (Lagally et al., 2016). By utilizing the heart rate monitor over

time, we can analyze how much effort someone is contributing to the class and thus how

motivated they are through activity.

Research Hypotheses

1. Heart rate monitors are a better motivation tool for students than physical aptitude tests.

2. Time of physical education class does not affect motivation.

The Literature
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Literature Search

In beginning my search, I began with the google search engine for current statistics on

physical education classes, obesity, and standardized testing scores. I progressed to using the

ERIC database to find research with a wide combination of the following descriptors: heart rate,

physical activity or physical fitness, school or students, health related fitness, motivation, and

MVPA—moderate to vigorous physical activity.

Literature Review

Current practices in PE are to have students participate in activities that can be tested in

order for educators to measure students gaining knowledge. This is why the Presidential Fitness

Test was created in 1966 to be the ultimate adolescent physical aptitude test, yet over the years

this test has only hindered physical activity participation by teaching children that if they cannot

perform the physical tests, they do not need to put effort into PE since they will not pass the class

(Lucas et al., 2019). The current struggle with performance-based teaching like this is that

students are spending an average 18 out of 60 minutes in target heart rate zones while the rest of

the time they watch other students perform the testable skill (Deutsch et al., 2019). Students are

then spending time exercising to perform a task instead of exercising to improve the body. This

lowers future continued participation in activity after school as students do not understand the

why behind physical activity being important.

Comparatively, the Physical Best (PB) curriculum allows more time in activity while also

teaching more valuable lessons than the performance-based activity. PB curriculum utilizes

creative nicknames such as "artery avengers" to teach students how their body physically reacts

to personal choices such as eating and activity habits (Deutsch et al., 2019). Not only do the

games stray away from making students feel tested, but they also allow a more educational
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curriculum to occur. While the PB curriculum increases time in MVPA by five minutes, the time

is still unevenly split between teaching students and actual physical activity (Deutsch et al.,

2019).

Although the curriculum is important, students need to also understand how to measure

activity personally so that they may continue the practice in the long run. Students often have a

low level of health-related fitness (HRF) knowledge because the focus is on the skill and not on

practicality (Prewitt et al. 2015). Many studies currently exist in elementary schools' PE classes

and have led to simple tools being created to find if students are participating at the desired

activity level. One such tool is rating perceived exertion or RPE which allows students to rate on

a scale from 0 to 20 how difficult the activity is, but while this tool is simple, there is a weak

correlation between RPE and actual heart rate because adolescents do not have fully developed

sensors to determine how difficult or painful an activity is (Lagally et al. 2016). This is why the

utilization of an objective measurement is more beneficial with students under the age of 16 so

that there is no subjective information. Commonly used to measure activity instead of the RPE

scale are heart rate monitors and pedometers. The digital displays on these tools allow students to

visualize their participation level and demonstrate that they are participating in the desired

MVPA zone (Hartwig et al., 2018). The limiting factor to this benefit though is the financial

burden to buy enough heart rate monitors for all the students.

Even though changing the curriculum and using technology are beneficial alone, the most

useful combination is to utilize the two together. Clapham and company (2015) studied children

ages 9 to 12 wearing heart rate monitors throughout a PE class and discovered that when the

curriculum supported physiological response measurement, students not only participated more

(an average of 49 minutes) but they also enjoyed seeing the digital screens change from activity
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to activity. This study demonstrates that not only do curriculums need to change to support

whole body lessons, but that technology utilization can encourage children to want to participate

in physical activity. There is a need to understand how technology can further motivate students

and if this has an effect on other academia areas as physical activity has been known to make the

brain healthier.

Research Design

The proposed research design is a true experimental study so as to identify if heart rate

monitors are effective in impacting motivation of students during the class and if an altered

physical activity level has an effect on energy level throughout the day. A true experimental

design allows us to study the cause and effect relationship with motivation by supporting heart

rate monitors and not supporting time as a variable. In this study, we will be utilizing an average

middle school to apply our design. Classes will be separated by grade and then proportionally

stratified by body type among 6 total group times for each grade— morning control, midday

control, afternoon control, morning implementation, midday implementation, and afternoon

implementation. This results in 18 total groups. The implementation group are those utilizing

heart rate monitors. The physical education instructors will be given curriculum packets with

guidelines on what topics to teach on and the activity to be performed which will be consistent

across the groups. The protocol will follow the students for 16 weeks to make an accurate

judgement on if students' motivation was affected by the utilization of heart rate monitors.

Variables

Independent variables in this study include which classes will have heart rate monitors

and the time of day in which the class is participating in PE. Dependent variables include student

motivation throughout the activity and minutes in target heart rate zone. As this is an
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experimental study, there are also confounding and extraneous variables that pose a threat. While

time of class could have been initially a confounding variable, the research design of allotting a

control group and an experimental group for various time slots has changed time of class from a

confounding to an independent variable. A concerning confounding variable is the class

curriculum because students could be motivated to participate in a class because of what is being

taught that day rather than because the new technology is motivating them to continue

participation. For this reason, I am proposing a set teaching regiment across all classes so that

each student has the same experience in the class. This curriculum will discuss physiological

responses to both classes so that even the control group without heart rate monitors is

participating knowing that the activity would be affecting their heart rate. An extraneous variable

that will need to be addressed is current physical state of the students. Physical state refers to

whether they are currently obese, overweight, normal, or underweight. To adjust for this

variable, students will be sampled by stratifying them by their physical state before

proportionally, randomly assigning them to the control or experimental group. In this way, there

should be an equal portion of body types for each time of PE class in addition to having equal

types of students in the control and experimental groups.

Sampling

When selecting a population, we are targeting a typical case sampling middle school

which has a variety of characteristics. The first characteristic of a typical case includes an

averagely supported PE program so that we are not studying a school that already has a high

physical activity motivation. This would alter the motivation to participate in PE because the

baseline of student efficacy is already higher than the average population. An average PE

program would also need to exist at an average school size around 550 people. Although parental
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permission would be needed, the total sample size will hopefully be around 500 students which

provides a large enough group to divide into different times for studying control versus heart rate

monitor. Additionally, this large of a population will allow for studying variation in age and

body type so that it may be applied to other middle schools. In order to find this school, we

would have to personally select the school based off of the aforementioned characteristics before

sampling the students. The typical case population would be sixth to eighth grade students

between the ages of 12 and 14. Students that are younger or older than this age often have

different physical attributes due to puberty stages that could affect desire to participate in

physical activity. While age could be the sample separation guideline, the sampling units will be

distributed by class instead as this is the easier way for class schedules. All students will be

stratified proportionally sampled based off first their grade level and then their body type. The

student population will be evenly distributed between obese and athletic individuals rather than

more on one end of the scale than the other. The physical trait of weight would be divided into

subgroups of obese, overweight, normal, and underweight so that the students could be evenly

distributed among the samples. These students should have a general knowledge about the

human body and why activity is important, but the PE class should still be able to teach them

more about physiological responses rather than the students possessing all of the knowledge

already.

Methods of Data Collection

This research protocol will utilize minutes in targeted heart rate zones to measure

motivation for participation in physical activity. In order to collect the data, we will use heart rate

monitors, pedometers, and questionnaires. The heart rate monitors can be personally assigned to

students and the data will be downloaded onto a computer to track changes in time and intensity
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of activity. The monitors allow for reliability between classes to determine if they are all

participating at the same level without outside factors impeding on the classes. The pedometers

will track activity to be cross compared with the heart rate monitors to determine internal validity

of if physical activity was actually occurring or if someone's heart rate was staying high without

activity. Additionally, questionnaires will be distributed at the end of every week to ask students

on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being poor and 5 being excellent, how they felt their activity level was in

addition to asking on a scale of 1 to 5 if the heart rate monitor motivated them to try harder. The

questionnaires will provide internal validity as well to see if increased time in heart rate zones is

correlated with motivation. In order to have high external validity, we will be attempting to

utilize a sample as average as possible so that it may be applied to the outside population.

Additionally, we will be giving curriculums to instructors rather than using researchers to teach

students so that the results can be applied to a larger population.

Data Analysis Procedure

An ANCOVA test will provide information on how heart rate monitor motivation was

distributed amongst the classes compared to their equal control group. ANOVA measures could

be used for comparing grade, gender, and body type differences. A dependent t-test will be used

to determine heart rate monitor change from start to end of experimental period. Similarly, an

independent t-test will tell which group had a more significant change during that time. A chi-

square test of independence will be used to determine if factors such as grade level and body

type were related to questionnaire responses.

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Works Cited

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, June 24). Prevalence of Childhood Obesity in

the United States.

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html#:~:text=Prevalence%20of%20Childho

od%20Obesity%20in%20the%20United%20States&text=The%20prevalence%20of%20o

besity%20was,to%2019%2Dyear%2Dolds.

Clapham, E., Sullivan, E. C., & Ciccomascolo, L. E. (2015). Effects of a physical education

supportive curriculum and technological devices on physical activity. The Physical

Educator, 72(1), 102-116.

Deutsch, J., Mahoney, S., Waldera, R., & Hetland, T. (2019). The effects of the physical best

health-related fitness curriculum on physical activity levels of primary-aged physical

education students. ICHPER-SD Journal of Research, 10(2), 13-19.

Hartwig, T. B., Del Pozo‐Cruz, B., White, R. L., Sanders, T., Kirwan, M., Parker, P. D.,

Vasconcellos, D., Lee, J., Owen, K.B., Antczak, D., Lubans, D. R., & Lonsdale, C.

(2019). A monitoring system to provide feedback on student physical activity during

physical education lessons. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 29(9),

1305-1312.

Lagally, K.M., Walker-Smith, K., Henninger, M.L., Williams, S.M., & Coleman, M. (2016)

Acute and session ratings of perceived exertion in a physical education setting.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 122(1), 76-87.

Lucas, I.R., Harris, C., Lee, S., Wargo, J., Barnes, S.P., Kauh, T.J., & Iachan, R. (2019). Teacher

physical education practices and student outcomes in a sample of middle schools

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participating in the presidential youth fitness program. Prevention Chronic Diseases

Public Health Research, Practice, and Policy, 16(104), 1-7.

Prewitt, S.L., Hannon, J.C., Colquitt, G., Brusseau, T.A., Newton, M., Shaw, J. (2015). Effects

of personalized system of instruction on health-related fitness knowledge and class time

physical activity. The Physical Educator, 72(1), 23-39.