Valuable yet costly: Exploring students’ perceived costs in physical education

Although physical education (PE) potentially fosters holistic development across physical, cognitive, affective, and social domains, its unique physical and social demands can render it valuable yet costly. These costs, however, remain underexplored, limiting our understanding of their effects on motivation and impeding efforts to design effective curricula and teaching strategies. Grounded in situated expectancy-value theory, this study investigates perceived costs, their causes, and implications for middle school PE curriculum and instructional practices. Qualitative data were collected from 30 students (aged 12–14 years, M = 13, SD = 0.61, 50% male, 50% female) in three middle schools in China through focus groups and individual interviews. Thematic analysis of the transcripts led to the construction of four themes that capture students’ perceived costs in PE, encompassing physical and physiological, psychological, opportunity, and social cost. These findings indicate that students’ perceived costs are potentially driven by the predominant emphasis on the physical domain in the PE curriculum. This highlights the need to reform high school PE entrance examinations, restructure the curriculum using a constructivist approach, and implement models-based practice to help mitigate perceived costs by emphasizing the long-overlooked affective and social domains. Given the significance of cost in PE, recognizing it as a distinct motivational factor can inform the creation of more inclusive and engaging PE experiences, thereby potentially fostering sustained participation and holistic growth.