Adolescent Interest and Physical Activity Fluctuation in Technology-Integrated Physical Education

This study examined the situational interest and physical activity fluctuation of middle school students during technology-integrated physical education. The researcher utilized a quasi-experimental design where 6th grade students were placed into an experiment group that utilized technology-integrated resources during physical education, or a comparison group that did not utilize technology-integration during physical education. The students participated in five physical education lessons with content based upon the conceptual understanding of relative physical activity intensity, heart rate measures, energy expenditure and the FITT principles. Student's physical activity levels were tracked over the five-lesson research period by accelerometers. Situational interest was assessed through a questionnaire students completed at the end of each physical education lesson. The sample consisted of 53 students, 26 in the experiment group and 27 in the comparison group. The researcher hypothesized (a) that students participating in the technology-integrated physical education lessons would have increased situational interest; (b) that there would be no statistically significant difference in physical activity levels between the technology-integrated lessons and the comparison lessons; (c) that the situational interest in the technology-integrated lessons would decline over time; (d) that there would be no statistically significant change in physical activity levels over time for students participating in the technology-integrated physical education lessons. The physical activity and situational interest data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson-product moment correlational analysis and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOV A) with repeated measure in both the technology-integrated physical education lessons and those of the comparison group. Overall, the students participating in the technology-integrated physical education lessons reported significantly lower amounts of time participating in MVP A, took less steps during each lesson and had less physical activity related energy expenditure. In addition, the students in the experiment group did not report higher situational interest with the introduction of technology-integrated resources into their physical education lessons. The findings suggested that utilizing technology-integration to increase a students' situational interest or physical activity level may not be the most effective method in a relatively short duration of physical education lessons. One explanation for the findings is that the research lesson technologies required little or no physical activity to engage; rather they required cognitive thinking and execution to complete the instructional tasks and fulfill the goal of increasing students' conceptual content knowledge which may have negatively affected the students' physical activity and interest levels. Future research should employ a crossover longitudinal approach where the trends in interest and physical activity measures can be analyzed over time.