TITLE:
Exploring Instructors’ Verbal Aggressiveness and Students’ Personal Orientations and Reasons of Discipline in Physical Education Class
AUTHORS:
Alexandra Bekiari, Ioanna Tsiana
KEYWORDS:
Verbal Aggressiveness, Task and Ego Orientations, Discipline
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Physical Education,
Vol.6 No.3,
August
4,
2016
ABSTRACT: In
this study we examined associations among physical education instructors’ verbal
aggressiveness as perceived by students and students’ task and ego orientations
and reasons for discipline. The sample consisted of 283 Greek adolescent
students (124 males, 159 females) aged 10 - 14 years old (M = 12.6, SD = .94) from
primary and secondary schools who completed three types of questionnaires
during physical education classes. The results supported the internal
consistency of the instruments. MANOVA’s findings supported that there is a
significant dependence between school classes on the factors of each
questionnaire. Specifically, the 2nd grade of secondary school
proved to have the lower score on verbal aggressiveness, the 2nd grade
of secondary school the higher score on ego-orientation, the 1st grade
of secondary school the higher score on external reasons of discipline and the
5th grade of primary school the lower score on caring reasons. Correlational
analysis indicated that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness was positively
related to students’ ego orientation, external reasons, introjected reasons, no
reasons, and self-responsibility reasons for discipline. Significant negative
correlations were noted for instructors’ verbal aggression with students’ task
orientation, intrinsic reasons and caring reasons for discipline. The results
of regression analysis revealed that perceived instructors’ verbal
aggressiveness could significantly predict the variables of students’ personal
orientations and external reasons, intrinsic reasons and self-responsibility
reasons for discipline. Distinct types of disciplined students are also proposed:
1) the “obedient” and 2) “altruist”. The findings
and implications of the contribution of instructors’ verbal aggressive behavior
to the students’ personal orientations and reasons for discipline are further
discussed as well as future research suggestions.