Attitudes of Wannabe Kinesiology Students about School Subjects, School in General and Extracurricular Learning

Abstract

Today's education focuses on teaching directed to learning outcomes, competencies, achievements, and the development of concrete and applicable knowledge. However, school life involves much more, and the student’s experience and the satisfaction with school are important elements of schooling. Students of the Faculty of Kinesiology are known among their peers as students who do not like to study, so the question is whether such an attitude comes from high school. The aim of this research was to determine and explain how much high school graduates and those who have already passed the state graduation exam and who wish to become future students of kinesiology (wannabe kinesiology students love common school subjects, school in general and learning outside the prescribed curriculum. The answers were given on a Likert-type scale from 1 (100% repulsive to me) to 5 (I adore it). The study involved 63 wannabe kinesiology students who in 2021 actively prepared for the entrance exam for the Faculty of Kinesiology. The average age of the respondents was M=18.83±1.33, of which 25 girls and 38 boys, predominantly from Zagreb (37%), but also from all other parts of Croatia from Orahovica to Split, with two high school graduates from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Descriptive statistics found that wannabe kinesiology students are not overly fond of school (M=3.27 including physical and health education (PE) i.e., M=2.55 without PE), nor school subjects on average (AS=3.14). However, they love, even adore to learn other non-school related things (AS=4.54). As expected, this population adores PE the most, but unexpectedly, the second ranked subject was geography (AS = 3.57). The lowest ranked subjects were chemistry (AS = 2.14) and physics (AS = 2.19), followed by mathematics (AS = 2.62). From the average of all school subjects, significantly differ subjects (not counting PE which is an outlier) geography, chemistry, physics and mathematics, with a medium to large effect size regarding the difference between arithmetic means. Those students who like school the most also like all subjects on average (r=0.36), history (r=0.40) and geography (r=0.37). The average love of all school subjects is in an unexpectedly low correlation with the love of school in general (r=0.43). The love of learning other things not related to school has no correlation with any school subject, nor the love of school in general. Variables are clustered into two basic clusters: a group of subjects that have a mathematical background (mathematics, physics, chemistry) and a group of all other school subjects, including loving school in general, as well as loving other things unrelated to school.

DOI: 10.5671/ca.45.3.8