Physical education teachers’ views about character education

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out the views of teachers of physical education about how they define character education, whether they think national education curriculum and the curriculum of private schools are suitable for character education and whether they think character education can be applied in physical education lessons. Case report design was used in this study which was prepared with qualitative research method. The sample group of the study consists of 6 physical education teachers working in 3 secondary schools and 2 high schools of Kütahya city center which were determined with easily accessible case sampling method, which is one of the purposive sampling methods. Individual interviews which lasted for an average of 15-20 minutes were conducted with physical education teachers within the context of semi-structured interview technique. The participants were informed that the interviews would be voice recorded and later their expressions would be written down to avoid data loss and after necessary permissions were taken, the interviews were recorded. Descriptive and content analysis methods were used to analyze the expressions which were converted into text. The results of the analyses showed that physical education teachers defined character education as changes that occurred in individuals’ behaviors first in the family, then at school and the education conducted to teach individuals socially accepted and correct behaviors. In addition, it was found that the teachers stated that the current curriculum of the country and also physical education curriculum were not suitable for character education; however, since it is a social lesson and since participants are continuously active and in communication, physical education lessons can be more effective than other lessons in terms of character development.