Students’ ability beliefs about running in physical education: Qualitative findings from longitudinal data

Students’ ability beliefs about running activities in physical education/athletics classes were investigated longitudinally from the perspectives of Nicholls’ conceptions of ability and Dweck’s implicit theories of ability. The data for this study were provided by 44 students (20 boys; 24 girls) who participated in a larger longitudinal project on students’ running motivation in schools. They were individually interviewed from fourth to eighth grade. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim for inductive analysis, revealing the criteria that students used to assess their own ability in running and reasons why they believed they could improve their ability in running. Frequencies and percentages were computed to determine changes in students’ ability assessment criteria over time. Results showed that students used ability, effort, task mastery, intra-individual comparisons, and social comparisons as criteria to assess their own ability in running as they progressed from the fourth to eighth grade. However, they increasingly used social comparison in assessment as they became older. Most students believed they could improve their ability in running, suggesting that they were incremental theorists. Ability/maturation, effort, experiences, and influences from significant others were cited as contributors to their beliefs about improving running ability. This study took the first step to provide longitudinal qualitative data on students’ ability beliefs about running in physical education/athletics classes. Findings of the study revealed students became more concerned with social comparisons in their ability assessments over time and held a belief that they could improve their own running ability. The implications of these findings for physical education teachers are discussed.

Implicit Theories of Ability in Physical Education: Current Issues and Future Directions

Purpose:In light of the extensive empirical evidence that implicit theories have important motivational consequences for young people across a range of educational settings we seek to provide a summary of, and personal reflection on, implicit theory research and practice in physical education (PE).Overview:We first provide an introduction to the key constructs and theoretical propositions associated with implicit theories. We then include a brief summary of the research findings on ability beliefs in school PE, which we draw on to identify several key issues that we feel are crucial to furthering our understanding of this topic. We conclude by offering a number of ideas for future research and discuss the potential misinterpretation of implicit theories when applied to professional practice in PE.Conclusions:We argue that researchers need to address more nuanced questions around implicit theories to prevent this area of inquiry stalling. Moreover, we need to provide teachers with more specific recommendations to help them integrate theory and research into practice.

Implicit Theories of Ability and Self-Efficacy

Our overall goal was to empirically test what we called the “growth mindset as inoculation” hypothesis using a series of latent profile analytical approaches. This inoculation hypothesis, which is consistent with the way in which Dweck and Leggett (1988) described their social cognitive approach, states that believing in the malleability of intelligence serves a protective role against negative motivational and achievement outcomes. Participants were Grade 6 students (n = 504) from a middle school and Grade 10 students (n = 354) from two high schools in the Southeastern part of the United States. Two distinct patterns emerged, which corresponded to a growth mindset profile, and an all moderate profile. Our findings did not completely confirm or disconfirm the inoculation hypothesis – rather, a more nuanced conclusion should be drawn. Although there was evidence that the growth mindset profile evinced more adaptive outcomes compared to the all moderate alternative, which reinforced Dweck and Leggett’s claims, there was no evidence of any profiles with a distinct fixed theory of ability. This was true even when we forced our data to conform to such a model. Results refine Dweck and Leggett’s social cognitive approach to motivation.