Katalin Kovács: A comparative study of the self-concept and social position of 12–13-year old girls participating and not participating in cooperative games in physical education

It is known that the neglected facilitation of the skills of cooperation is an indicator of the weakness of the sense of community in any school. The understanding of the self and the problems of the self in a school environment is almost impossible without taking the social context into account, and vice versa. This study emphasises the character of interactions between students in examining whether the regular involvement of students in cooperative activities is an appropriate measure to help the development of their personality in a way that could be reflected in their self-assessment, as well as in changes of their self-concept and so-cial position. The subjects were 12–13-year-old girls (N=144) in grade 7 in three Budapest academic secondary schools (downtown, outskirts and denominational schools). 73 subjects were assigned to the experimental group (16 from the downtown, 14 from the outskirts and 41 from the denominational school) and 71 to the control group (20, 14, 39, respectively). In the experimental group, students played cooperative games for at least 10 minutes in every PE class. Games appropriate for the content and conditions of the classes were chosen from a collection of approximately 70 games compiled for the study. The Hungarian version of the Tenessee-Fitts Self-Concept Scale (Dévai and Sipos, 1986) was used to assess students’ self-concept and the Group Assessment Protocol (Schellenberger, 1973) to map intragroup social relationships. The results show that the common experiences of the group facilitated a posi-tive change in students’ self-concept. A change occurred in the members of the largest ex-perimental sub-sample (N=41), with significant gains on the Tenessee Self-Concept Physical, Moral and Whole Self-Concept Scales. The Group Assessment Protocol revealed favourable changes in the experimental groups. Not only did girls on the periphery move closer to the centre, but the majority of the indifferent ones also moved in the direction of the preferred.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 104. Number 1. 57-76. (2004)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Kovács Katalin, Semmelweis Egyetem, Testnevelési és Sporttudományi Kar Sportjáték Tanszék, H–1125 Budapest, Szarvas Gábor u. 26.

 
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