Impact of Teacher Value Orientations on Student Learning in Physical Education

Based on the value orientation theory, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of value orientation incongruence between physical education teachers and an externally designed curriculum on student learning in a concept-based fitness-centered physical education curriculum. Physical education teachers (n = 15) with different value orientations taught an externally designed, standards-based fitness/healthful living curriculum to their middle school students (n = 3,827) in 155 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade intact classes. A pre-post assessment design was used to determine whether student fitness/healthful living knowledge gains differed in terms of teachers' value orientations. An ANOVA on class means of residual-adjusted knowledge gain scores revealed no statistically significant differences based on value orientations. The evidence suggests that teacher value orientation impact may be mediated by curriculum impact. This finding supports the observation that a well-designed physical education curriculum may minimize the impact of teachers' diverse value orientations on the curriculum implementation and student learning.