Associate professor, PhD L.G. Pashchenko¹
Associate professor, PhD A.V. Korichko^1
1Nizhnevartovsk State University, Nizhnevartovsk

Keywords: motivation, female university student, component-wise body composition, physical working capacity, physical education improvement.

Introduction

It was for at least the last few years that the national government has been increasingly attentive to and supportive of the university physical education process. In the present conditions, it is the higher education establishments that play the key role in the initiatives to protect and improve students’ health standards, expand their functional capacities and step up their physical fitness levels. Policies and practices of the physical education process in the national higher education system will be designed to help every trainee master high physical education standards and facilitate the theoretical fundamentals of physical education and healthy living standards being approved and learnt by the students to give them due means for mastering the best physical education practices and skills as a basis for physical self-learning and individual health-improvement practices so important for their successful professional careers in the future. Any failure in the physical education process being prudently tailored to the individual agendas, motivations and needs of the trainees may have a negative effect on the education process efficiency as manifested by the present statistics of poor academic attendance of Physical Education lessons [9].

As far as the ways to improve the physical education process in the national higher education system are concerned, it should be noted that many authors [1, 5, 8] are supportive of the concept of differentiated approach designed to make due consideration of the age-, sex-, type- specific and other needs and expectations of every individual. This is the reason why the free-choice of university sport curriculum as a basic idea for physical education process improvement within the frame of the Physical Education academic discipline is being increasingly supported as promising and effective.

Objective of the study was to assess the physical education process efficiency in the situation of free choice of university physical education and sport curriculum by female students.

Methodology and structure of the study

The study was performed at the Sports and Health Improvement Laboratory of Nizhnevartovsk State University. Subject to the study were 185 female 1-3 year students plus 38 senior schoolgirls from the 11^th grade of General Education School #6 of Nizhnevartovsk city.

The students’ physical education motivations were surveyed based on special questionnaires whereby the respondents were asked to score (using a 5-point scale from 1- negative response to one or another statement to 5 – absolutely positive response) their individual motivations for health protection activity, body shaping practices, motor activity, practical skill acquisition, physical education and sport interests, competitive spirit, pleasure from movement practices, following suit, habit, positive emotions etc. The survey was intended to help us detect the most effective and imperative motivations for physical education and sport activities in contrast to the insignificant motivations having next to no noticeable influence on the choice.

The morphological and functional assessments under the study were based on the component-wise body composition and physical working capacity indicators. The component-wise body composition was studied using the regular fat-, bone- and muscle-mass analyses. The study program was designed to measure the following values and indices: body mass and height; transverse diameters and circumferences of distal shoulder parts, arm, thigh and shin; and the skinfold thickness rates in eight points on the right side of trunk. Special computer software “Component-wise human body mass composition” was used to compute the fat-, bone- and muscle-mass and the relevant body-surface rates in the analyses. The test data were processed using standard mathematical methods of statistics.

As things now stand, free choice of the physical education curricula under the Physical Education academic discipline is offered to future bachelors of Nizhnevartovsk State University provided they have no health contraindications for the preferred sports, the choice being offered at the start of an academic year with an option of the choice being revised during the year. Female students may choose volleyball, basketball, table tennis, bodybuilding in gym, swimming, aerobics, gymnastics and modern dances. The wide range of the physical education and sport disciplines offered to the students provides every opportunity (as expected by the academic staff of the Physical Education and Sport Department) to meet the individual demands and interests of the young women.

Study results and discussion

Analysis of the available literature on the subject shows that it is the system of motivations driven by individual needs and expectations of every person that determines the individual agenda and mobilizes the person for one or another activity [9]. The free choice of the university physical education and sport curricula is normally based on active and conscious interest of students. We used a questionnaire form offered by M.M. Bezrukikh to rate the students’ motivations for the university physical education and sport disciplines. Given in Table 1 hereunder are the survey data for 11^th-graders and university female students of non-sport departments. The surveyed senior schoolgirls taking school courses under the unified Physical Education curriculum were found the least motivated to acquire the knowledge and practical skills regardless of how important they may be for them in their future. They showed poor interest to the unified physical education and sport activities and were in fact reluctant to join them.

Table 1. Comparative analysis of physical education and sport motivations reported by schoolgirls and female students (М±m)

The study demonstrates that the girls who freely chose the physical education curriculum were more interested in the university sport process and more motivated to obtain practical experience of the relevant physical education and sport activities with the hope to benefit from the knowledge and skills in the future (р<0.05). It should be noted in this context that, regardless of the physical education process design and management, both the school and university girls gave the top priority to the positive emotions and pleasure from movements as their key motivations (р>0.05).

The detailed grouping of the subject students into the aerobics, swimming, sport game (volleyball) and bodybuilding groups provided us with the means to sort out the key and minor motivations on the questionnaire list. It was noted that wherever the sport managers created welcoming conditions for the interest-specific physical exercises, almost every girl surveyed mentioned the pleasure from movement among the key motivations for the practices. Furthermore, the study found that the female students who opted for sport games in the range of university physical education and sport disciplines were different from the others in terms of their motivation set as they highlighted the positive emotions and the will-enforcement opportunities as their key motivations (р<0.05); whilst the students who chose swimming and bodybuilding gave the top priority to friendship and communication in the sport process (р<0.05); and those girls who opted for aerobics were found most motivated by the health improvement needs and expectations (р<0.05). It might be of special interest that the body shaping agenda was rated on top of the list of motivations by the swimming and bodybuilding young ladies; whilst the health-improvement aerobics group rated this motivation second on their list of priorities. These data was found to be in fair correspondence with the component-wise body composition data of the students surveyed [6].

Table 2. Component-wise body composition variation data for the subject students, М±m

Having analyzed the fat mass component variations in soma (see Table 2), we found the fat mass indices showing a reduction trend by the 2^nd academic year for the young women engaged in bodybuilding and swimming (р<0.05), and the same trend by the 3^rd year for the aerobics group (р<0.05). It should be noted in this context that the sport game group showed no meaningful variations of the fat- and muscle-mass indices for the same period.

Our analysis of the subject young women working capacity rates versus their health-improvement motivation for physical education showed these indices being in negative correlation (r=0.6); since higher Ruffier-Dickson index promoted higher health-improvement motivation rates of the students. Furthermore, the physical working capacity indices were found to be in a parabolic-shaped correlation with the pleasure-centred motivations for the physical education practices, as the girls showing fair and very low working capacity rates reported higher pleasure from the movement practices than their peers rated with the satisfactory and low working capacity indices (R²=0.98).

Rated with the insignificant motivations category, that received minimum scores in the questionnaire surveys of the aerobics, swimming and bodybuilding groups, were the zeal to dominate and the competitive spirit elements in the university sports and physical education, and this finding agrees with the data reported by A.A. Kasatkin [2]. Furthermore, girls of these groups reported low interest to the university physical education and sports curricula and reluctance to join these activities. The young women that opted for sport games reported that their choice was not motivated by the sports being regarded fashionable or stylish, and they assessed as insignificant the motivation for physical-education-and-sport experience gaining with the hope to benefit from it in their future life and career.

On the other hand, our analysis of the available literature on the subject shows that the practical experience of participation in the university sport-and- physical-education events and sports festivals should not be underestimated as an important factor of additional positive influence on the stability of attitudes to the physical education and health-improvement practices – that supports the relevant institutional arrangements like the free choice of university sports and the students’ grouping based on this choice [5, 7, 8]. This conclusion agrees with quite a few findings reported by the national and foreign researchers, and this factor appears to provide good motivation for persistent physical education practices [3, 4]. Our analysis of the obligatory physical education course attendance statistics shows that 67% of the subject female students attended the course on a regular basis and never missed the sessions for unsound reasons; 24% missed the sessions occasionally; and 9% were quite frequently absent. It should be noted in this context that the subject students reported low involvement in the university physical education mass events and sport competitions, and due consideration needs to be given to this negative attitude in further efforts to improve the university physical education standards.

Conclusion                                         

The study gives the reasons to state that physical education process design models giving a high priority to the individual sport interests and motivations and offering free choice of sports within the frame of the university physical education and sport curricula – help increase the education efficiency of the Physical Education university discipline.

References

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Corresponding author: korichko_nv@mail.ru

Abstract

The paper contains an assessment of the effectiveness of the organization of physical education in Nizhnevartovsk State University. It is distinguished by the fact that female university students choose sport for training on their own. There were identified the key and minor reasons for physical education and sport classes for girls engaged in aerobics, bodybuilding and sport games. The dynamics of the students' component body composition was presented. The interrelation of indicators of physical working capacity with the leading motives was allocated. The study had shown that the possibility of choosing type and form of motor activity has a favourable impact on solution of the objectives of physical education.