the investigation of motives and reasons of non-physical education graduates to participate in postgraduate physical education discipline

the purpose of this study was to investigate the motives and reasons of non-physical education graduates to continue their education in postgraduate physical education discipline. research method was descriptive. the statistical sample of the research consisted of physical education students of the universities in tehran who were studying in 2009-2010 educational disciplines. 136 subjects were selected randomly from five universities (tehran, tarbiat modares, tarbiat moallem, allameh tabataba’i and shahid beheshti) as the sample. a researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect the data and the reliability and validity was conformed through the scientific methods. mann whitney u test and factor analysis tests were used to analyze the data. the results of the research showed that interest was the most important factor to choose an educational discipline. importance of physical education discipline and society’s need for this discipline were among important reasons to choose postgraduate physical education discipline. the most important reason of non-physical education graduates to select the postgraduate physical education discipline was their interest in this discipline. the comparison of mean percents of each lesson between physical education graduates and non- physical education graduates showed a significant difference in percents of sport medicine and corrective exercise courses (p=0.014) and specialized and general english courses (p=0.018) no significant difference in other courses. the investigation of all aspects of physical education discipline and redesign of postgraduate courses is suggested to select the most qualified students to study postgraduate physical education discipline.