Secondary School Students and their Knowledge about Health-related Physical Fitness and Sport

This study evaluated physical education knowledge according to gender, secondary school programme, year of study and type of knowledge. The results of multivariate analysis of variance show that the programme of study had the highest impact (20.2% of the variance) on both dependent variables (conceptual and specific knowledge), the impact of gender was about half as high (11.7% of the variance), whereas the impact of the year of study was much lower (3.5% of the variance). The students from grammar school programmes had more knowledge than students from the other two secondary school programmes. Males scored higher than females, especially on specific knowledge. In technical and vocational programmes, there is no impact of the year of study on the knowledge exhibited by female students. As a result, physical education teachers should have more knowledge and skills in order to educate students about health-related physical fitness. They will need to acquire special didactic competences, particularly when teaching girls in technical and vocational secondary schools.