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International Archives of
Public Health and Community Medicine ISSN: 2643-4512

Citation

Chan DKC, Lo KCH, Cheung F, Ntoumanis N (2019) Social Influences of Teachers, Classmates, and Parents on Children's Commitment to Physical Education and Language Education. Int Arch Public Health Community Med 3:028. doi.org/10.23937/2643-4512/1710028

Copyright

© 2019 Chan DKC, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

RESEARCH ARTICLE | OPEN ACCESS DOI: 10.23937/2643-4512/1710028

Social Influences of Teachers, Classmates, and Parents on Children's Commitment to Physical Education and Language Education

Derwin KC Chan1,2,3*, Karen CH Lo2 and Felix Cheung2

1Faculty of Education and Human Development, The Education University of Hong Kong, China

2School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong, China

3Physical Activity and Well-Being Lab, School of Psychology, Curtin University, Australia

Abstract

This study aims to examine the social influences of teachers', classmates' and parents' (i.e., positive reinforcement and punishment) on children's commitment to physical education (PE) and language education (LE). Children from the UK (N = 614; Mean age = 13.05, SD = 2.01) completed the Perceived Social Influence Scale (Chan, et al. 2012), and also measures of competence, enjoyment, and effort in either the PE or LE context. Multi-group structural equation modelling (CFI = 0.97-0.98; TLI = 0.96-0.97; RMSEA = 0.03-0.04) showed that social influences from teachers, classmates, and parents explained 33% to 58% variance of the commitment outcomes. Significant differences were observed in the strength of predictions between PE and LE. In conclusion, teachers are the key social agents for children's commitment towards PE and LE. Classmates are more important to children in LE than in PE. The role of fathers' and mothers' social influences on students' commitments to PE and LE appeared to be mixed.