Exploring Contextual Stressors and Coping Strategies in Physical Education. A Case Study Approach

Abstract

The school is an important arena for working with children and young people’s life skills and health (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2017). Nevertheless, stress at school is considered one of the reasons for the increase in students’ psychological problems (Bakken, 2019). Well-being among Norwegian school students is considered high, but an increasing proportion of students experience significant negative stress during the school day (Bakken, 2021, 2022). Physical education (PE) is one of the largest comprehensive school subjects and a central subject in facilitating students’ life skills and health (Ministry of Education and Research, 2020, (KRO01-05)). Therefore, it is essential to acquire knowledge about how students experience PE and what contributions it can have in this context. This thesis aims to increase knowledge about and understand how students experience PE in lower secondary schools. Do students get stressed in PE, and if so, what may be everyday contextual stressors? What strategies do students use to handle stressful situations? Further, this thesis discusses what students may learn from challenging experiences and handling stressful situations in PE, and how to reduce students’ negative experiences of stress in PE. The overarching research question guiding this work is: What are the conceptual and contextual perceptions of stressors and coping strategies in physical education? This thesis presents, operationalizes, and concretizes key concepts and the overall theoretical approach that binds the theoretical contributions and issues in the individual articles together. A literature review of previous research addressing the status of knowledge within the field supports the theoretical framework, identifying a lack of Scandinavian qualitative studies describing students’ perceptions of their stressors and coping strategies in PE. The study used a qualitative, cumulative, single case study design to answer the research questions, applying multiple qualitative approaches sensitive to exploring and generating rich, in-depth knowledge and a nuanced understanding. An additional supplementary survey was utilized within the case study to add nuance, triangulate, and broaden the picture. Article 1, titled “Perceptions of Contextual Stressors in Physical Education. A Qualitative Case Study” and published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, explores students’ perceptions of contextual stressors in PE. The article shows that most students experience little or no stress in PE. Nevertheless, a small group of students (mostly girls) do experience significant stress in PE. Depending on the situational context, students experience a multitude of stressors. The article offers insight into the volume and variety of different contextual stressors that students and their teachers perceive in PE. Article 2, titled “Students’ Perceptions of Visibility in Physical Education” and published in the European Physical Education Review, explores students’ perceptions of visibility in PE. This article sheds light on how students dissimilarly perceive visibility in PE as a stressor or not, depending on the situational context, highlighting the importance of the teacher’s competence, students’ self-perception, and the social environment among the students. Article 3, titled “Exploring Coping Strategies in Physical Education. A Qualitative Study” and published in Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, explores students’ use of coping strategies in PE. The article contributes insight into the variety and volume of students’ ways of coping with stressors in PE. The findings shed light on the importance of understanding how environmental context demands in PE and the stressor in question differently affect individual students’ appraisals of the situation. Together, these three articles’ findings contribute to increasing knowledge about and a better understanding of how lower secondary school students experience PE in a Norwegian school. The study findings express complexity and nuances that expand and support previous research, adding valuable knowledge of contextual stressors and coping strategies in PE. The framework to explore and understand the students’ perceptions of stressors and coping strategies in this thesis consists of the Cognitive Motivational-Relational Theory of Emotions (CMRT) perspective (Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), existing motivational constructs and definitions, and previous research within the field of PE.