Validation of the teaching beliefs scale of postmodern physical education

Abstract

For physical education (PE) teachers, teaching beliefs are vital to improving students’ aptitude, encouraging teachers and students to develop an equal relationship, and identifying and eliminating the differences between students’ perspectives and learning styles through consultation and dialogue to  improve and advance teaching. Therefore, developing a PE-related teaching belief scale from a postmodern perspective is essential for PE development.  This study adopted stratified random sampling to select 144 PE teachers for the exploratory factor analysis. We distributed a second round of  questionnaires to 418 PE teachers from Taipei, who were randomised into two clusters for confirmatory factor analysis in terms of competing models  (n=209) and cross-validation (n=209). The Teaching Beliefs Scale of Postmodern Physical Education demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity. The  internal model structure showed factor loadings of .70–.90, composite reliability values of .89–.94, and average variance extracted values of .62–.74. In  adherence to the concept of postmodernism, all statistical data met the threshold conditions and hierarchy, and the four constructs (innovation,  reflection, pluralism and criticism) were met. In the future, this scale can be applied to evaluate the development of teachers’ beliefs about teaching PE in  the postmodern era.