Perceived Leadership Behavior of Physical Education Teacher-Coaches: When They Teach vs. When They Coach

Abstract

The objective of the study was to see whether a teacher-coach exhibits different types of leadership behavior when s/he teaches a PE class and coaches a group of athletes. The participants in this study were 17-18 year old second-year preuniversity students from two local junior colleges in Singapore. A total of 159 students of mixed gender participated, including 80 PE students and 79 student-athletes from floorball, canoeing, and shooting teams. All of the 159 students were taught or coached by three (one male and two female) PE teachers, who performed the dual roles of a PE teacher-coach in the school. The data collection instrument used in this study was the Leadership Scale for Sports (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) measuring five leadership behaviors. A multivariate analysis of covariance indicated that democratic decision making accounted for most of the differences between the PE students' and student-athletes' perceived leadership behavior of their teacher-coaches; the student-athletes perceived their coaches to provide training and instruction more than did the PE students. In addition to training and instruction, the student-athletes perceived more positive feedback given to them than did the PE students. For decision making style, students in PE class perceived more democratic decision making than athletes in school teams. The social support subscale did not show statistically significant group difference.