Developing an instrument to assess physical education teachers’ competencies in using fitness monitoring to promote physical literacy

Sepahvand, Hossein (author), Leskošek, Bojan (author), Meh, Kaja (author), Besal, Sara (author), Jurak, Gregor (author)

Background: Physical education teachers (PETs) play a vital role in fostering students’ physical literacy (PL). To leverage fitness monitoring as an efficient educational tool for students’ holistic development and lifelong physical activity, PETs must be proficient and competent in its implementation. This study aimed to create an instrument to evaluate teachers’ competencies essential for promoting PL through fitness monitoring. Methods: A Delphi study with 30 experts from 26 countries established content validity. Pilot testing on 339 PETs across Europe assessed psychometric characteristics using exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha. Results: The Delphi study identified 13 core competencies, but construct validation revealed seven dimensions: (1) supporting cognitive learning, (2) encouraging positive feedback and learning climate, (3) understanding of fitness concept, (4) emotional support, (5) planning, (6) understanding of PL concept, (7) explaining learning objectives. Thus, the final instrument, the FitBack PET competency questionnaire, was designed with 27 items covering 7 competencies. The instrument exhibited high reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha exceeding 0.7 for six factors and the intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.94 for test–retest. Conclusions: The instrument’s development was successful, demonstrating high validity and reliability. The final version is publicly available, providing a practical tool for teacher training programs.

• Language: English
• Keywords: education, pedagogy, fitness, monitoring, physical literacy, physical education, teacher, competency, assessment
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FŠ - Faculty of Sport
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 17 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 15, iss. 4, art. 466
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-182873
• UDC: 37+796.01
• ISSN on article: 2227-7102
• DOI: 10.3390/educsci15040466
• COBISS.SI-ID: 234082051
• Publication date in RUL: 26.05.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Education sciences
• Shortened title: Educ. sci.
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2227-7102
• COBISS.SI-ID: 520257817

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: vzgoja, izobraževanje, pedagogika, fitnes, spremljanje, telesna pismenost, športna vzgoja, učitelji, usposobljenost, ocenjevanje

Projects

• Funder: Erasmus+ Sport Program of the European Union
• Project number: 101089829
• Name: FitBack4Literacy

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0142
• Name: Bio-psiho-socialni konteksti kineziologije