The relationship between teachers' attitude toward fitness testing and student performance on the Connecticut Physical Fitness Assessment

It is well documented that teachers maintain certain attitudes, and that these attitudes may influence their teaching behavior. It is also known that teacher behaviors in the classroom and gymnasium may influence student performance. It is not known, however, if teachers' attitudes are directly associated with student performance. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between teachers' attitudes toward fitness testing and student fitness test performance.;A sample of 184 certified, physical education teachers participated in this study. Participants were required to (a) complete and return a previously validated questionnaire designed to determine teachers' attitudes toward fitness tests, and (b) grant the researcher permission to access his or her students' fitness test scores. Once obtained, teachers' attitude scores were correlated with their students Connecticut Physical Fitness Assessment (CPFA) scores.;Results indicated that teachers' maintained mostly neutral attitudes toward fitness tests. Sub-domains of attitude were also measured and indicated that while teachers may have enjoyed using fitness tests results to some extent (4.98 on a 7 point scale), they did not enjoy implementing fitness tests (3.93 on a 7 point scale). This finding may be due to a general lack of teacher knowledge pertaining to fitness tests, and beckons teacher education programs to increase preservice teachers' fitness test knowledge through systematic coursework interventions with hopes of positively effecting their attitudes. For inservice teachers, interventions through graduate studies and inservice training may possibly be used to help form more positive attitudes toward fitness tests.;These data also revealed the existence of small to moderate relationships between teachers' attitudes and their students' CPFA performance. Significant relationships were found between each sub-domain of teachers' attitude, and the percentage of students passing all four components of the CPFA. These findings reveal that teachers' attitudes may have some association with students' CPFA performance, and may influence the manner in which the CPFA is administered, and possibly skew students' test performance.