Warming up through games in physical education learning. Can it increase students’ learning motivation and cooperation?

Abstract

Background and Study Aim. The importance of warming up before exercising is something that must be done, especially warming up through games. The purpose of the study was to determine whether warm-up through games in physical education learning can increase students’ learning motivation and cooperation. Materials and Methods. The research design used in this study was a Nonequivalent Control Group Design. The total population was 138 students (aged 10-12 years) from six elementary schools, with 67 students from three elementary schools as the experimental group and 71 students from three elementary schools as the control group. Instruments to measure pretest and posttest of learning motivation and cooperation skills used questionnaires with a Likert scale (1-5). The analysis technique used an independent sample t-test with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 software. Results. Based on the results of the analysis, we conclude that warm-up through games is effective in increasing learning motivation (p-value 0.000<0.05) and student cooperation (p-value 0.000<0.05) in Physical Education learning. Conclusions. We understand that the selection of games in the warm-up is not arbitrary. It depends on the next learning activity and the group of students. It is also decided holistically, taking into account how the various warm-up games complement and support the overall activity.