Theses and Dissertations Collection

Kinesiology professionals work to promote and enhance healthy active lifestyles by emphasizing objective outcomes, such as improving health, gaining friendships, and achieving goals. However, the subjective experience of movement may be more meaningful and lead to more commitment to sport/PA, but is often neglected in kinesiology curriculum. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of an educational curriculum on subjective, aesthetic sport experiences (ASE). Students (n=68) taking a 200-level philosophy-based kinesiology course completed the curriculum over nine weeks as an assignment in their course. Students enrolled in one of three100-level activity-based kinesiology courses served as the control (n=47). Post assessments with the Rickel Exercise Value Inventory (Rickel, 2005) revealed significantly higher subjective commitment among the treatment group (p=.015). Treatment group participants also scored significantly higher than the control group on social motivation (p=.01), as measured by the Motives for Sport and Physical Activity Measure-Revised (Ryan et al., 1997). Results indicate that kinesiology students may become more subjectively committed and socially motivated to sport/PA when given space to consider their personal ASEs. As subjective experiences may improve sport/PA behavior, kinesiology curriculum should value and include subjective experiences.