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Abstract

Abstract:There is little research about physical education teachers´ influence of students´ self-development, but even less research about another important self-concept source: the other students being the peer group. However, research shows that peers are one of the most important socialization agents in childhood and youth and that sport competence is used as an important criterion for being recognized by other peers. Therefore, it is important to examine the link between non-recognition experiences in physical education in the sense of negative peer feedback and self-indices. Furthermore, it is important to examine how children individually handle non-recognition experiences to identify potential pedagogical interventions. A mixed method study combining video-records, video stimulated recall interviews with a questionnaire, and PE teacher ratings about students' sport competence was conducted. The data set includes N = 144 students (mean age: 11.75 years; n = 67 boys; n = 77 girls). From these 144 students, n = 20 boys and n = 20 girls were selected for video stimulated recall interviews which aimed at identifying students´ handling strategies with non-recognition experiences in PE. To avoid gender reification, "sport competence," which is more relevant for (non-)recognition experiences in PE rather than "sex" was chosen as the differentiating category to identify differences between the students. For sportive children there are significant negative correlations of non-recognition experiences in PE with most selfindices and significant positive correlations of recognition experiences with all self-indices. However, there is no significant correlation between the self-indices of less sportive children and their non-recognition as well as their recognition experiences. The interviews showed that non-recognition experiences are self-relevant for sportive children whereas less sportive children use defense strategies to handle non-recognition experiences in a non-self-threatening way. Finally, the study shows that for the self-indices of less sportive students, PE is no (more) a relevant context.