Research on Youth Sports Interest Cultivation and Physical Education Innovation Strategies

Years of monitoring have shown that the physical fitness of Chinese adolescents is on a continuous downward trend, and insufficient physical activity is the main reason. Inadequate physical activity not only threatens the health of adolescents, but also erodes their athletic potential and creates an increasingly heavy economic burden for the society [1–2]. Therefore, how to improve the level of physical activity of adolescents and enhance their physical health has become an important issue. In order to promote the development of school sports and health, the state and localities have also continued to introduce a series of regulations, policies and measures to incorporate school sports and health education into an important task in the construction of future development. However, it must be recognized that the improvement of the level of physical activity of young people and the enhancement of physical fitness is a systematic project, which deserves great attention from all walks of life, and at the same time, it is also the goal and incumbent task for which a group of physical educators have been making unremitting efforts [3–5].

As we all know, “interest is the best teacher”. The so-called “interest” refers to a person’s psychological tendency to strive to recognize and explore certain things [6]. Analyzed from the psychological point of view, interest is the original motivation for learning and an important guarantee for effective learning [7–8]. Being interested in a certain sports activity can prompt people to devote more time and energy to it, produce lasting attention, maintain clear perception, form thorough thinking, solid memory, and can produce rich imagination, thus stimulating a strong desire to participate in it [9–11]. Adolescents are in a critical stage of physical and mental development, but also an important stage to develop sports habits and form lifelong sports beliefs, effectively cultivating adolescents’ interest in sports has a significance that should not be ignored in order to improve the level of their physical activity [12–14].

As the cradle of students’ growth and the main place of study and life for young people, schools bear an unshirkable responsibility for the cultivation of students’ interest in sports, the development of their health consciousness and the promotion of their physical fitness and health. Yao, T. et al. showed that the lack of diversity in physical education is a key reason why adolescents lose interest in physical activity, as the main place for adolescents to receive education, institutions should abandon physical education that only has the content form of repetitive skills training and physical exercise, and restimulate students’ interest in sports [15]. Wei, W. pointed out that the goal of physical education teaching under the concept of quality education is not only to help students master sports skills, but also to cultivate students’ interest in sports, to help young people form lifelong beliefs in sports, so that they can independently engage in physical exercise outside the physical education program [16]. Mengmeng, Y. explored the ways to cultivate students’ lifelong sports awareness in physical education, and to enhance adolescents’ health education thinking and lifelong sports thinking by carrying out practical training activities in physical education, so as to lay the foundation for adolescents’ lifelong sports [17]. Beni, S. et al. examined the important factors influencing adolescents’ access to meaningful physical education and sport in terms of social interaction, fun, challenge, athletic ability, and personally relevant learning to design innovative physical education methods that can create appropriate sport environments for adolescent sport participation [18]. Gardner, L. A. et al. used a social cognitive model to explore the relationship between achievement motivation and sport participation in adolescents and found that individuals who maintained high incremental beliefs were more likely to generate a willingness to enjoy and continue physical activity, whereas those with high entity beliefs had a lower willingness to persist in sport [19]. Islam, R. W. et al. analyzed the effect of traditional sports invitations on adolescents’ interest in physical recreation and showed that improvements in physical education by incorporating traditional forms of sports can significantly enhance students’ interest in learning [20].

This paper combines interest theory to construct a theoretical framework for the generating mechanism of situational interest in the physical education classroom. Exploratory intention, perceived gap, challenging, and the generating mechanism of situational interest are proposed to construct the research hypothesis. The correlation analysis of each influencing factor is carried out, and a hierarchical regression model is built to incorporate the variables of novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploratory intention, immediate pleasure, and perception gap in a step-by-step manner, and to analyze the predictive role of each variable on the overall dimensions of situational interest. Structural equation modeling was constructed to analyze the role of each factor in the process of generating situational interest in the physical education classroom. Combined with the results of the path test of the structural equation model, the cultivation strategy of youth physical education under the integration of physical education is proposed. Conduct a teaching experiment on the new strategy of physical education to test the rationality of its proposal.

2

Examination of the mechanism of action of the factors influencing interest in sports

2.1

Reasons affecting adolescents’ interest in physical activity

The so-called “interest” refers to a person’s psychological tendency to strive to recognize and explore certain things. Analyzed from a psychological point of view, interest is the original motivation for learning and an important guarantee of effective learning. Being interested in a certain sports activity can prompt people to devote more time and energy to it, produce lasting attention, and maintain clear perception. The formation of thorough thinking, solid memory, and can produce rich imagination, thus stimulating a strong desire to participate in it.

The adolescent stage is a key stage in the physical and mental development of students, as well as an important stage in the development of sports habits and the formation of lifelong sports beliefs. Therefore, it is of great significance not to be overlooked to effectively cultivate young people’s interest in sports and improve their level of physical activity.

As the cradle of students’ growth, school is the main learning and living place for young people. It has an unshirkable responsibility for the cultivation of students’ interest in sports, the development of their health consciousness, and the promotion of their physical fitness and health. Effective promotion of students’ physical fitness, improve the level of physical activity, need to find the key factors affecting the interest of young people’s physical activity. Thus, it is truly the right remedy to stimulate the enthusiasm of their participation in sports.

The cultivation of young people’s interest in sports and the development of sports habits are affected by many factors. This paper mainly focuses on the social and cultural environment, school physical education and family three aspects. 1)

Influence of social environment

People’s behavior and consciousness are always affected by their social environment. The environment is the basis for the survival and development of things, and the generation and cultivation of interest in sports are inevitably influenced by the social environment in which they are located.

2)

The influence of school physical education

School sports mainly include physical education and health courses, after-school physical exercise, extracurricular sports activities.

3)

Influence of family sports environment

Parents’ concept of sports is often the prototype of children’s future awareness of sports. There is no doubt that parents’ sports behavior and exercise habits will have a direct or indirect influence on young students.

2.2

Mechanisms for generating situational interest in the youth sports classroom

Based on the theory of interest, combining with the results of existing research, the theoretical framework of the mechanism of generating interest in physical education classroom situations is constructed. It is also tested using structural equation modeling to analyze the role of each factor in the process of generating situational interest in the physical education classroom, and to compare the differences in the mechanism of generating situational interest in the physical education classroom of students at various stages. Synthesizing the results of previous studies, the research hypotheses were established:

H1: Exploration intention can directly and indirectly influence situational interest.

H2: Perceived gap plays a mediating role in the process of situational interest generation. Novelty, challenge, and attentional demand can influence situational interest directly through the mediating role of perceptual gap or indirectly through exploration intention and immediate pleasure.

H3: Challenging has an indirect effect on situational interest.

H4: There are stage differences in the mechanism of generating situational interest, mainly including: whether all the influences on situational interest can play a role, there may be differences in the size of the effects in the mechanism of generating situational interest, and there may be differences in the interactions between the factors.

In summary, the study concluded that the generating mechanism of situational interest is a complex model of multiple mediation.

The theory of situational interest generation mechanism in physical education classroom is shown in Figure 1. The dependent variable is situational interest, and perception gap may play a key mediating role. It not only explains the effects of novelty, challenge, and attentional demand on situational interest, but also elicits the individual’s intention to explore and immediate pleasure, thus indirectly affecting situational interest.

2.3

Mechanisms of Influencing Factors of Interest in Physical Education Teaching Situations

A stratified random sampling method was used to select 12 grades of students from 15 primary and secondary schools as survey respondents. Among them, the northeast region included Changchun, Shenyang, Dalian, and Harbin. The central region includes Taiyuan, Zhengzhou, and Changsha. The eastern region includes Shenzhen, Jinan, and Yantai. The western region includes Chengdu, Inner Mongolia and other places.

The researchers were trained before the survey and completed the questionnaires with the cooperation of physical education teachers after the consent of the relevant persons in charge of the schools. All questionnaires were distributed, filled out and collected immediately after the physical education class. To ensure that students fully understood the meaning of the questions and options, the questions were read by the trained researcher and explained accordingly to the students in the first and second grades of elementary school. Students were then asked to fill in the questions and to raise their hands to ask questions at any time during the process.

The research was conducted in May 2023 and the data were retested in 2023 and 2024 for the relevant data. A total of 4,560 questionnaires were distributed, 4,327 questionnaires were recovered, with a recovery rate of 94.89%, and 583 invalid questionnaires were excluded, resulting in 3,744 valid questionnaires, with a validity rate of 86.53%.

2.3.1

Correlation analysis

Correlation analysis between situational interest and each influencing factor Correlation analysis was used to test the correlation between each factor of situational interest in the physical education classroom and perceived gap.

The correlation analysis between the dimensions of situational interest in the physical education classroom and the perceived gap is shown in Table 1 (*p<0.05, **p<0.01). In the table, I-IX are knowledge skill perception gap, teaching method perception gap, perception gap overall, novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploration intention, immediate pleasure, and overall interest, respectively. The correlations between the dimensions of situational interest and the dimensions of students’ perception gap and overall reached the level of significance (p<0.05), indicating that there is a close correlation between situational interest and perception gap.

Table 1.

The correlation between the dimensions of interest and the perception gap

	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII	IX
I	1
II	0.53**	1
III	0.94**	0.87**	1
IV	0.25**	0.32**	0.32**	1
V	-0.26**	-0.05**	-0.15**	0.11**	1
VI	0.34**	0.41**	0.42**	0.56**	-0.03**	1
VII	0.49**	0.36**	0.52**	0.45**	0.25**	0.63**	1
VIII	0.31**	0.21**	0.33**	0.32**	-0.09**	0.24**	0.24**	1
IX	0.56**	0.43**	0.68**	0.52**	-0.15**	0.69**	0.62**	0.21**	1

2.3.2

Regression analysis

1)

Regression analysis

The relationship between variables is either a functional relationship or a correlation relationship, which indicates a definite one-to-one relationship between variables, while the correlation relationship indicates that there is a connection between variables but it can’t be precisely expressed by the functional relationship, for example, the relationship between the father’s height and the children’s height. Correlation analysis mainly describes the closeness of the correlation between variables, while regression analysis not only reveals the degree of interaction between variables but also allows estimation and prediction through the establishment of regression equations.

Regression analysis is a computational method and theory used to study the association between one or more independent or predictor variables and a (continuous-valued) dependent or response variable [21–22]. That is, when there is a correlation between variable X = {x₁,x₂,…,x_n} and a random variable y, a mathematical formula can be used to characterize this relationship. That is: 1 $y = f (X) + ε$

Where, X is the independent variable, y is the dependent variable. ε is the random error, and f(·) is the deterministic functional relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable. When the value of random variable X is determined, the probability distribution of dependent variable y can be obtained through the correlation model. Equation (1) accurately describes both the linkage and uncertainty in the correlation between variables. ε as a random error describes the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable as a stochastic equation, so that the relationship between the independent variable X and the dependent variable y can be investigated by means of stochastic mathematics.

2)

Regression analysis between situational interest and each influential factor

Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the predictive effects of novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploration intention, immediate pleasure and perceived gap on the overall dimension of situational interest.

The regression analyses of each influencing factor on the overall dimension of situational interest in the physical education classroom are shown in Table 2. Contextual interest was used as the dependent variable.

In the first step, demographic variables were included in the regression equation. The physical form perception variable was entered into the regression equation, and physical form perception had a positive predictive effect. Together, they explained 16.74% of the variance in situational interest, and the predictive effect of the other demographic variables did not reach the level of significance (p>0.05).

In the second step, novelty, challenge, and attentional demand were included in the regression equation based on the first step. The three variables, including novelty, explained a total of 62.28% of the variance in situational interest.

In the third step, based on the first two steps, Perceived Gap, Intention to Explore and Immediate Pleasure were included in the regression equation. As can be seen from the results, when all the variables are entered into the regression equation sequentially, the predictive effect of immediate pleasure on situational interest reaches the level of significance. At the same time the predictive effect of grade level variables reached the level of significance, and the study hypothesized that there may be grade level differences in the effect of instant pleasure on situational interest.

Table 2.

The regression analysis of the overall dimension of sports interest

Variable	First step			Second step			Fourth step
Variable	b	SE	β	b	SE	β	b	SE	β
Grade	-0.065	0.008	-0.212***	-0.025	0.007	-0.089***	-0.021	0.005
Gender	-0.042	0.035	0.041	0.019	0.024	-0.004	0.032	0.023	-0.060***
Physical health	0.029	0.015	0.025	0.009	0.015	0.015	0.012	0.012	0.024
Physical perception	0.035	0.019	0.171***	0.031	0.017	0.032*	0.015	0.015	0.012
Novelty				0.245	0.019	0.201***	0.251	0.018	0.013
Challenge				-0.113	0.034	-0.101***	-0.096	0.021	0.015
Attention demand				0.521	0.018	0.423***	0.235	0.023	0.189***
Perception gap							0.315	0.025	-0.098***
Exploration intention							0.102	0.19	0.245***
Instant pleasure							0.152	0.052	0.175**
ΔR²	0.1674			0.6228			0.6869

2.3.3

Structural equation modeling analysis

1)

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

Structural equation modeling is a statistical analysis technique based on an existing causal theory and representing that causal theory with a system of linear equations corresponding to it. Its purpose is to explore the causal relationships between things and to represent such relationships in the form of causal patterns, path diagrams, etc. [23].

Structural equation modeling consists of two sets of equations. One is the set of equations for the relationship between structural variables, called the structural equation set. One is the set of equations for the relationship between structural variables and observed variables, called the set of observation equations.

In a typical customer satisfaction index model, the set of structural equations contains 6 structural variables (implicit variables) ξ₁, η₁~η₅ with 11 relationships (γ₁~γ₄ for the role of the independent variables and β_ij for the role of the dependent variables) as shown in (2): 2 $(\begin{array}{l} η_{1} \\ η_{2} \\ η_{3} \\ η_{4} \\ η_{5} \end{array}) = (\begin{matrix} 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ β_{21} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ β_{31} & β_{32} & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ β_{41} & β_{42} & β_{43} & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & β_{54} & 0 \end{matrix}) (\begin{array}{l} η_{1} \\ η_{2} \\ η_{3} \\ η_{4} \\ η_{5} \end{array}) + (\begin{matrix} γ_{11} \\ γ_{12} \\ γ_{13} \\ γ_{14} \\ 0 \end{matrix}) ξ_{1} + (\begin{array}{l} ε_{η 1} \\ ε_{η 2} \\ ε_{η 3} \\ ε_{η 4} \\ ε_{η 5} \end{array})$

In the general case, the number of structural variables need not be five. The form of the coefficients of the structural equations can be different from Eq. (2) except for the requirement that the diagonal is 0 and it is a lower triangular matrix, and the number of independent variables can be more than one. A general description is given using vector and matrix notation. Let there be m dependent variable, arrange η₁,…,η_m as a column vector, denoted as η. There are k independent variables, arrange ξ₁,…,ξ_k as a column vector, denoted as ξ. The coefficient matrix of η is a square matrix of order m, denoted as B. The coefficient matrix of ξ is a matrix of order m×k, denoted as Γ, and the residual vector of ε₁,…,ε_m is arranged as a column vector, denoted as ε_η. Then the system of structural equations (2) can be expanded as follows: 3 $η = B η + Γ ξ + ε_{η}$

The structural variables of SEM are implicit and not directly observable, but correspond to a number of observable variables. Let there be a total of M observed variable, and for each observed variable there are N observations, which in the case of customer satisfaction index analysis means that there are N customer measures. The data in hand is then a N×M-matrix.

The relationship between the structural variables and the observed variables can also be represented by equations, and there are two ways to represent the causal path of the effects. Let the S(t) observed variables corresponding to independent variable ξ_t be x_tj and j = 1,…,S(t), and the L(i) observed variables corresponding to dependent variable η_i be y_ij, j = 1,…,L(i), then the set of observation equations from the observed variables to the structural variables can be expressed as follows: 4 $ξ_{t} = \sum_{j = 1}^{s (t)} ψ_{t j} x_{t j} + ε_{ξ t}, t = 1, \dots, k$ 5 $η_{i} = \sum_{j = 1}^{L (i)} ω_{i j} y_{i j} + ε_{η i}, i = 1, \dots, m$

Conversely, the set of observation equations from the structural variables to the observed variables can be expressed as: 6 $(\begin{matrix} x_{t 1} \\ ⋮ \\ x_{t S (t)} \end{matrix}) = (\begin{matrix} v_{t 1} \\ ⋮ \\ v_{t S (t)} \end{matrix}) ξ_{1} + (\begin{matrix} ε_{x + 1} \\ ⋮ \\ ε_{x i s (t)} \end{matrix}), t = 1, \dots, k$ 7 $(\begin{matrix} y_{i 1} \\ ⋮ \\ y_{i L (i)} \end{matrix}) = (\begin{matrix} λ_{i 1} \\ ⋮ \\ λ_{i L (i)} \end{matrix}) η_{i} + (\begin{matrix} ε_{y : 1} \\ ⋮ \\ ε_{y, L (i)} \end{matrix}), i = 1, \dots, m$ where v_ij and λ_ij are load terms.

Note the observation vector: 8 $x_{t} = (x_{t 1}, x_{t 2}, \dots)', t = 1, \dots, k$ 9 $y_{i} = (y_{11}, y_{t 2}, \dots)', i = 1, \dots, m$

Noting v₁ = (v_t1,…,v_tj)′, λ_i = (λ_i1,…,λ_ij)′, the system of observation equations (6) can be expanded as: 10 $x_{t} = v_{t} ξ_{t} + ε_{x l}, t = 1, \dots, k$

Equation (7) can be expanded as: 11 $y_{i} = λ_{i} η_{i} + ε_{y i}, i = 1, \dots, m$

Similarly, remember: 12 $ψ = I_{k} \otimes ψ_{t}$ 13 $ω = I_{m} \otimes ω_{j}$ where ψ_t = (ψ_1t,ψ_2t,…)′, ω_j = (ω_1j,ω_2j,…), and I are unit squares.

Remembering again x = (x₁,…,x_k)′, y = (y₁,…,y_m)′, the system of observation equations (8) and (9) can be written as: 14 $ξ = ψ x + ε_{ξ}$ 15 $η = ω y + ε_{η}$

Combining Eqs. (14) and (15) is referred to as structural equation modeling (SEM), sometimes called path analysis modeling.

2)

Structural equation analysis

This study constructed a structural equation model based on the theoretical hypothesis model of the role mechanism of the influencing factors of adolescents’ interest in physical education learning contexts and synthesized the results of correlation and regression analysis. The model takes the psychological, institutional and physical environments of sports as the antecedent variables, the stimulation of interest in sports learning situations as the mediating variable, and the maintenance of interest in sports learning situations as the outcome variable.

View the model fit of the structural equation model of interest in physical education learning situations. The model fit of the structural equation model is shown in Table 3. At this point, the displayed values of each fitted parameter of the structural equation model, χ² = 301.251, df = 205, χ²/df = 2.326<3, NFI = 0.967>0.9, IFI = 0.993>0.9, TLI = 0.975>0.9, CFI = 0.935>0.9, GFI = 0.927>0.9, and RMSEA = 0.031<0.05. Are all in accordance with the proposed requirements of the study, which indicates that the model is fitted well. Therefore, the structural equation modeling of interest in physical education learning context in this paper has a good fit for the sample data obtained from the questionnaire.

Table 3.

Model fitting statistics

Model fitting	χ²	df	χ²/df	NFI	IFI	TLI	CFI	GFI	RMSEA
Results	301.251	205	2.326	0.967	0.993	0.975	0.935	0.927	0.031
Recommended value	/	/	<3	>0.9	>0.9	>0.9	>0.9	>0.9	<0.05

The results of the path coefficient test are shown in Table 4. For interest stimulation, psychological environment has a significant positive effect on interest stimulation in adolescent physical education learning context, β=0.236, C.R.=8.965, p=0.001<0.05. Similarly, it can be seen that the physical environment and institutional environment have a significant positive effect on interest stimulation in adolescent physical education learning context. Interest arousal, psychological environment, physical environment, and institutional environment have a significant positive effect on interest retention in adolescents’ physical education learning situations. This suggests that in order to promote adolescents’ interest in physical education learning situations, the psychological, physical, and institutional environments need to be optimized to increase students’ participation and satisfaction. Interest stimulation has a significant positive effect on adolescent physical education learning context interest retention, which means that if students’ interest can be effectively stimulated in the physical education learning context. Then this interest will last for a period of time, promoting students’ active participation in physical education learning and lasting learning outcomes.

Table 4.

The path coefficient test results

Path	Estimated value	S.E.	C.R.	P	Normalization factor
Psychological environment → Interest excitation	0.521	0.045	8.965	0.001***	0.236
Physical environment → Interest excitation	0.226	0.096	5.617	0.000***	0.218
Institutional environment → Interest excitation	0.186	0.038	6.501	0.003***	0.169
Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.375	0.045	7.139	0.004***	0.353
Psychological environment → Interest retention	0.264	0.052	4.248	0.002***	0.267
Physical environment → Interest retention	0.182	0.069	6.331	0.000***	0.241
Institutional environment → Interest retention	0.299	0.024	8.634	0.011***	0.398

Therefore, Hypothesis 1 exploring the intention, Hypothesis 4 (psychological, physical and institutional environments) can directly influence the retention of interest in adolescent physical education learning context is established. Hypothesis 3 the stimulation of adolescents’ interest in physical education learning context can directly influence the retention of adolescents’ interest in physical education learning context is established.

In this paper, Bootstrap method mediation effect analysis was performed with a sample size of 3000 automatically drawn with a confidence level of 95%. The upper and lower bounds of the mediation effect are observed using bias-corrected confidence intervals. If the bias-corrected confidence interval for the mediation effect does not contain zero, it indicates the presence of a mediation effect. It is also necessary to observe the bias-corrected confidence interval for the direct effect. If it does not contain 0, it implies that the mediating effect is not fully mediated. If it contains 0, the mediating effect is fully mediated.

The results of the mediation effect test are shown in Table 5. The indirect effects of the mediation paths “institutional environment→interest stimulation→interest retention”, “physical environment→interest stimulation→interest retention” and “psychological environment→interest stimulation→interest retention” are 0.077, 0.093 and 0.152, respectively. The corresponding Bootstrap confidence intervals do not contain 0, indicating that interest stimulation has a significant mediating effect in the institutional environment, physical environment, and psychological environment for the path of interest retention. Moreover, the confidence intervals of Bootstrap corresponding to the direct effects of the above mediation paths also do not contain 0, indicating that interest stimulation plays a part in the mediation effects of institutional environment, physical environment, and psychological environment on the path of interest retention. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 is valid.

Table 5.

The mediation effect tests the results

Path		Effect value	BootSE	BootLLCI	BootULCI
Total effect	Institutional environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.526	0.042	0.298	0.563
	Physical environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.332	0.055	0.179	0.478
	Psychological environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.486	0.039	0.396	0.569
Direct effect	Institutional environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.399	0.035	0.352	0.521
	Physical environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.155	0.051	0.121	0.163
	Psychological environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.416	0.086	0.241	0.231
Indirect effect	Institutional environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.077	0.052	0.125	0.119
	Physical environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.093	0.021	0.061	0.272
	Psychological environment → Interest excitation → Interest retention	0.152	0.013	0.056	0.351

Overall, the results of this study indicate that institutional, physical, and psychological environments have significant indirect effects on adolescents’ retention of interest in physical education, and that the mediating effect of this effect is mainly realized through interest stimulation. This means that to improve adolescents’ interest retention in physical education learning, it is necessary not only to improve the physical, institutional, and psychological environments, but also to find effective ways to stimulate and maintain their interest arousal.

3

New strategies for the development of physical education for young people

3.1

Youth sports literacy and its components

School education is a crucial link in the growth stage of young people, and school education is responsible for cultivating good physical culture literacy among young people. Enhancing the physical culture literacy of young people is a necessary process to comply with the transformation of modern education from exam-oriented education to quality education. Sports have an irreplaceable role in comprehensively improving the physical literacy of young people, cultivating and improving the physical literacy of young people can not only shape their healthy body. And also can have to promote the comprehensive implementation of quality education in schools, for the school sports culture heritage solid foundation, and promote the overall development of young people.

The development of new education in modern society has given school sports a new historical mission. Sports occupy an important position in the process of cultivating the comprehensive quality of young people, purifying the mind, enlightening wisdom, and establishing a correct world view, outlook on life and values. Young people are the future of the motherland, and the improvement of young people’s sports literacy will enable them to have a strong fighting spirit and perseverance, which is not only necessary to adapt to the complex and changing society in the future, but also an important guarantee for the realization of the country’s wealth and strength.

Sports literacy is the result of accumulation through the overall mastery of sports skills and hands-on practice. Students improve the level of sports skills through the learning of sports technology, as well as cultural heritage, physical fitness and sportsmanship accumulation, i.e., the process of learning sports technology is also the process of cultivating sports literacy.

The components of youth sports literacy include sports knowledge, sports awareness, sports behavior, physical fitness level, sports skills, sports morality and sports personality.

3.2

The construction of the goal system of youth sports literacy

The construction of the goal system of youth sports literacy requires that the factors constituting youth sports literacy achieve certain goals, and only in this way can the construction of the goal system be realized. Only in this way can the factors be comprehensively integrated and utilized to carry out evaluation on the basis of mutual influence and mutual promotion. 1)

Sports knowledge

Master certain basic knowledge of physical education and health, master the basic methods of physical exercise, be able to take the initiative to use scientific and technological means to collect information related to physical education and physical and mental health, focus on the knowledge of sports health care, methods of exercise and the mastery of the rules of sports, clarify the concept of sports, development and classification, the basic ways to achieve the goals and tasks of sports and the basic requirements, the way of implementation of sports and the means, and understand the teaching of the subject of physical education, sports training, competitive sports competitions and sports and leisure exercise in general tasks, content, principles and methods, the organization, structure and methods of physical education, the principles of physical exercise, the difference and assessment of physical fitness, physical fitness and physical ability.

2)

Sports Awareness

Through the teaching competition to deepen the strong interest in sports activities, put positive enthusiasm for exercise into the daily study and exercise, to complete the process of transformation from “want me to be fit” to “I want to be fit” and finally to “I will be fit”. The transformation of the process from “I want to be fit” to “I want to be fit” and finally to “I can be fit”.

3)

Sports behavior

To love life, have good self-regulation ability, self-confidence, full of emotion, physical health, not easy to get sick. Fully respect the students’ individual interest orientation, choose to show their love of a number of sports content, the development of specialty sports skills.

4)

Sports ability

Teenagers should understand some sports health care and sports psychology, use sports health knowledge to prevent injuries, know simple first aid, master some simple treatment of common injuries in sports basic methods.

5)

Sports Character

Sports advocate fair competition, honesty, fairness, equality, respect for each other and the referee are its inherent moral characteristics, but also the sports character that young people must have. Coherence, coordination and collective strength are not only the guarantee of success, but also a necessary condition for sports activities and sports to be carried out properly.

3.3

Strategies for Cultivating Youth Physical Education in the Context of Sports-Education Integration

1)

Strengthening ideological guidance for young people and establishing the lifelong sports value of “health first”.

Adhering to the guiding principle of “health first” in youth sports is the precursor to deepening the integration of sports and education. In the context of deepening the “integration of sports and education”, school sports should strengthen the ideological leadership of young people, guide them to participate in sports activities, establish the sports value of “health first”, and make sports a habit of life.

2)

Deepening the reform of the physical education curriculum in schools and implementing the policy of “teaching, practicing hard and playing often”.

Youth participation in sports activities is the most direct way to cultivate sports values. It is important to incorporate the development of youth sports values into the reform of school physical education curricula, and to enrich competitions or activities with sports elements. Publicize the positive effects of sports, so that young people can feel and understand the unique charm of sports in the curriculum. Ensure the quality of physical education programs for young people, so that young people can insist on one hour of physical exercise every day in order to form good sports values.

3)

Strengthening the family’s participation in sports and reinforcing the service function of social “sports resources”.

Parents should deeply realize that family sports are an important part of family education. Families should take up the heavy responsibility of cultivating the values of sports among young people at an early age. They should shape a good sports environment and organize or participate in various forms of sports activities to enrich the sports life of young people, so as to meet the requirements of fostering young people’s sports interests and promoting the healthy development of young people’s physical fitness. In the process of participating in sports activities, it is necessary to fully observe, understand and grasp the interests and aspirations of young people, so as to subconsciously guide and educate young people to develop good sports values and promote the healthy development of young people’s bodies and minds.

3.4

Effectiveness of New Strategy Intervention in Youth Sports

In order to explore the effect of the new strategy of youth physical education proposed in the previous section to improve youth’s interest in physical education learning. A 2*2 repeated measures ANOVA as well as a simple effects analysis were conducted on the two phases of physical education learning interest in the experimental and control groups, and the results were analyzed as follows.

3.4.1

Impact of the Situational Interest Stimulation Stage

The variability of stimulated situational interest is shown in Figure 2. Repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant main effect for this dimension group, F_(1,90) = 152.36, p<0.01, η² = 0.72. The main effect before and after the intervention was significant, F_(1,90) = 352.65, p<0.01, η² = 0.89. The interaction between group and pre and post-test was significant, F_(1,90) = 236.14, p<0.01, η² = 0.64.

A simple effects analysis showed a nonsignificant main effect of group before the experiment, F_(1,90) = 0.25, p>0.05. The main effect of post-test group was significant, F_(1,90) = 345.74, p<0.05. Significant before and after intervention in the experimental group, 3.15 vs 5.63, p<0.05. The control group was not significant before and after the intervention (3.17 vs 3.75, P>0.05).

Contextual interest arousal is the most basic stage of interest generation and is a corresponding response of an individual to external stimuli. It usually occurs during the individual’s interaction with the learning activity. The process of situational interest arousal shows the formation of interest from nothing to something. In order to fulfill the birth of this level of interest, external support is usually required. By constructing a good learning environment, as a way to satisfy the students’ need for a learning environment and the psychological environment to get pleasure, the students’ participation in physical education learning and the degree of their motivation for physical education learning is increased.

In the experimental process of this study, when the experimental class conducted new lectures, following the principles of empowerment, interest and success in the new strategy of physical education, the teacher maximized the novelty and autonomy of the learning content, and at the same time reduced the challenge of the learning content so that the students could experience the feeling of success within a reasonable range, and the students were quickly integrated into the physical education classroom to build up their self-confidence and sense of satisfaction.

As the control group is carried out traditional teaching. The requirements for technical movements are relatively high, which reduces the students’ sense of participation to a certain extent, especially the students who are waiting for the best in sports. A technical link does not keep up will be abandoned, at this time the teacher is still to ensure the completion of the teaching objectives in accordance with the high requirements of such students, is unable to achieve the true meaning of tailored to the needs of the students. And will prompt students to have the idea of giving up, interest in the introduction will fail.

3.4.2

Impact of the situational interest maintenance phase

Maintenance of situational interest, the second stage of interest development, builds on the stimulation stage of situational interest and is more in-depth relative to the first stage. It is the support of the individual to continue to strengthen the connection to the content through external support, and usually interest is internalized after this stage of development.

A comparison of the differences in maintenance of situational interest before and after the intervention is shown in Figure 3. Repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant main effect for this dimension group, F_(1,90) = 21.63, p<0.05, η² = 0.24. The main effect before and after the intervention was significant, F_(1,90) = 49.22, p<0.01, η² = 0.42. The interaction between group and pre-posttest was significant, F_(1,90) = 60.31, p<0.01, η² = 0.37. The analysis of simple effects showed that the main effect was not significant in the pre-experimental group and significant in the post-experimental group. It was significant before and after the intervention in the experimental group (3.71 vs 5.25, p<0.05) and not significant before and after the intervention in the control group (3.66 vs 4.21, p>0.05).

Since situational interest relies on many situational factors in learning to cause, for example, group cooperation among classmates, one-on-one tutoring between teachers and students, the atmosphere of the class, the teacher’s attitude, the novelty of learning technical movements and some intrinsic emotional experiences, etc., in this study, following the principles of teaching physical education for adolescents and young people and requiring the experimental classroom physical education teachers to strictly follow the implementation of the lesson plan of this experiment, the classroom was given a very rich emotional value, and were able to keenly observe the students’ needs at the moment as well as the expansion of knowledge other than sports skills.

The reason why the control group not only did not increase but decreased at this stage could be that the teachers focused too much on the teaching process of the lesson. Because the usefulness and care of new strategies in physical education were not injected in the regular teaching preparation, there was a lack of advance anticipation in teaching contingencies. They can only ignore or simply deal with them to ensure the smooth running of teaching, thus neglecting the emotional needs of students, which makes students disappointed and less interested in physical education classes.

4

Conclusion

In this paper, the factors affecting adolescents’ interest in sports are identified from society, school and family, and a theoretical framework of interest generation mechanism in sports classroom context is drawn. By establishing a structural equation model of the influencing factors of sports interest, we analyze the mechanism of each influencing factor and propose a new strategy for the cultivation of youth sports education.

Stratified random sampling was used to obtain the data related to youth’s interest in physical education in different regions. The correlation analysis of the influencing factors of sports interest showed that there was a close correlation between the dimensions of situational interest and the dimensions of students’ perceived gap and the overall. Novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploration intention, immediate pleasure and perception gap variables were included in the regression equation in steps, and when all variables entered the regression equation sequentially, the predictive effect of immediate pleasure on situational interest reached the significance level. The structural equation path test of sports interest validated the mechanism of generating situational interest in the sports classroom proposed in this paper.

Based on the mechanism of the role of each influencing factor on adolescent sports interest, a new strategy for adolescent sports education is proposed. The new strategy of physical education produces significant effects in both the interest stimulation stage and interest maintenance stage of the physical education classroom situation, which can improve adolescents’ interest in physical activities and innovate physical education strategies.

Język:: Angielski

Częstotliwość wydawania:: 1 razy w roku
Dziedziny czasopisma:: Nauki biologiczne, Nauki biologiczne, inne, Matematyka, Matematyka stosowana, Matematyka ogólna, Fizyka, Fizyka, inne

Kanał RSS czasopisma

Research on Youth Sports Interest Cultivation and Physical Education Innovation Strategies

Jixu Zhu

Data publikacji: 19 mar 2025

Otrzymano: 28 paź 2024

Przyjęty: 05 lut 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0519

Słowa kluczoweRegression analysis, Structural equation modeling, Influencing factors, Sports interest, Sports literacy

© 2025 Jixu Zhu, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Słowa kluczowe
Regression analysis, Structural equation modeling, Influencing factors, Sports interest, Sports literacy