The physical education programs mainly aim to improve the psycho-motor abilities of the students, have them gain favorable social behaviors and form a habit of doing lifelong sport for a healthy life (Temel & Sunay, 2002; Yenal, Çamlıyer & Saracaloğlu, 1999). While lifelong learning is so popular nowadays (Lynch, 2008), lifelong exercising or lifelong sport should also be an objective of educational systems as well. Physical education classes seem to be the most convenient settings to raise the awareness and habit to be lifelong performers of one or more sportive activities. But the whether physical education programs achieve this long term objective is difficult to test. Because, both it requires long follow-up studies and it is difficult to directly measure affective behaviors such as positive attitude towards physical education or gaining the habit of doing a sportive activity regularly. As a matter of fact, current studies reveal that the physical education programs are not meeting even the short term objectives, let the long term objectives alone (Taşmektepligil, Yılmaz, Osman & Kılcıgil, 2006) since the time allotted to the lessons is not enough, there is a lack of equipment and facility, and teachers reduce the curriculum to what they know better or are specialized. Nevertheless, it sounds important to investigate the viability of long-term affective objectives of physical education programs, especially liking doing a sport regularly as a part of lifelong sport. Thus this study intends to investigate to what extent primary and high school curricula are able to provide the students with knowledge, ability and especially a liking or a habit in terms of doing a certain sportive activity during the rest of their life.

This study is planned to be based on survey design. The participants are planned to be the contestants in tournaments between universities to be held in various universities in Turkey during 2008-2009 academic year. The possible branches will include (but not restricted to) indoor football, badminton, handball, volleyball, basketball, folk dances, athletics (cross), and tennis. The sportsmen are to be given a questionnaire which includes items about the contribution of their former physical education programs to their life in terms of lifelong sport. Also the impacts of some independent variables will be involved into the study such as their gender, former PH teachers’ branch of specialization, for how long they have been doing the sports activity, whether they perform other sports too. The data is planned to be analyzed using frequencies and percentages.

This study is expected to yield results which will help us to point the challenges about PE programs in terms of lifelong sport. Based on these challenges some recommendations can be put forward in curriculum development process both in primary and secondary schools, and in PE teacher training at educational faculties.