The rapid growth of knowledge and its significant impact on professional and personal life is a fundamental condition for education to be one of the most powerful drivers for countries to achieve future prosperity. Teachers are the creators of our next generation, their beliefs and values play a leading role in the development and implementation of the curriculum, and their values also determine how they will teach.

Professional socialization is a nonlinear, continuous, interactive, transformative, developmental, personal, psychosocial and self-reinforcing process, which is formed in newcomers through internalizing the specific culture of a professional community, including expectations, values, beliefs, customs, traditions, and unwritten rules of the profession, as well as understanding the hierarchy and power structure, and the responsibilities. The initial and main outcomes of this professional socialization are the formation of professional identity and professional development (Sadeghi Avval Shahr, Yazdani, & Afshar, 2019). This research will focus on the personal aspect of teachers’ professional identity (Chere-Masopha, 2018), studying the beliefs of future physical education teachers and physical education teachers.

Jewett, Bain and Ennis (1995) determined five structured set of value orientations by investigating educational values of both physical education teachers and future physical education teachers: Disciplinary mastery (DM) – acquisition of specific motor skills. Learning process (LP), where the teacher acquires processes and specific skills required for good performance, learning independently, problem solving skills. Self-actualization (SA), where physical education (PE) teacher realizes their personal goals, values, and confidence for self-growth, nurturing personal growth, personal autonomy. Social responsibility (SR) – (formerly known as social reconstruction), perceives the class as a micro-society that pursues such goals as cooperation and group work while respecting each another, places high priority on societal needs and social change. Ecological integration (EI) – PE teachers respect the balance between the social dimension, the student, and the knowledge of the subject, emphasise on personal search for meaning by integrating natural and social environment. The value orientations inventory has been translated into different languages for studies in non-English speaking countries such as in French speaking Canada, Chinese, Flemish and Taiwanese.  

In ECER2022 the authors presented the results of their research exploring the psychometric indicators of the Latvian version of the Questionnaire on Teachers’ Value Orientations in Physical Education (VOI- Short Form) for the future physical education teachers (Fernate & Vazne, 2022). In ECER2023 the authors aim is to present the results of the analysis of the psychometric indicators of the Latvian version of the Questionnaire on Teachers’ Value Orientations in Physical Education (VOI- Short Form) for the future physical education teachers and physical education teachers.

The aim of this research is to assess the psychometric indicators of the Latvian version of the Questionnaire on Teachers’ Value Orientations in Physical Education (VOI- Short Form) for the Future Physical Education Teachers and Physical Education Teachers.

The research question:

Will the psychometric indicators of the Latvian version of the short 50-statement 10-value orientations, statements characterizing the directions of future physical education teachers’ and physical education teachers’ value orientations, be in accordance with the psychometric indicators of the original version of the 50-statement Questionnaire on Teachers’ Value Orientations in Physical Education (Chen et al., 1997)?

The research first phase involved 82 respondents – future physical education teachers (39 women and 43 men), second phase 107 - physical education teachers (58 women, 49 men). The following methods were used in the research: the Latvian version of the Questionnaire on Physical Education Teachers’ Value Orientations (Chen et al., 1997); expert opinion methods; mathematical statistics (descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s coefficient alpha). The adaptation of the questionnaire took place in several stages (Zhu & Chen, 2018; ITC, 2017). The forward-backward translation of the questionnaire was provided by professional English and Latvian philology specialists specializing in sport science. The apparent and content validity was determined. Four experts were invited to determine the content validity. The expert group consisted of 2 scholars, 1 practitioner, and 1 end user. The questionnaire process and collection of respondents’ data took place anonymously, in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Human Rights. Respondents rated their responses to 50 questionnaire statements, which were summarised in 10 value orientation directions of forced-choice scales and 5 dimensions: disciplinary mastery (DM), characterized by one of the statements – I plan so that students would practice skills, abilities or fitness tasks; Learning process (LP) – For example, statement – I teach students how to divide the tasks of movement, skills, and physical fitness so as to emphasize the most important components of their learning; Self-actualization (SA), characterised by one of the statements – I teach students to take responsibility for their actions. Social responsibility (SR) – for example, statement – I teach students to work together to solve class/group issues. Ecological integration (EI), where one the characterising statements is – I teach students to try new activities to find the ones they like. Respondents rank the five statements in each direction using a different number on a 5-point scale (in which 1 = least important and 5 = most important) to indicate their value priority. Respondents consistently rank the statements representing one particular value orientation higher than others throughout the 10 sets. The collected data were analyzed to determine the validity (with a focus on the item rating means) and reliability evidence (with a focus on internal consistency by computing Cronbach’s alpha (Cronbach, 1951).

Indicators of internal coherence of the questionnaire on future physical education teachers’ value orientations show a corresponding reliability of the translated Latvian version of the questionnaire, as evidenced by the total Cronbach’s coefficient alpha .925 with variation in dimensions from .723 to .888. But the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of all scales of the questionnaire on physical education teachers’ value orientations is .94, which indicates a high alpha value. This form is appropriate for the Latvian language and the Latvian cultural environment too. Variation in dimensions each of the scale’s ranges from .766 to .867. The highest indicators in terms of arithmetic mean and standard deviation were DM - 35.40±1, α=.744 on future physical education teachers’ value orientations, but 36.37±7.19, α=.774 on physical education teachers’ value orientations. This trend shows the extent to which the traditional approach - to focus on knowledge of the content and skills and performance-related knowledge. LP (34.2±7; α=.766) this dimension ranks second in the hierarchy of future teachers’ value orientations and second (35.48±7.16; α=.810) in the hierarchy of teachers’ value orientations, which emphasizes learning progress by adding new knowledge to what they have previously learned. In turn, the lowest arithmetic mean indicator is in the SR scale 31.14±8, α=.852 on future physical education teachers’ value orientations, which focus on pupils showing respect and cooperation, as well as valuing teamwork during physical activities and not only as a member of a group. But the lowest arithmetic mean indicator on physical education teachers’ value orientations is in the EI scale 34.11±7.31, α=.772, which indicates that the teacher can maintain a balance between the needs of the person and the group and integrate the socio-cultural goals. In this case, the main aim PE teacher’s further education is to promote skills for formation of a balanced critical thinking.

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