The effect of psychological well-being and socialappearance concerns on communication skills of physicaleducation and sports teachers: The Case of Muğla

The main purpose of the study is to examine the predictive power of physical education and sports teacher candidates' psychological well-being and social appearance concerns on their communication skills. The sub-objectives are to examine the psychological well-being, social appearance anxiety levels and communication skills of the participants according to the variables of gender, class, sports branch, regular sports and socio-economic level. This research was carried out in the descriptive survey model. A total of 154 teacher candidates (97 male, 57 female) who were active students in the Department of Physical Education and Sports of Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Faculty of Sport Sciences in the 2021-2022 academic year participated in the study. 'Psychological Well-Being Scale', 'Social Appearance Anxiety Scale', 'Communication Skills Assessment Scale' and descriptive information form were used as data collection tools. In the study, multivariate linear regression analysis was performed using the variables of psychological well-being and social appearance anxiety in order to predict the dependent variable, the communication skill variable. The findings showed that the perception of communication skills (98.59±11.8) and psychological well-being (42.65±7.7) of the participants were high, and their social appearance anxiety levels (36.08±15.2) were close to medium. While psychological well-being levels predicted communication skills positively and significantly, social appearance anxiety predicted negatively and significantly. It was determined that the level of communication skills and psychological well-being differed in favor of female students according to the gender variable (p<0.05). However, no difference was found in terms of social appearance anxiety according to the gender variable (p>0.05). There was only difference in the level of social appearance anxiety according to the class variable (p<0.05). Only willingness to communicate sub-dimension (p<0.04) and social appearance anxiety (p<0.01) differ according to the regular sports variable. It was determined that those who declared that they did sports regularly were more willing to communicate, those who did not do regular sports had higher social appearance anxiety, and students with high socioeconomic level had a significantly higher social appearance anxiety than those with low socioeconomic level (p<0.05). The internal experiences of physical education and sports teacher candidates such as psychological well-being and social appearance anxiety should be monitored, besides providing the necessary psychological support to these students, activities should be organized to improve their communication skills with effective speaking and listening techniques, and they should be supported to become more prepared for their professional life.