The effect of practice of "constructing sportsmanship in juniors' games" (CSJG) on students' sportsmanship behaviors and their tendency of empathy

Introduction and aim: Constructing Sportsmanship in Juniors' Games (CSJG) is a practice that aims to gain sportsmanship behaviors to students at physical education and sports courses. It is also the goal of the practice to make students act in sportsmanship manners. The aim of the search is to analyze the effect of the practice of CSJG on students' sportsmanship behaviors and empathy attitudes. Material and method: Our search has been planned as explanatory model which is a pattern of mixed method case study. Pretest-posttest design which is one of the experimental models has been used at analyzing quantitative data. Descriptive analysis has been used at analyzing qualitative data. This study has been done with 72 (32 girls, 40 boys) volunteer 6th grade students of two different secondary schools in central Erzincan in spring in the 2016-2017 education year. "Physical education and sports course sportsmanship behaviour scale", "Index of Empathy for Children", interview form, observation form and the practice of CSJG have been applied to the students. In the analysis of the data, Excel and SPSS 22 programs were consulted. It has been seen that data set has been distributed normally with the help of skewness and kurtosis tests. Therefore, statistical methods such as frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, independent and Dependent sample t-tests have been used at evaluating quantitative data. Results were evaluated according to p<0.05 significance level. Results: It is realized with post-tests that there is a meaningful increase at sportsmanship behaviour scores of girls and boys after taking the practice of CSJG. Moreover, the students have made a significant positive progress both in their cognitive process and ways of behaviors according to the observation and interviewing findings. There is not a meaningful difference at sportsmanship scores of control group students' cognitive process and ways of behaviors when their pretests and posttests have been compared. It is also realized that there is not a meaningful and significant change at both experimental and control group students' empathy level. Conclusion: It is confirmed that the practice of CSJG contributes to students' sportsmanship behaviors; however, it does not contribute to their empathy level. Keywords: Empathy, Practice of CSJG, Sportsmanship behaviors.