Differences in teachers’ burdens during school-based extracurricular sports activities according to teacher expertise

Problem Statement: There is a notable burden placed on teachers to coach and manage school-based extracurricular sports activities. Outside of decreasing the time teachers are engaged in these activities, increasing teacher expertise may reduce this burden. However, the relationship between these burdens and teacher expertise is not well understood. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to clarify differences in these burdens according to teacher expertise. Approach: The study participants were 361 teachers who worked in public junior high or high schools and supervised school-based extracurricular sports activities. These participants completed cross-sectional self-administered questionnaire surveys. The main survey questions involved expertise and three types of burdens (i.e., temporal, psychological, and economic). Then, an analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis test, and multiple comparison were performed. Results: The results revealed that physical education teachers and non-physical education/expert teachers spent significantly more time and money on school-based extracurricular sports activities than did non-physical education/non-expert teachers. Conversely, physical education teachers and non-physical education/expert teachers experienced significantly less of a psychological burden than did non-physical education/non-expert teachers. In addition, physical education teachers spent more time and money, and experienced less of a psychological burden, than did non-physical education/expert teachers. Conclusions: The study considered teacher expertise in school-based extracurricular sports activities to affect the level of burden teachers experienced. Placing teachers with appropriate expertise into school-based extracurricular sports activities, providing teacher training to improve expertise, and utilizing external coaches would contribute to the reduction of these burdens.