If you've ever wondered why some elective PE sections fill up with waitlists while others struggle to attract students, our new study published in the Journal of Teaching in Physical Education has some suggestions:
The study, conducted in a large school district in the southeastern United States, interviewed six teachers and 26 students across four elective PE courses: Weight Training and Conditioning, Personal Fitness, AICE PE (an internationally recognized academic PE course), and Unified PE (which pairs students with and without disabilities). The goal was simple but overdue: almost nothing has been written about why American high schoolers choose elective PE once their required credits are met. What the researchers found offers a practical roadmap for anyone designing or running these programs.
It Comes Down to Three Basic Needs
The study leaned on Self-Determination Theory, which says people are motivated when three psychological needs are met: autonomy (having choice), competence (feeling capable), and relatedness (feeling connected to others). Those three needs showed up constantly in what students said.
Students didn't sign up for elective PE because they had to. They signed up because the class gave them something regular PE often doesn't: a say in what they do, work they can visibly get better at, and people they want to spend time with. One student put it plainly—being in a class with people who chose to be there, rather than kids who "have to be there," changed the whole feel of the room.
Enjoyment and Belonging Matter More Than You'd Think
Fun was a major driver, and teachers noticed it too. One teacher observed that "fun is overlooked in education," and the interviews back that up. Students talked about class being the best part of their day, a stress reliever after a hard day at home, or simply a break from sitting in a classroom.
Social connection mattered just as much. Weight training students talked about wanting to train alongside friends or other athletes. In Unified PE, students described genuine friendships with peers with disabilities—bonds strong enough that one student invited her partner to prom. Teachers who let those pairings develop organically, rather than forcing rotation for its own sake, saw stronger relationships form.
Worth noting for administrators: girls were consistently a minority in weight training classes, and several described real discomfort being one of only a couple of female students. This lines up with prior research showing participation drops sharply for girls once required credits are met. If you're trying to grow enrollment across genders, this is a specific, fixable barrier—not just a general engagement problem.
Students Want Ownership, Not Just Choice
A recurring theme was how much it meant to students when teachers treated them as capable of making their own decisions—about training plans, activity selection, or pacing. Several said it made them feel more like "a young adult" than "a student." That said, students in the study also pushed back when freedom felt artificially capped, such as being required to follow a beginner plan despite having more experience.
The takeaway for teachers: autonomy doesn't mean an unstructured free-for-all. It means building in real decision points—which activities to vote on, how to structure a personal program, how much competitiveness to bring—once students have shown they can handle it.
Practical Takeaways
For teachers, the study suggests a few things you can act on immediately:
Build in genuine choice points, even small ones, as students demonstrate readiness.
Let peer relationships develop naturally rather than over-managing them.
Ask directly what activities students want, rather than defaulting to what's easiest to teach.
Be intentional about gender balance and comfort, especially in strength-based electives.
For administrators, the implications are about access and design:
Offer a genuine variety of elective options—cognitive (like AICE), physical (weight training, fitness), and affective/social (Unified PE) all pulled different students for different reasons.
Survey students the year before about what they'd actually want to take, rather than building electives solely around staffing convenience.
Recognize that high demand for these courses (several had waitlists) signals an appetite that mandatory PE isn't fully meeting.
The Bigger Picture
Perhaps the most encouraging finding is one teachers already sense but rarely get to see confirmed in research: when students have real choice, they choose to be active—and they take it seriously. That's a strong argument for expanding these programs, not the reason they're often deprioritized. If elective PE can hook students who've already "done their time" in required PE, it may be one of the best tools available for building activity habits that carry into adulthood.
Full Cite: Banville, D., Rodrigues, A., & Marttinen, R. (2026). Elective Physical Education in the United States—Why Do Students Enroll? Journal of Teaching in Physical Education. https://doi.org/10.1123/jtpe.2025-0261
This blog post was written with the assistance of AI to support clarity and accessibility. It is intended to help disseminate and discuss research findings with a broader audience. However, for the most accurate and reliable information—including conclusions and practical applications—please refer to the original peer-reviewed publication on which this blog is based. The peer-reviewed article remains the most authoritative source.