Teaching is a demanding job and the aim of the present study was to explore
the emotional experiences and wellbeing levels (burnout and vigor) of Physical
Education (PE) student teachers in comparison with student teachers of other
subjects. In all, 167 student teachers (99 in PE and 68 in other subjects)
described two significant professional negative events experienced during the
school placement. They also reported the frequency of occurrence of these
events, the level of unpleasant emotions related to the events, and their scores
of burnout and vigor. The negative emotional events were encoded following
an inductive approach and five categories emerged: Student rules violations,
Collaborative issues, Physical integrity risks, Organizational issues, and Lack of
student motivation. The Chi-square analyses revealed a different distribution
in the negative events according to the subject taught, especially including an
overrepresentation of Lack of student motivation and Physical integrity risks
for PE student teachers and Collaborative issues for other-subjects student
teachers. Moreover, Mann-Whitney U-tests revealed a similar frequency of
negative emotional events whatever the subject taught, but a lower intensity
of unpleasant emotions, lower physical fatigue and higher scores of physical
strength for PE student teachers in comparison with those of other subjects.
The present findings confirmed that the specificities of PE lead to singular
significant negative events for PE students during initial training. Finally,
the health outcomes (intensity of unpleasant emotions, burnout and vigor)
suggest that PE teachers have developed specific resources to cope with
school constraints, probably in relation to their sport experiences.