Abstract
The rapidly changing world characterised by technological comforts, social ills and complicated lifestyles has contributed to the decline of traditional values in most societies. Physical education (PE) programmes should employ holistic developmental approaches to instill desirable values in learners. The aim of the study was to determine and explore pre-service educators' strategies in infusing values education through PE lessons. The study was grounded in the social learning theoretical framework. In this qualitative study, information was gathered from open ended questionnaires, unstructured interviews and reflexive journals from a purposively sampled cohort of final year pre-service PE educators at a tertiary institution in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Thematic analysis was applied in which raw data from interview transcripts and texts were used to examine topics, ideas and patterns which emerged repeatedly from the data. The data were interpreted to confirm, contradict or reveal novel findings in comparison with the literature. The themes which emerged from the study included pre-service educators' conceptualisation of values, reasons for values education and strategies to include values education in PE. The findings showed that PE was associated with positive values which contributed to character development. The participants proposed various pedagogic strategies such as role modelling, developing an appropriate environment as well as placing learners in small multicultural groups as critical means to instill desirable values through PE. The study recommends that schools prioritise values education through PE in view of its pivotal role in engendering holistic development in learners in the South African context.