Abstract:
The curriculum at physical education teacher education (PETE) requires comprehensive but straightforward evaluation methods for PE quality. Teaching physical education in the Netherlands is grounded in recent redesigned national standards and learning. These standards are aligned with the main functions of education (i.e., qualification, socialization, subjectification; Biesta, 2009). The Dutch PETE curriculum is in particular centralized around pedagogical and didactical courses facilitating teaching processes during internships. Such attention and interest includes pre-service teachers’ task to conduct comprehensive evaluations of what is occurring during PE lessons in perspective of their own teaching decisions. One of the important challenges is the relatively lack of student pedagogical-content-knowledge in making situated decisions in the practice of physical education lessons.
The central purpose of this study is to explore observational markers that can be used in the Dutch PETE curriculum for evaluating teaching processes in physical education. Both data from user-experiences and perceptions from educators, pre-service teachers and practitioners were collected around the evaluation of teaching whilst participating in a long term design-thinking process. The insights of this process were used to build a comprehensive prototype evaluation tool that can be applied in pedagogical and didactical textbooks, in lesson plans, as well as in the practice of observing teaching processes and using teaching assessment forms.
The results of this explorative journey will be presented through describing and explaining the prototype pedagogical observation tool that has been developed. This operationalised tool provides observation markers that are adjusted to pre-service teachers’ understanding of teaching PE. The observation focuses on three main aspects, namely (1) the degree of functional collaboration shaped by interactions between classmates and between teacher and children, (2) the degree of skilfulness and successful outcomes of each child in the movement activity, and (3) the degree of children involvement and participation during movement activities and lessons. These three aspects are scaled within a teaching continuum and related to the situated context (i.e., children behaviour, movement experience and motivation). This continuum fosters growth through enhancing autonomy of children. Based on observing the learners in class, the tool includes several decisive didactical aspects that improves pre-service teachers situated decision-making.
Reference
Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability (formerly: Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education), 21, 33-46.
The central purpose of this study is to explore observational markers that can be used in the Dutch PETE curriculum for evaluating teaching processes in physical education. Both data from user-experiences and perceptions from educators, pre-service teachers and practitioners were collected around the evaluation of teaching whilst participating in a long term design-thinking process. The insights of this process were used to build a comprehensive prototype evaluation tool that can be applied in pedagogical and didactical textbooks, in lesson plans, as well as in the practice of observing teaching processes and using teaching assessment forms.
The results of this explorative journey will be presented through describing and explaining the prototype pedagogical observation tool that has been developed. This operationalised tool provides observation markers that are adjusted to pre-service teachers’ understanding of teaching PE. The observation focuses on three main aspects, namely (1) the degree of functional collaboration shaped by interactions between classmates and between teacher and children, (2) the degree of skilfulness and successful outcomes of each child in the movement activity, and (3) the degree of children involvement and participation during movement activities and lessons. These three aspects are scaled within a teaching continuum and related to the situated context (i.e., children behaviour, movement experience and motivation). This continuum fosters growth through enhancing autonomy of children. Based on observing the learners in class, the tool includes several decisive didactical aspects that improves pre-service teachers situated decision-making.
Reference
Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability (formerly: Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education), 21, 33-46.