The effect of professional development workshops in teaching elementary physical education
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to examine how professional development workshops affect the teaching of elementary physical education. Thirty two classroom teachers from public elementary schools in Nicosia participated in this study. Teachers were required to submit their sport education unit and lesson plans they prepared and teach two lessons, which were videotaped. The Sport Education Observational Instrument was used to code teacher sport education pedagogical behavior. The author of the study and a reliability coder independently coded: a) the unit and lesson plans used in the Sport Education programs, and b) the implementation of their program. The results of this study suggest that to design more effective professional development workshops, requires extensive prior knowledge of the contextual barriers that exist within the school setting. Although the workshops allowed the teachers to see the value of the content, it did not provide them the skills necessary to effectively implement the strategy within the school setting. These findings highlight the importance of providing resources to help teachers integrate new curricula and instructional skills into their existing contexts, such as the use of authentic contexts for training and providing a mentorship model of support mechanisms provided at the school site.References
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