2013: My First Year of Teaching Physical Education
As mentioned in my introductory section, for the purpose of this teaching portfolio I will focus on my Physical Education Modules as it incorporates the most education-through-movement and emotion provoking content.
Physical education is meant to develop your social, cognitive, emotional and physical domains. It is hence not surprising that in my journey of teaching this subject I have had some of the most positive and negative experiences of my teaching career. As physical education is inherently an emotionally provoking type of module (as it includes team-work, thinking-out-the-box and being placed outside your comfort zone) but additionally is deemed by many to be less valuable than Maths, Languages and the Sciences, my focus is not only on teaching the physical education pedagogical and content knowledge but additionally to transform perceptions.
My journey with physical education starts with one months notice to create a 14 week module for Foundation Phase physical education. At the time when I was awarded the position I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Reflectively I can say getting thrown into the deep end and learning how to do the 'butterfly stroke' was the theme of my first physical education lecturing semester.
At the time I had no formal training in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). My background was primarily in adult based sport and rehabilitation. I had no physical education powerpoints, assignments, test/exam, books, articles, physical education lesson plans for each session, administrative support staff or a formal well-constructed study guide. I had not worked in schools to grasp the day-to-day activities of a physical education teacher in the real world. I had no idea what the South African CAPS document requirements were for physcial education and I had limited knowledge on the different teaching styles at my disposal for children and adult learners. I had no idea that I would need to incorporate large class pedagogy into my lecturing as at the time I had never dealt with large classes when facilitating such a practically orientated module. I had 80 students in 2013. Lastly, I had no mentor in teaching physical education to large classes of adults learners or children.
Consequently the content presented between the years 2013 and 2017 are my own and based on literature findings, personal experience, consultations and practical experience with physical education teachers in lower (see Move-it Moving Matters) and higher socio-economic schools, reviewing online physical education websites, joining the South African University Physical Education Association (SAUPEA) research project, joining the Centre of Teaching, Learning and Media and applying my 'interrogation cycle' to teaching.
The following section highlights the positive and negative experiences of my students in the year 2013. I additionally refer to the why, what and how of my lectures with literature support.
As my teaching strategies included active learning activities such as peer based learning through creating a lesson together but additionally presenting a lesson to peers, a portfolio of evidence to reflect on teaching plans and experiences, creating integrated physical education lesson plans, and sharing the empirical research based benefits of physical education with students, students should have experienced all these benefits as per the literature findings. Additionally ensuring for a positive experience through making movement activities fun by firstly asking students what makes activities fun and then incorporating dance, music, varied movement experiences and use of equipment added to the positive experience. As lesson construction included elements of physical, cognitive, social and emotional development, motor development theory and lesson plan structure; students should have felt equipped to create their own lesson plans. A student reflection which highlights this type of learning can be seen at this hyperlink.
The benefits of incorporating the aforementioned movement activities and educational material facilitated with students' perceptions towards physical education changing.
However, with the positive experiences of the 2013 year students did have negative experiences. Table 3 highlights these experiences.
Whilst you reflect on table 3 you should note six categories of negative experiences namely communication, management/organization/planning, content based, timeous feedback, facilitator training and venue based (outside/far). There were two main reasons for these experiences, namely the large class size and my phase of module development. The large class numbers made it difficult to manage, organize and plan activities, give feedback in a timeous manner, keep up-to-date with content upgrades and train facilitators adequately. Large class ratios in physical education are cited as being barriers to effective teaching. In terms of my novice stage of lecturer development, my own learning curve was at a beginner level and hence keeping up with the pace of work-reflection-upgrade cycle took and immense amount of my time.
Communication barriers included mainly student e-mails being used as apposed to online sharepoints. At this phase of my teaching development I had not yet used the online resources. Additionally I was upgrading content as I was teching as I had no content to start with and hence pre-loading documents for students to follow was not possible.
Content related request that included me demonstrating to students, providing real-life experiences (authentic learning) and scaffolding assignments additionally align with Physical Education Teacher Education literature and education models and theories. Consequently students comments on the need for this type of teaching strategy inclusion could be expected.
Hence based on the aforementioned reflections and literature finding, the upgrades made to the 2014 Physical Education Module are depicted in table 4.
It should be noted that although most students' 2013 needs were use to upgrade 2014 content, no authentic learning experiences at schools could be added as the management of large groups at schools with the necessary trained in-service teachers was not present. Instead videos of movement activities were added and shared on the blended learning moodle site and in lectures. The need for videos is cited in literature by Du Toit & van der Merwe (2011).
To see what happened in 2014 with the upgrades mentioned in table 4, refer to 2014's reflections.
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