Essay on Physical Education Teacher

Practices of physical activity among South African school learners are reported to be insufficient to promote health and prevent chronic diseases. South Africa’s 2014 Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth indicates that less than 50% of learners (6 - 18 years) meet the recommended amount of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) a day. Low physical activity levels are partly accountable for the obesity epidemic that threatens the wellness of the SA population and the country's economy. When it comes to physical education, we critically examine and rationalize teaching pedagogy concerning teaching approaches and styles, curriculum approaches, teacher’s value orientations, knowledge bases, pedagogy, and reflection.

According to Daniel, teaching styles are the teaching methods and strategies employed and the use of certain kinds of rhetoric while an approach is a way of looking at teaching and learning, especially the theoretical part of physical education. There are seven teaching styles, that a physical educator could use, which are command, practice, reciprocal, task, guided discovery, problem-solving & exploration. Command is the teacher-directed style and this is whereby the teacher will give a demonstration of the expected performance, as well as emphasize and explain specific important points of the movement it includes examples such as dancing.

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Mosston further claims that practice is one of the most common teaching strategies used in physical education. It is similar to the command style in a way that the teacher is the primary decision maker, and the task will also start with a demonstration and description of what is to be achieved. Demonstration may also come from students or audio-visual aids then students will practice either in groups or on their own as the teacher observes. The only difference between the two styles is that practice does not permit some decision-making made by students for instance, students may decide where they will practice and if they will be working with, or without, a partner.

Compared to the practice and command styles reciprocal style allows more decision-making by the students. In this style, the teacher develops a reciprocal task sheet, which describes the task to be performed, and points out what the observer should be looking for to see if the performer is executing the task properly. Students are responsible for observing one another and providing feedback. The task has the teacher deciding the content of what will be taught, however, it allows the students some decision-making and provides them with the chance to work at their own pace. The teacher designs an arrangement of tasks leading up to the unit outcomes. The tasks are then broken down into a group of activities.

The guided discovery approach continues to use teachers-designed movement tasks, in a way that allows students to make individual decisions about how to move. In other words, the teacher defines the intended outcome of the movement response but does not determine how it will be attained. The problem-solving is similar to guided discovery except that in guided discovery the is only one proper way of performing the final movement/task while with the problem-solving approach, several solutions can be the results. An exploration is a student-centered approach. With this style students are allowed to move as freely as they want while they are staying within the limits of safety The style is similar to that of problem-solving, except the students are exploring the movements in a less restrictive and more natural environment with much less teacher direction (Nichols, 1994)

An approach to curriculum reflects an individual’s view of the world, including what happens in the real life of that person, values, that are considered important, and the knowledge, he or she has. When it comes to physical education there are two important approaches namely behaviorism and humanistic approach. In physical education, learners with disabilities or behavior ranging from severe to mild can be taught through the humanistic approach, whereby humanism is applied to the skill of acquisition and the management of social behaviors. Teachers should strive to emphasize cooperation and social interaction rather than individual performance and stress the importance of genuineness and honesty in praise for improving self-concept with the population.

Students with severe behavioral disorders require intense programming efforts. This group includes students who are self-indulgent, aggressive, noncompliant, and self-stimulatory or self-destructive Self-indulgent behavior. Behaviors in this category include crying, screaming, throwing tantrums, and performing repetitive, irritating activities or making noises. The rule of thumb for handling students who engage in self-indulgent behaviors is to ignore them until the behavior is discontinued and then socially reinforce the first occurrence of appropriate behavior. For example, one would ignore children's tantrums when they cannot control a play situation with classmates but reinforce with social praise their initial attempts to play cooperatively.

Value orientation refers to the principles of wrong and right a social group or an individual accepts that. Beliefs and values developed through years of socialization because of experiencing PE as pupils are labeled an ‘apprenticeship of observation’. Suggested experiences of PE throughout the school years play a powerful role in the formation of beliefs about teaching PE and are used by (student) PE teachers to make sense of teaching and ultimately negotiate the teaching role. Because of their prior socialization, many students enter a PE initial teacher education (ITE) course with strong, preconceived, and firmly entrenched ideas, beliefs, and values about teaching and pupil learning on which they model their practice. In England at least, ‘many teachers come to PE teaching, as a career, with a built-in commitment to sport and an intuitive conviction regarding its inherent worth’.

However, teachers are seldom aware of the beliefs and values they hold. If values and beliefs are not made, explicit it is difficult for student PE teachers and teacher educators to understand their impact on student teachers’ learning, their teaching behaviors, practice, and the curriculum. Values and beliefs need to be made explicit to enable them to be challenged. According to several researchers challenging student teachers to reflect on their beliefs and how these affect their teaching behavior and practices may result in a change in their beliefs, which, in turn, may influence teaching behaviors and practice.

There are many ways in which the term pedagogy can be used within PE – to some, pedagogy equates to teaching PE. For others, it is synonymous with instruction. This slippage or lack of conceptual clarity is at times confusing and makes definitive distinctions between these terms difficult. Dictionaries (for example, Oxford English Dictionary) give a clear and useful definition of pedagogy – ‘the art or science of teaching’. Most of what teachers do produces pedagogical work relating to three interrelated dimensions; physical activity, bodies, and health. For example, when teachers do pedagogy for physical activity, it inevitably does pedagogical work on the body. Kids learn about their bodies (what they can and cannot do) in part through their learning of physical activities that form part of school PE.

Physical education in schools is a disaster, and although the causes for these disasters are many, PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHER’S EDUCATION present knowledge base contributes to it because it does not develop teachers to be transformative agents. School physical education is in deep crisis, and although it still exists, many now seriously doubt its existence. The reasons for its state are complex and many, coming from myriad of social, political, and economic factors within communities and institutions. Moreover, it could be argued that the lack of appropriate preparation of teachers also contributes to this crisis. Although the knowledge-based prospective physical educators presently receive does not allow them to fit in schools and transmit their subject matter effectively, it also ranks them as unskilled workers (Fernández-Balboa J, 2012).

Teachers are prepared to become reflective practitioners, as well as to become proficient in the technical skills of teaching, which is increasingly the focus of many teacher education programs (Goodman, 1991; Valli, 1992). The development of reflection is recommended in the National Standards for Beginning Physical Education Teachers (National Association for Sport and Physical Education [NASPE], 1995), which suggests that the teacher becomes a reflective practitioner who can evaluate the effects of his or her actions on others. In addition, a beginning educator of physical education should have knowledge of a variety of self-assessment and problem-solving strategies for reflecting on practice and its influences on learning' (NASPE, p. 16). The NASPE/NCATE Guidelines for Teacher Preparation in Physical Education further support the development and facilitation of reflective thought by challenging PETE programs to prepare prospective teachers to consistently demonstrate the use of a reflective cycle by describing, justifying, and critiquing teaching performances; to set personal teaching goals; and to implement change in the teaching/learning environment (NASPE, 2001). Pedagogical strategies that are different can be used to enhance preservice teachers' (PTs') reflectivity. They include the use of metaphors (Carlso2001).

In conclusion, I see theory as important as practice and therefore teaching time should be allocated equally to both theory and practice, but that is not what happens to our public schools. Teachers pay much more attention to theory in class and consider the practice time less important and as time for playing. Therefore I think pedagogy in physical education is very important because it provides teachers with skills to teach and approaches to work on while the teaching styles make teaching fun for learners.

Reference list

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