Date of Award

1987

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

This paper describes the planning and interactive decision making used by expert elementary physical education teachers as they developed and taught a 5 day unit on basketball dribbling. Secondly, it explores the relation between teachers' planning productivity (number of statements made) and student achievement. Expert elementary physical education teachers (N = 11) provided information regarding their thought processes during planning and interactive decision making. Planning sessions were conducted prior to each lesson with teachers using the "think aloud" technique. All instructional lessons were videotaped. Following each of the first three lessons, teachers were shown a videotape of the lesson and were interviewed regarding their thoughts and decision making strategies used during teaching. Students' performance on the AAHPERD Control Dribble Test was used as an indicator of achievement. Students were tested prior to and after the 5 day instructional unit. Results indicated that when planning, the dominant focus of expert teachers was the development of activities. Further, activities rather than formal objectives appear to be the basic unit of instruction by which teachers organize the lesson. During teaching expert teachers were primarily concerned with students' performance. Expert teachers appear to use student behavior cues as the major indication to alter the lesson suggesting that antecedents of alternative actions are content and situation specific. In addition, expert teachers used the class as the focal point when adjusting the original teaching plan. Results from the control dribble test indicated that girls and boys improved significantly in their dribbling skill during the 5 day unit. However, the relation between teacher productivity and student achievement was not significant.

Pages

144

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.4400

Share

COinS