A major goal for teacher educators is to help pre-service teachers (PTs) understand the teaching process as teachers instead of as students (Hare, 2002). Teacher educators can facilitate PTs acquisition of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by providing experiential learning field experiences that allow interaction with and observation of children learning particular content. Teaching with an environmental design approach, which is different from direction instruction, requires PTs to understand the impact of the individual-task-environment interactions on movement performance and to accept that not all teaching is “telling”. The purpose of this study is to describe PTs perceptions of environmental design as an effective teaching approach. Twenty-two PTs were asked to imitate Sweeting and Rink's (1999) experiment by teaching the standing long jump using direct instruction and environmental design. Half of the PTs taught 2nd graders and half taught 7th and 8th graders. Each PT wrote a post-teaching reflection paper and then was interviewed about the effectiveness of the two approaches. The themes that emerged from the categorical analysis of interview data revolved around PTs' perception of their ability to manage and motivate students and to change their movement patterns and outcomes. PTs who taught intrinsically motivated 2nd graders saw how use of a task constraint (barrier and a swamp) elicited a tucking movement and a higher takeoff trajectory and how the figurative scenario motivated the students. However, PTs were very uncomfortable relinquishing control (i.e., not being able to “tell” or provide corrective statements) due to students “play-like” behavior and lack of focus on the objectives. On the other hand, PTs who taught 7th and 8th graders reported that the task constraint (barrier and swamp) created a competitive yet encouraging motivational climate. They saw how task constraints interacted with environmental (social climate) and individual structural constraints (student weight and athletic ability).They also reported more positive comments about environmental design despite their penchant for the direct approach. Overall, both groups noticed the ability of the task constraint to change both product and process characteristics of the long jump but had different experiences based the management and motivation of the students. Experiential learning can be a positive way for PTs to acquire the necessary PCK to consider environmental design as a viable teaching option. The information obtained from this study can help teacher educators' facilitate PTs' shifts to appropriate teaching conceptions.Keyword(s): . NA