Preservice Teachers' Skill Ability and Their Teaching Volleyball Lessons

Thursday, March 18, 2010: 10:05 AM
109 (Convention Center)
Shannon Boehner, Kristin Hendricks, Kelsi Archibald and Weiyun Chen, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Background/Purpose

As a part of the large-scale study, this presentation will focus on describing to what degree pre-service teachers' skill ability affected their task design, instructions, management, and responses in a volleyball unit.

Method

Thirteen Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) students who enrolled in the secondary methods course voluntarily participated in this study. In the volleyball unit, the participants initially participated in five lesson activities modeled by the course instructor to learn essential volleyball skills, tactics, and game rules and how to teach sequential volleyball lessons at the secondary level. Afterwards, the participants played a 20-minute regular game, which was videotaped. Then, each participant team or individually taught their peers a 30 to 50-minute lesson, which was also videotaped. Quantitative data included two investigators' individually coding each participant's game performance with the Assessing Volleyball Game Performance Competency Rubrics (AVGPCR) and seven videotaped lessons with the Teaching Quality Assessment Rubrics (AQAR). Qualitative data consisted of (a) writing each participant's salient teaching characteristics after coding each lesson, (b) formally interviewing the participants using semi-structured interview questions and transcribing the interviews, and (c) collecting the participants' artifacts.

Analysis/Results

The mean of the total volleyball game performance index was calculated to classify seven participants into the high-game performance group and seven into the low group. Second, the results of the MANOVA indicated that the high-game performance participants' mean scores on instructions and responses were significantly higher than their counterparts' (F=5.28, p<.05; F=17.24, p<.01), but not on task design and management. Analysis of the qualitative data confirmed that the participants with high skill ability were more likely to present a task using game scenarios, use whole and step-by-step demonstrations based on the complexity of the task, and provide accurate and appropriate learning cues than their counterparts. They addressed the key points of the task to facilitate quality practice when needed and provided adequate positive and performance-related feedback. In contrast, the participants with low skill ability sometimes missed demonstration of the actual drill though they demonstrated proper forms of a skill with related learning cues. They barely re-emphasized the key elements of the task and provided little feedback specific to an individual's performance. The participants in both groups designed developmentally and progressive tasks and smoothly organized the class activities.

Conclusions

Although the participants demonstrated effective teaching on task design and management, the high-skill ability group was more effective at instructions and responses than the low-skill ability

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