Background/Purpose
Numerous studies report reasons new teachers feel overwhelmed during their first years of teaching. Such feelings are linked to their school environments and characterized by poor administrative support, difficult teaching loads, feeling powerless and isolated, and conflicts with colleagues (McCormack & Thomas, 2003a; Liston, Whitcomb, & Borko, 2006; Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). In physical education, additional issues reported in the literature include the low status of the subject matter and a lack of respect given to physical education by members of the school community (McCormack & Thomas, 2003b; Schempp, Sparkes, & Templin, 1993). According to Feiman-Nemser (2001), new teachers must undertake two jobs of having to teach and learning to teach. The purpose of this study is to determine the challenges in teaching and learning to teach faced by 20 first year physical education teachers.
Method
From school-year 2006 to 2008, all first year physical education teachers in a southeast suburban school district were asked to participate. Twenty agreed, 11 were at the secondary level, and nine at the elementary level; nine were females, and 17 were Caucasians. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted toward the end of the school year. All participants provided written consent to have interviews audio-taped.
Analysis/Results
Open coding was applied to sorting and categorizing interview data. Both researchers independently determined major categories, subcategories, and relationships among categories across the data. Constant comparison identified negative cases and variations among cases (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Results from each researcher's analysis were compared and discussed until agreement was reached. Four themes were identified: curriculum decision making, motivating students, assessment, and management. The framework, Central Tasks of Learning to Teach, developed by Feiman-Nemser (2001) was used to describe and discuss the themes. These teachers' school contexts greatly impacted their learning to teach. Contexts included co-workers, the established curriculum and management systems, class sizes, and diversity of populations. Overall, these teachers addressed successes and challenges encountered in their first year, and stated specific strategies for overcoming these challenges in their second year.
Conclusions
During their first year of induction, new physical education teachers were faced with the challenges of teaching and learning to teach. These teachers experienced first-hand the induction tasks identified by Feiman-Nemser (2001) that included learning the context, developing approaches to curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and growing a professional identity. The goals identified by these soon-to-be second year teachers were also consistent with Feiman-Nemser's framework.