Sport pedagogy researchers have continued to lament and document the lack of content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) with which pre-service teachers enter and leave PETE (Byra, 2009; You, 2011) and with which some in-service PE teachers continue to teach physical education classes (Rink, 2007; Siedentop, 2009; Ward, 2009). The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ perceptions of the influence of a professional development program on acquisition of content knowledge and development of pedagogical content knowledge of a novel activity.
Method:
The participants were two middle school physical education teachers (male and female) who initially had limited knowledge of badminton. Each teacher taught four 6-lesson units of badminton to different classes, two prior to professional development workshop and two thereafter. The units were taught to 6th, 7th, and 8thgrade classes (average class size = 20) with each lesson lasting 50 minutes.
Professional development program followed Ward’s (2009) model of CK/PCK development and focused on: (a) knowledge of the etiquette and rules of badminton; (b) knowledge of techniques and tactics; (c) knowledge of skill discrimination to enable error detection in student performances; and (d) knowledge of tasks to rectify errors in student performances. The program included a two-day badminton workshop with the follow up on-site visits, observations and de-briefings with the expert.
Data were collected from critical incident reports after each teaching episode (48), two semi-structured formal interviews, document analysis of unit and lesson plans, and field notes from observations.
Analysis/Results:
Thematic analysis was used to analyze data. Member checks and data triangulation were performed to strengthen the findings. The identified key themes were as follows: difficulty acquiring CK and PCK without adequate time playing/executing sport specific skills; observations of instructional videos of correct skill executions had an impact on CK; error detection, metaphors and sample tasks contributed to PCK development; a higher level of CK and PCK increased number and appropriateness of extending and refining tasks.
Conclusions:
The results of this study supported previous research about contextual nature of PCK and provided further empirical evidence of how CK and PCK can be effectively acquired. A greater knowledge of CK and PCK seems critical for the development of more appropriate lessons. However, a number of factors in this study both enhanced and negated the acquisition of CK and PCK. An on-going support during professional development efforts seems to enhance the acquisition of CK and PCK.