Since Mosston introduced the Spectrum of Teaching Styles (STSs) to the field of teaching physical education (PE) 49 years have passed. Nowadays, many PE teachers and researchers around the world have adopted this theoretical framework as their guidelines for instruction, research, and developing teacher education programs (Zeng, 2013). Mosston’s STSs have been recognized as a solid, unified, and universal theory for teaching around the world (Ashworth, 2008). This study aim at: examining the status of perceiving and implementing the STSs between men and women, undergraduates and graduates pre-service teachers (PTs); releasing the differences regarding perceiving and implementing STSs among the PTs, and providing meaningful information and recommendations for the physical education teacher education (PETE) professionals to prepare their PTs become more skillful teachers.
Method:
Participants were 142 PTs (96 men, 46 women or 84 undergraduates and 58 graduates) who enrolled in a STSs based teaching strategies course in a PETE program in recent years. A ‘Self report survey’ using Ashworth’s STSs Inventory-adapted version (STSI-AV, Zeng, 2012) was administered to the participants after all the course works / training programs were completed. The STSI-AV is comprised of descriptions for nine different STSs with three statements for each style: 1) “I have used this style to teach”; 2) “I think this style would help students’ learning”; 3) “I think this style would motivate students to learn”. Participants can choose: ‘never-use/strongly-disagree’, ‘seldom-use/some-disagree’, ‘sometimes-use/okay’, ‘often-use/some-agree’, or ‘always-use/strongly agree’ options (score 1-5). Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test were employed for data analyses.
Analysis/Results:
Analysis/Results included: on statement 1, participants scored 3.00 or higher on Command, Practice, Reciprocal, and Inclusion Styles; scored 2.40 or less on Self-Check, Convergent-Discovery, Divergent-Production, Guide-Discovery, and Learner-Designed Individual-Program Styles. On statement 2, participants scored 3.50 and higher on Command, Practice, Reciprocal, Inclusion, Guide-Discovery, Convergent-Discovery, and Divergent-Production Styles. For statement 3, participants scored above 3.00 on all styles. The mean score comparison on the STSI-AV released: men used significantly more (p <.05) Practice Style than women; women used significantly more (p <.05) Command Style than men. Graduates used significantly more (p <.00) Guide-Discovery Style and Divergent-Production Style than those of undergraduates.
Conclusions:
In conclusion, men favor Practice and Guide-Discovery styles, while women prefer Command and Convergent-Discovery styles; graduates use more Guide-Discovery and Divergent-Production Styles than that of undergraduates. The findings provided quantitative data from a PETE program in perceiving and implementing the STSs; much detail and reasoning behind those findings were discussed.