Cognition and Understanding of Learning Domain Goals

Background/Purpose: Psychomotor, cognitive, and affective goals are a focus of physical education (PE). While it is often the teacher’s intention to impart learning goals in all three domains, how teachers impart, and the way students understand, these goals might differ (Dyson, 1995; Hopple & Graham, 1995).  Students can have different cognitive processes to teachers’ instruction (Dodds, 1977). To examine both teacher and student cognition the theoretical framework of cognitive mediation was used, focusing on instruction in the three educational domains, and student cognition regarding that instruction (Lee & Solmon, 1992). The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service instruction of the goals in the different domains during PE lessons, and student identification of those goals. If learning is to take place, it is essential that these goals be clearly understood by students (Rink, 2002).

Method: The method was piloted and IRB cleared.  Four pre-service teachers, were observed instructing lessons to sixth grade students. Lesson plans, interview and observation data were collected during eight lessons taught by four pre-service teachers.  To understand student cognition two students from each teaching group, eight in total, were interviewed following the lessons regarding their perceptions of the goals for each lesson. Stimulated recall (Calderhead, 2011) was used in order to assist students in remembering what the teachers said and the lesson activities. All data were transcribed and entered into N-Vivo 10 and were analyzed for emergence of patterns and themes using the constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Member checking, triangulation, and peer reviewing were used to strengthen the trustworthiness and credibility of the findings.

Analysis/Results: Three major themes emerged. First, when goals were related to sport skills or game play in the psychomotor domain, the pre-service teachers described the goals, and the students identified the goals of the lesson. Second, goals in the cognitive domain were clear to the pre-service teachers and were described in detail, however were rarely identified by the students. Third, affective goals were described by the teacher, but were not connected in specific ways to the activities and not a focus during the lessons and therefore students were unable to describe or connect affective goals to specific activities. 

Conclusions:

Data indicated that teacher education programs should provide pre-service teachers with specific instruction in how to develop appropriate objectives in all domains, specifically focusing on the affective and cognitive domains as prospective teachers have difficulty imparting these goals to their students.