Backward-designed curriculum (Wiggins &McTighe, 2005)is a three-stage approach to curriculum design consisting of determining the desired results, acceptable evidence, and the instruction to bring about the desired results.Trust is a core psychological and interpersonal issue in Korean education. Trust building activities in physical education help students to develop mutual respect, openness, understanding, and empathy, as well as to develop communication and teamwork skills. The purposes of this study were (1) to develop PE lessons to build trust using backward curriculum design, and (2) to examine the effectiveness of the lesson.
Method:
Participants were tenth graders (N=379, M=213, F=166). Students participated in various trust-building activities such as trust fall (e.g., a person falling backwards from table height into the arms and hands of the group; . each group member can opt to take a turn as faller), trust lean (e.g., in pairs of similar size, one person becomes a Faller and one the Catcher), blind walk (e.g., a group is blindfolded and linked together - holding the hand of someone next to them and the shoulder of the person in front; the group is then lead on a walk)as learning experience. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data after 10class periods. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Woods, Priest & Roberts, 2002).
Analysis/Results:
The results of this study showed that students reported that the learning experiences were (1) fun and enjoyable (e.g., ”I had a lot of fun with TF and it’s an enjoyable activity”), (2)challenging (e.g., “Challenge and courage was surely needed because falling down backwards provoked fear”), (3) effective (e.g., “I built up trust because I must trust friends whenever I fall down backwards,” “ I know somebody will lead us to the spot”). Backward-designed curriculum class activities were effective because students developed a sense of (1) trusting themselves (e.g., “I did it and I feel like I am a new person even though I did not like the activities at first”), (2) trusting friends (e.g., “I have got more friends than ever before, and trusted them all strongly during the activities”), (3) trusting the group (e.g., “I thank you for the PE teacher that I can work with nice group I can trust”).
Conclusions:
Results of this study suggested that backward curriculum design was effective in trust-building activities in physical education. Recommendations for using backward-designed curriculum in PE were provided.