Method: A month of observations, for the entire school day, in one Northeastern high school observed three high school physical education teachers. Tools used in the study are: Quality Measures of Teaching Performance Scale (QMTPS) was taken three times for each participant that measured teaching effectiveness, Teaching Efficacy Scale for Physical Education (TESPE) that measured teaching efficacy, Attitudes Survey Towards Curriculum in Physical Education (ASTCPE) that measured teachers’ view of ideal curriculum, three forty-five minute interviews, an access of one hundred informal interviews, observation of the each individual physical education teacher for two fifty minute blocks, and field notes.
Analysis/Results: Findings reveal (a) misconception of curricular choice (b) high teaching efficacy despite practice not being congruent (c) low teaching effectiveness (d) misconception of the teaching career cycle the teachers were in (e) high collective teaching efficacy for the physical education program. In addition, teachers believed they were truly effective teachers however; their definition of effective teaching is not the same as physical education literature.
Conclusions: The research draws upon the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a theory not yet discussed in physical education literature, that states the highest 25% in a skill underestimates their performance while the lowest 25% overestimate their performance. These finding are significant because (a) teachers were over confident in their teaching abilities and were not aware of the lack of learning occurring in the classroom (b) teachers identified themselves as a department that had an effective physical education program (c) the study shows a variance in the definition of teaching effectiveness that each teacher had and these definitions did not align itself with theory of teaching physical education effectiveness.