Assessing the Influence of NASPE/NCATE Accreditation on PETE

Background/Purpose: The National Association for Sports and Physical Education (NASPE) developed a new version of National Standards for Beginning Physical Education Teachers (NASPE, 2008), and these standards have provided the framework for NASPE/NCATE accreditation of programs (Senne & Lund, 2012; Bolton, 2008). It is necessary to know the influence of accreditation on Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). The primary purpose of this research was to specifically examine: (a) faculties’ perception to initial standards; (b) influence was perceived by faculties when prepare accreditation report; (c) influence was put on PETE students in the process of using standards from faculties’ view; (d) efforts has been done by faculties when fully achieving standards’ requirements.

Method: Data were collected via a qualitative investigation. Approximately 30 PETE program faculties were contacted via e-mail, and 7 faculties from 6 institutions responded with complete. These 6 institutions distributed at Research Universities (2), Doctorate-Granting Universities (2) and Comprehensive Institutions (2) respectively.

Analysis/Results: (a) Participants value the initial standards equally. Standards can bring positive impacts which provide a uniform framework for guiding program develop, course design and teaching methods choose; keep philosophy consistent with National K-12 and state standards. Negative impacts were also existed especially little room for innovation; (b) Preparing accreditation report is really time-consuming, but faculties have to do because of responsibility. They have experienced positive experience included opportunities conversation with peers, know more about the program’s strength and weakness, more cooperation and supportive, form a community of practice; negative experience included lack of opportunities to interact with program reviewers, limited support from dean, limited resources and time. (c) From perspective of faculties, there were very few benefits for PETE students. No significant improvement can be found in students pre-post accreditation. Students from accredited program were not more marketable during job search process. (d) Faculties faced lots of constraints in the process of accreditation, such as hard to find correct key assessments. Aiming to overcome the difficulties, some efforts has been done in terms of modified the assignments, integrated more different experiences into courses, increased faculty meeting and communication, adjusted the instruction and course content, more knowledgeable about the standards.

Conclusions: NASPE/NCATE accreditation can bring positive and negative outcomes, time-consuming probably is biggest constraint in accreditation. PETE program students may not get benefits as expected. Suggestions were given that NASPE/NCATE should play more attention to students gain rather than a passed-examination game.