Beyond the Boundaries of Physical Education by Laker Anthony;

Author:Laker, Anthony; [ANTHONY LAKER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

Teacher attitudes

Generally then, pupils bring a positive attitude to physical education lessons. They tend to enjoy what they do and they value the subject, as do parents. It can reasonably be suggested that pupils with these characteristics should be receptive to the teaching of the lesson content. However, it has been said that there is a mismatch between stated aims and pupils’ beliefs about physical education (Physical Education Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1987; Underwood, 1983, 1988). The teachers’ views of the subject illustrate this mismatch: two main avenues of research into teachers’ perceptions of physical education have been aims, objectives and curriculum content; and occupational socialization into the profession. The former have been discussed earlier, but the latter now requires some attention to elaborate on ‘what teachers bring to lessons’.

Occupational socialization discusses how various factors influence people entering the field of physical education, and how these factors are therefore responsible for their perceptions and actions as teachers (Lawson, 1986). Studies in this area provide detailed analysis of the process (Templin and Schemmp, 1989) and anecdotal descriptions of how teachers react to prolonged exposure to the role of the physical educator (Sikes, 1988). Even after brief exposure in the role, perceptions change. Arrighi and Young (1987) found that preservice and inservice teachers had strong consensual agreement on what factors were important to effective teaching: both groups identified learning time, management, knowledge of skills and safety. However a change that may be attributed to socialization (or confronting reality!) was from student teachers’ concern with pupil learning, to inservice teachers’ concern with self. Part of the reason for these changes in attitude may be the perceived low status of physical education in the hierarchy of school subjects. Hendry (1975) reports that pupils, physical education teachers, colleagues and administrators all viewed the subject as possessing little importance. Sparkes (1987) comments in a similar manner that physical education lacks prestige, wealth (in terms of salaries) and authority (in terms of career positions). In spite of the fact that physical education is a foundation subject in the National Curriculum there was a feeling of ‘marginality’, that is, it was seen as peripheral to the main goals and functioning of the organization.

Teachers’ views of pupils have received some investigation. Hendry and Welsh (1981) revealed that teachers had different attitudes towards participants and non-participants. The most favourable attitudes were towards participants in extracurricular sports, and competitive pupils were viewed as having many positive characteristics. Surprisingly, Placek (1983) found that student learning was not of much concern to the teachers. Teachers most frequently had concerns for student enjoyment, participation and misbehaviour. In this way Placek characterized physical education teachers as defining teaching situations in terms of keeping students ‘busy, happy, and good’ (1983: 49).

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