The Role of Perceived Competence in Determining Teacher Support in Upper Secondary School Physical Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 384-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Laxdal ◽  
Erlingur Johannsson ◽  
Rune Giske
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Gauti Laxdal

The overreaching aim of this thesis was to gain a better understanding of the students’ perceptions of the learning environment in upper secondary school physical education, with special focus on marginalized subgroups. More specifically, the intention was to explore whether students perceived their learning environment differently depending on their teachers’ gender, the learning support they received or the perceived competence they had. Despite the learning environment being a well-researched phenomenon in the more academic school subjects, there was a substantial knowledge gap concerning its influence in physical education. The individual works that form this ensemble aimed to occlude some of those gaps. In an effort to achieve the aforementioned aims, a new instrument measuring teacher learning support in the physical education context was also constructed and validated. The chosen methodology for the thesis was cross-sectional, comprising of a multicomponent self-report questionnaire. The data was analyzed using various analytical tools, including structural modeling analysis and MANCOVA between group comparisons. The participants were 1133 upper secondary school students (Mage = 17.2, SD = 0.86) from Norway (n = 554) and Iceland (n = 579), and 17 Norwegian PE teachers (11 males, 6 females). The sampling of participants was performed using a stratified procedure representing both urban, suburban and rural settlements. Multiple steps were taken to ensure adequate sample representability. The collective results of the individual papers indicate that the current organizational trends in PE are more in line with the needs of the highly competent students, and less so with the needs of the less competent students. This tendency intensifies the differences between these groups and may be one of the primary drivers behind the negative relationship between age and appreciation for the subject. Further, the students do not appear to be self- regulating their learning to the same extent as they are in other subjects, despite the teachers efforts to facilitate the behavior. The cause of this discrepancy likely being PE’s reputation as a recreational subject, underlined by the absence of homework and the playful nature of the lessons. Additionally, the role of the teacher’s gender in influencing the PE experience seems to be exaggerated. Gender matching and positive discrimination of female PE teachers are therefore unlikely to improve the learning environment of female students. The concluding recommendations are multitudinous and include suggestions to all the stakeholders of the subject. They include an appeal to the policymakers to rely more heavily on the body of research when implementing or adjusting policy, a plea to the teaching institutions educating the physical education teachers to emphasize formative teaching practices to a greater extent in their program, in order to promote learning behavior, and a call to the physical education teachers to address the various challenges related to the less interested and less competent students by reducing the benefits of sporting experience and ameliorating the current curriculum implementations by introducing more non-traditional sports and activities.


Author(s):  
Petr Hlaďo ◽  
Jaroslava Dosedlová ◽  
Klára Harvánková ◽  
Petr Novotný ◽  
Jaroslav Gottfried ◽  
...  

Maintaining and promoting teachers’ work ability is essential for increasing productivity and preventing early exit from the teaching profession. This study aimed to identify the predictors of work ability among upper-secondary school teachers and examine the mediating role of burnout. A large and diverse group of Czech upper-secondary school teachers was surveyed to address this goal. The sample comprised 531 upper-secondary school teachers (50.0 ± 9.94 years, 19.9 ± 10.62 in the teaching profession, 57.6% females). Relatively greater empirical support was found for the effects of burnout, sense of coherence, work–life balance, and perceived relationships in the school environment on work ability than for the impact of age, homeroom teacher duties, workload, and caring for elderly relatives. Furthermore, burnout served as an important mediator of the relationship between sense of coherence and work ability. Teachers with a higher sense of coherence are thus better able to cope with adverse work circumstances and identify and mobilize internal and external resources to prevent professional exhaustion and the subsequent decline in work ability. The study can guide interventions on the work ability of teachers.


1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bunting

In this article the author opens up some of the issues involved in teaching composition to individual pupils of the upper Secondary School age range. To do this he studies the work of two boys over two terms in detail, including many of their sketches, and pays particular attention to the role of the boys' teacher. This study leads to some general considerations: syllabus design, the relationships between composing, performing and listening, and methods of assessment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Toni Mäkipää ◽  
Najat Ouakrim-Soivio

The paper addresses Finnish students’ perceptions of assessment practices in upper secondary school. We study what experiences students have about assessment, and how they assess their ability to use and understand teachers’ feedback. The data were gathered on a web-based questionnaire to 918 students in four upper secondary schools. The questionnaire contained both closed-ended and open-ended questions. According to students’ responses, most students consider that they are able to use and understand their teachers’ feedback, and that teachers are prone to apply traditional assessment methods. The results pave the way for enhancing versatility in assessment practices. At the end of this paper, we will discuss the important role of assessment in teaching and how teachers’ assessment literacy could be enhanced and made more visible. We also ponder whether alongside teachers’ assessment literacy we should also consider students’ assessment literacy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uffe Thomas Jankvist ◽  
Morten Misfeldt ◽  
Anders Marcussen

The article discusses three empirical examples of Computer Algebra System (CAS) use in Danish upper secondary school mathematics class with a recent change of teacher. All examples lead to didactical problems surrounding the situation and unclear expectations between teacher and students, involving loss of students’ mathematical skills and confidence, loss of global mathematical perspective, and the students losing sight of the mathematical objects in question. The article is the result of collaboration between two mathematics education researchers and an upper secondary school mathematics teacher, who experienced severe difficulties when taking over a class from another teacher. CAS was experienced as a crucial part of and reason for these difficulties. As a means for investigating the potential reasons behind the difficulties, a selection of constructs from the Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS) is applied. In particular, it is observed that unclear contractual relations about the role of CAS bring with them misguided winning strategies and metacognitive shifts, eventually causing the students to ‘lose the game’.


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