Preservice teachers’ enacted pedagogical content knowledge as a function of content knowledge in teaching elementary physical education content

ABSTRACT

Background

Over the past decade, there has been empirical evidence that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) represented by teachers’ observable and measurable teaching behaviors can be enhanced by a well-designed content knowledge intervention which has differentiated between effective and ineffective teaching in physical education [Iserbyt, P., R. Coolkens, J. Loockx, K. Vanluyten, J. Martens, and P. Ward. 2020. “Task Adaptations as a Function of Content Knowledge: A Functional Analysis.” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. doi:10.1080/02701367.2019.1687809; Kim, I., P. Ward, O. Sinelikov, B. Ko, P. Iserbyt, W. Li, and M. Curtner-Smith. 2018. “The Influence of Content Knowledge on Pedagogical Content Knowledge: An Evidence-based Practice for Physical Education.” Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 37 (2): 1–35. doi:10.1123/jtpe.2017-0168]. However, little research has been conducted to examine how preservice teachers’ PCK develops and how their PCK behaviors differ as a function of content knowledge developed through physical education teacher education (PETE). There is a need to unpack initial levels of PCK enacted by preservice teachers, which reveal their understanding of the content, students, and context before exiting their physical education teacher education (PETE) programs.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine how preservice teachers’ enacted PCK defined as task selections, task representations, and task adaptations and use of instructional tasks differ as a function of content knowledge (CK) developed through their elementary physical education content course.

Method

Twenty-one preservice teachers enrolled in the elementary physical education content course participated in this study. The participants’ three CK levels (i.e. high-, medium-, and low-CK) were identified from the results of CK tests for the course requirement and used as an independent variable. Using the videotaped preservice teachers’ self-selected teaching exemplars (N = 36) that demonstrate the best teaching performances in teaching elementary content, the three enacted PCK and the use of instructional tasks were directly measured. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for the data analysis.

Results

The MANOVA results showed that there were statistically significant differences between the three groups in the three PCK variables (p = .002) and the use of instructional tasks (p = .003). The results of the study indicated that the preservice teachers with strong CK were able to demonstrate mature forms of enacted PCK and implement more instructional tasks to refine and apply the tasks within a lesson than those who possessed weak CK in teaching elementary content.

Conclusions

This study provides significant evidence to support the essential role of strong CK and its impact on the initial PCK development and the use of instructional tasks in teaching elementary content in PETE.

KEYWORDS:

• Effective teaching
• quality instruction
• instructional tasks
• elementary teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).