What do urban/inner-city physical education teachers teach? A contextual analysis of one elementary/primary school district

Abstract

Background: It is critical to understand the contextual factors in schools that influence teaching behaviours and student learning outcomes. This study uses a contextual framework with four domain areas (personal, instructional, institutional, and societal) to take an in-depth look at urban/inner-city teachers' context and the enacted curriculum. The personal domain includes characteristics of students, parents and teachers. The instructional domain addresses classroom descriptions, content taught and student issues. The institutional domain includes school level variables and finally, the societal domain deals with views on general education issues.

Purpose: To examine how the teaching context of an urban/inner-city school district's elementary/primary physical education program influenced what teachers taught. More contextual information is needed in order to address the additional challenges that urban/inner-city schools face in educating youth.

Participants and setting: Male (n = 24) and Female (n = 23) elementary/primary teachers from an urban/inner-city school in the US. Most teachers reported their ethnic background as African-American or Caucasian.

Research design: A descriptive study aiming to provide urban/inner-city physical education contextual and teaching data from a large school district that had adopted a standard curriculum.

Data collection: An effort was made to recruit all elementary/primary physical education teachers from a large urban/inner-city school district to participate in this study with 52% of teachers recruited. Teachers completed an extensive contextual index reflecting on all content taught from the district's physical education curriculum over the last year for each grade level and other contextual issues.

Data analysis: Descriptive statistics were computed for all items on the contextual index. Repeated measures analysis of variance (RM ANOVA) was used to examine a variety of factors, such as to determine if there was a differential emphasis on content areas, if there were differences in objectives taught (breadth) and lessons taught (depth) across grade levels, and if teachers' profiles (i.e., breadth and depth) differed by teacher characteristics.

Findings: At the Personal domain level, teacher demographics varied from non-urban/inner city contexts. Within the Instructional domain, the content taught differed by teachers' education, gender and ethnic background. The breadth and depth of the content taught varied by the content area (e.g., motor skill) and grade level. Teachers focused more on breadth or depth by content area with older students. The Institutional and Society domains results highlight the difficult conditions urban/inner-city teachers face such as little or no budget and small and shared facilities.

Conclusions: Teachers learning to use a new curriculum may need more training than a one-day in-service. Teachers may also need skill sets for working under difficult workplace conditions and alternative strategies for getting needed support. Finally, the cultural relevance of a curriculum needs to be considered prior to adopting it.

Keywords:

• Exemplary physical education curriculum
• Contextual domains