Operationalizing physical literacy through sport education in a university physical education program

ABSTRACT

Background

Sport Education (SE: Siedentop, D., P. A. Hastie, and H. Van der Mars. 2019. Complete Guide to Sport Education. 3rd ed. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics) is a pedagogical model that has been espoused to develop physically literate students through more authentic sports experiences in physical education (Hastie, P. A., and T. Wallhead. 2015. “Operationalizing Physical Literacy Through Sport Education.” Journal of Sport and Health Science 4 (2): 132–138). Despite this proposition, there remains a void of research that has examined how in-service teachers operationalize physical literacy (PL) within their delivery of SE. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perspectives of university physical education lecturers in attempting to operationalize PL outcomes through the implementation of the student-centered features of SE.

Method

Guided by a grounded theory constructivist approach, qualitative data were collected from lecturers through interviews following a SE continuing professional development (CPD) program that included a 12-hour workshop, staff development meetings, development of SE season plans, and the implementation of a 10-week SE curriculum intervention. Themes of lecturer perceptions of student PL and SE implementation were developed by open, axial, and selective coding techniques using a co-occurrence and c-coefficients table developed within the ATLAS.ti software. Trustworthiness criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability were adopted throughout the data collection and analysis procedures (Shenton, A. K. 2004. “Strategies for Ensuring Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research Projects.” Education for Information 22 (2): 63–75).

Findings

The generated themes included lecturer recognition of the potential of SE in developing students’ PL within the constraints of contextual and pedagogical issues relating to the implementation of some of the student-centered features of the model. A teacher typology of insistency, consideration, and transformation described the lecturers’ receptivity to adopting and delivering these key features of SE. Lecturer resistance to pedagogical change may offset the positive influence of the model on students’ PL.

Conclusion

The findings of the study lend support to the proposition that the CPD program of student-centered pedagogical models, such as SE can manifest growth in the development of key attributes of student PL. Further efforts are required to design CPD experiences that consider the contextual challenges that can arise when teachers are asked to construct a significant pedagogical shift towards a student-centered approach and the prioritization of more holistic PL outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical literacy
• sport education
• university physical education
• continuing professional development
• qualitative research

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from The Chinese University of Hong Kong under the Teaching Development and Language Enhancement Grant (4170558).