The influence of content knowledge on teaching and learning in Traditional and Sport Education contexts: an exploratory study

Background: Our understanding of the role in which content knowledge (CK) can strengthen instructional models and how that knowledge matters for professional development is limited. It is contended that mere use of an instructional model is insufficient to impact psychomotor learning in meaningful ways.

Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate how a teacher's enacted pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) differed as a function of CK and Sport Education (SE), and to investigate the relative contribution of CK and Sport Education on student learning in terms of swimming performance.

Methods: Four intact classes comprising 88 secondary school students (age: 16–17 years) were randomly assigned to a Traditional, an Sport Education, a Traditional-CK, and a SE-CK group. All classes were taught by the same teacher during a 10-day unit of instruction in the front crawl.

Results: Results showed that the teacher's PCK differed as a function of improved CK. For verbal representations, the amount of cues in the Traditional-CK and SE-CK groups increased about sixfold compared to the Traditional and the SE group. For visual representations, more partially incorrect demonstrations were observed than correct demonstrations in the Traditional and the SE group. More mature and developmentally appropriate tasks were observed in the Traditional-CK and the SE-CK group compared to the Traditional and the SE group. Students in the Traditional-CK and SE-CK groups demonstrated a significant reduction of their amount of strokes on 50?m compared to the Traditional group. A significant interaction effect revealed a larger increase in swimming performance in the CK groups compared to the Traditional and the SE group. Finally, students in the SE group swam significantly more laps than their counterparts in the other groups.

Discussion and conclusion: These results show the impact on student learning when CK was added to both Traditional and Sport Education conditions and contribute to the literature for pre- and in-service teachers. The Sport Education model did not contribute to students’ swimming performance. Students in the Traditional and the SE group did not get the same quality of instruction as students in the Traditional-CK and SE-CK conditions. The latter groups received content that was presented differently both as a presentation and in terms of the actual task. In short, students in the Traditional and Sport Education conditions experienced the content differently than those in the Traditional-CK and SE-CK conditions. These instructional differences resulted in students in the Traditional-CK and SE-CK conditions improving their swimming performances in terms of technical efficiency and in terms of 50?m times.     

Development of a performance assessment task and rubric to measure prospective secondary school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills

The purpose of this paper is to share a performance assessment task and rubric designed to assess secondary school mathematics preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills. The assessment task and rubric were developed in collaboration with five education faculty, four arts and sciences faculty, and four high school teachers over a period of one year. Over this period, the group met more than 15 times and designed an assessment task and rubric to measure secondary school preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills. The assessment task and rubric were piloted at the end of the year and extensively revised using the pilot data. The redesigned task and rubric were successfully carried out in the second and subsequent years. Other teacher education programs can benefit from this assessment of teacher candidates’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills.     

Labour perspectives on the new politics of skill and competency formation: International reflections

Skill/competency approaches to workplace-based policy seek to assess and train for discrete individual competencies with the goal of increasing employability and productivity. These approaches have become increasingly prominent across a range of advanced capitalist countries. A substantial critique has emerged over this same period regarding issues of instrumentality and social control, as well as the failure of skill/compentancy approaches to articulate a meaningful understanding of human learning capacities. In this article, these critical perspectives are clarified further by a review of contributions to understanding the skill/competence question emerging from sociology of work literature. Building from these critiques, this article outlines recent experiences with and perspectives on skill/competency frameworks amongst different national labour movements. Included in this outline is a more detailed, comparative analysis of Norway and Canada; here we see the lofty ‘new’, ‘knowledge economy’ rhetoric — in two countries where one might expect to see it blossom in application — brought down to earth by the realities of industrial relations, employer intransigence and intra-labour movement differences. ‘Skill/competence’ proves to be a floating signifier that, amongst both employers and labour, stands as a proxy for ‘power/control’ struggles. Degenerating in this way, from a labour perspective, the new politics of skill/competency formation is seen to have spiraled toward irrelevance in Norway and Canada; awaiting, in both countries, a re-invigoration through attention to changes in the participatory structure of the labour process itself.     

Inter Navex 70 and ICEM Annual General Assembly Olympia,London, July 1970

With respect to films, OFRATEME cooperates with FWU without any true coproduction. For example so far as 16mm films are concerned, the films produced all come within the scope of the free-exchange agreement made either at Council of Europe level or ICEM level. For example for 8mm films, all the producting countries, including France and West Germany, wish to retain ownership of their films, and negotiate the transfer of utilisation rights within the framework of the distribution system.     

Messy but meaningful: exploring the transition to reform-based pedagogy with teachers of mathematics and coordinators in Ontario,Canada

The RE4MUL8 Project involved the creation of an online/mobile resource for Intermediate Division (Grade 7 and 8) teachers of mathematics. This resource showcases video documentaries of seven key mathematics topic lessons (fractions, integers, proportional reasoning, composite shapes and solids, solving equations, and, patterning and algebraic thinking), as delivered by seven teachers in Ontario, Canada who were nominated by their respective District School Boards as being, or becoming, highly effective practitioners in the area of reform-based mathematics education. As part of a qualitative case study research design, these teachers, often along with their math coordinators, were then interviewed following the lesson, and shared reflections on the lesson itself and, more generally, on their ongoing journey towards reform-based mathematics teaching. This paper reports on three major themes that emerged from these discussions, namely, problem-based learning, the reality and necessity of ‘messy time’ transition to reform-based pedagogy, and, balancing instructional planning and practices.     

Not fit for purpose: a call for separate and distinct pedagogies as part of a national framework for those with severe and profound learning difficulties

The introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 caused much discussion (some of it angst‐ridden) among both academics and practitioners working with pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties, and much of the meat (and the angst) of these discussions is still going on today. We argue that 24 years is a long experiment; that despite the best intentions of many, the experiment has failed; it is therefore well past time for separate and distinct pedagogies to be formulated for both severe and profound learning difficulties. Such pedagogies can only exist as part of the current National Curriculum if they are recognised as distinct curriculum models for those with severe and profound learning difficulties.