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Purpose: Social media has become a popular platform for forming professional learning communities (PLCs) for educators. However, few studies have been conducted to understand physical educators’ behaviors in these social media-based PLCs. This study aimed to investigate physical educators’ help-seeking behaviors in a social media-based PLC on Facebook. Method: A case study was conducted to explore physical educators’ help-seeking behaviors. A total of 4,323 posts were collected and analyzed using content analysis procedures. Both descriptive and qualitative analyses were performed. Findings: More than half (51.45%) of posts published in this Facebook PLC aimed to seek help. Six themes reflecting the types of help that physical educators sought were generated: teaching ideas and materials, equipment and technology, classroom management and discipline, extracurricular event and program development, career and professional development, and social and emotional support. Conclusion: The findings suggest that social media-based PLCs can provide physical educators at all levels opportunities to seek help.

The purpose of this study was to create a valid and reliable volleyball common content knowledge (VB-CCK) test in secondary physical education contexts in the United States. Two physical education teacher educators served as content experts and developed test items for the VB-CCK test. We then established content validity with a group of inservice teachers and determined face validity with preservice teachers. The Rasch model was used in data analysis. The standardized residual contrasts for the items loaded in the range of -.4 to .4, confirming the test was unidimensional and measured VB-CCK. Both infit mean-square residuals and outfit mean-square residuals were within the criterion range of .5 to 1.5 (infit = .8 to 1.1; outfit = .8 to 1.5), which showed the range of the question difficulties matched the respondents’ knowledge levels. The item separation index was 3.46 (reliability = .92; an excellent level) and the person separation index was 1.55 (reliability = .71; an acceptable level). The results provided evidence of the range of question difficulties and respondents’ knowledge levels. The Wright Map added additional evidence that the 40 questions were well distributed from easy to difficult levels and could discriminate different knowledge levels of preservice teachers’ VB-CCK. The study was successful in developing a valid and reliable instrument for PETE programs to assess secondary VB-CCK of their preservice teachers. We propose future CCK studies for both elementary content and secondary content.

Background: Teacher education is a complex endeavor designed to prepare preservice teachers for the task of teaching physical education to students in K–12 schools. Yet, there is widespread criticism of teacher education outcomes within the United States and around the world. Consequently, teacher educators have been increasingly called upon to use evidence-based approaches in teacher education. Purpose: In this article, we discuss a teacher education reform called practice-based teacher education from macro and micro perspectives. Discussion: Practice-based teacher education emphasizes a curriculum that is focused on relevance defined in terms of what a teacher needs to know and do to be able to teach physical education. Evidence for curricular changes to physical education teacher education and to the content and pedagogies of methods and content classes are presented. We conclude with a discussion of how practice-based teacher education can address social injustice.

Purpose: Practice-based teacher education (PBTE) has been proposed as an approach to combat forms of teacher education that create prescriptive understandings of teaching that are disconnected from practice. In physical education, PBTE is becoming more prevalent. Some have argued that many of its elements have been in use for some time, whereas other elements have been refined or are new. In this study, we were motivated to examine the use of PBTE by physical education teacher educators and their perceptions of PBTE. Method: Participants were nine teacher educators from the United States (n = 6), Turkey (n = 2), and Belgium (n = 1). Surveys were used to gather data on the use of PBTE and the perceptions of teacher educators. Data describing the use of PBTE in their programs were descriptively analyzed. Our perceptions were interpreted using an intrinsic case study with PBTE serving as the case. Findings: Programs adopted similar and different elements of PBTE. Four themes emerged relative to the perceptions of teacher educators about PBTE: (a) how the context of the teacher educator influences their use of PBTE, (b) teacher educators’ use of PBTE, (c) the advantages of using PBTE, and (d) a critical analysis of PBTE. Conclusion: Our approach to operationalizing PBTE may help encourage useful conversations in physical education teacher education.

Purpose: This study had two purposes. One purpose was to explore preservice physical education teachers’ development of adaptive competence in six core practices during planning and teaching in physical education. The second purpose was to understand how rehearsals and repeated teaching as two pedagogies of practice-based teacher education were perceived by preservice teachers in their development of adaptive competence. Methods: This was a mixed-methods study using descriptive analysis to analyze data collected from lesson plans and a collective case study to analyze semistructured interviews. Findings: Preservice teachers made the most adaptations in the core practices of coordinating and adjusting instruction, establishing rules and routines, and providing precise instruction. Rehearsals and repeated teaching were perceived as effective strategies to facilitate the development of adaptive competence in teaching. Conclusions: Findings are discussed in terms of three contemporary teacher education conceptualizations: (a) adaptive competence, (b) core practices in physical education, and (c) practice-based teacher education pedagogies.

The purpose of this article is to present a content map and sequenced learning tasks to teach tennis footwork techniques in a physical education setting.

This article, as a practical guide, introduces pedagogical strategies to PETE faculty on how to teach PETE students to develop quality instructional objectives. Specifically, this article presents ...

Purpose: This study was to examine the effects of a curricular model named Situated Game Teaching through Set Plays (SGTSP) on secondary students’ tactical knowledge in a 10-lesson soccer unit. Methods: A quasi-experimental design with a repeated measure was used to examine the effectiveness of the SGTSP model in comparison with a technique-focused approach. Participants’ perceptions of SGTSP were collected through reflection journals throughout the unit. A convenient sample of 27 sixth graders from two classes participated in this study. Data were collected from a tactical knowledge test and reflection journals. A 3 × 2 × 2 factorial analysis of variance with a repeated measure was conducted to analyze the data. Responses to reflection journals were analyzed by deductive analysis and constant comparison. Results: Participants’ tactical knowledge in the SGTSP condition improved significantly more than those in the comparison condition over time. Conclusions: The findings provided evidence supporting the effectiveness of the SGTSP model on developing students’ tactical knowledge as compared to a technique-focused approach.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine how preservice teachers (PSTs) developed their adaptive competence in lesson planning through repeated rehearsals and reflections in an online learning environment. Methods: A case study design utilizing descriptive analysis was used to analyze data collected from a series of lesson plan iterations made by nine PSTs in a physical education teacher education program. All participants attended one online introductory methods course, which consisted of a synchronous lecture and laboratory components to learn fundamental instruction and management skills in teaching physical education. Findings: PSTs made positive adaptations in five core practices in their lesson plan iterations. However, the frequency of adaptations in each core practice varied in different lesson components. The findings suggest that the complexity of content being taught and opportunities embedded in each lesson component may influence how adaptations were made in lesson plans. Conclusions: Repeated rehearsals and reflections can facilitate PSTs’ development of adaptations in lesson planning in an online environment. However, learning environments may prevent PSTs from adapting certain core practices.

Background/Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to review intervention studies in school physical education, with a goal of identifying the gaps and future trends of intervention research ...

Purpose Risk behaviors are significantly impacting physical and psychological health among adolescents, resulting in a tremendous public health issue. The aim of this study is to examine the association of clustered risk behaviors with mental health and physical activity, and identify to what extent the clustering of various risk behaviors is associated with psychological health and physical activity in Chinese adolescents. Methods Students aged 16–18 years, male 16.2 ± 1.03, female 16.3 ± 1.56, were recruited from 30 high schools to complete an online questionnaire in fall semester 2017. A structured questionnaire, 2017 state and local youth risk behavior survey was revised, modified, and translated into Chinese. Five questions were designed to assess physical activity times of the last 7 days. Symptom checklist 90 (SCL-90) was used to investigate the mental health status of the participants. Statistical analyses were done employing chi-square tests, two step cluster analysis, logistic regression. Result Results illustrate that girls report a significantly higher mean of being bullied in school, electronically bullied, feeling sad or hopeless, and trying cigarette smoking. Two-step cluster analysis and regression analysis find that alcohol use, smoking and sedentary behavior have significant effect on adolescent health. Logic regression demonstrated that risk behaviors have significantly associated with mental health and physical activity in specific cluster. Conclusion This study finds that a specific behavior cluster has significant impact on mental health and physical activity among adolescents. Integrating risk behaviors cluster with factors can be employed to target high-risk adolescents who have poor physical and psychosocial health. The research suggest that more effective and feasible school intervention programs can be designed to promote adolescent health-related behavior in terms of those pathways.

The majority of the sport and physical education literature defines how a technique and tactic should look. However, a gap existing in the current literature is how to select different techniques a...

Guided by Situated Learning theory, the purpose of this article is to propose an extension to existing game-centered curricular models, named Situated Game Teaching through Set Plays (SGTSP). This proposed model fills in the gaps in the literature on game-centered curricular models by theorizing the concept of game scenarios/match conditions in the coaching literature for physical education, utilizing Situated Learning theory as a theoretical framework to systematically develop a curricular model, and conceptualizing and operationalizing the stimulus-response selection and execution or if–then links decision-making process in teaching sports and games in physical education. This SGTSP model has a potential to advance the curricular development and provide an alternative approach to teach tactical decision making in sports and games in physical education. Future research shall examine the effectiveness of SGTSP curricular model on students’ motivation, tactical decision making, technique development, and game performance. Features of this model and implications for future research will be discussed.

Historically, efforts to prepare teachers have relied on teaching preservice teachers bits of knowledge across various courses in a way that results in the accumulation of broad knowledge and skill...

Higher education institutions invest a significant amount of resources every year to recruit new students. However, higher education administrators have been continuously facing challenges in enrollment management due to the demographic shifts, dramatic increases in educational costs, intense competition among institutions, and the uncertain nature of human selection patterns (Baum, Kurose, &McPherson, 2013).[3] Today's post-baccalaureate applicants are more knowledgeable than in previous years, because they can access information on a specific graduate program, in a given college, at any time. As reported in numerous studies, the number of graduate students switching out of their universities continues to be an essential issue. A useful prediction model of matriculation that uses available student data is highly desirable to assist the graduate students with timely advising early in their universities. This study was designed to build a predictive model for the probability that a specific admitted graduate student will matriculate. The results indicated that ten predictive variables were statistically significant at the .05 level. Getting an assistantship made the most substantial positive contribution in predicting student matriculation, followed by FAFSA, experience with the university, campus, degree level, college, gender, age, the number of days between application and admission, and distance to the university. This study's results could be beneficial for improving marketing efforts aimed toward individuals with characteristics most likely to enroll. Administrators could calculate the predictive score (or percentage) for each prospective student based on the predictive model. Marketing efforts could then concentrate on those applicants whose predictive score is high and eliminate the low qualifying students from their recruitment plan.