PE 452

Theoretical Perspectives on TGFU Summary - Gareth Jones

  Pedagogical Content Knowledge for teachers

Integrate Everything You Know to Help Students Learn

 By Griffin, L., Dodds, P., & Rovengo, I. (1996)

Issue/focus

This article clearly explains what Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is, the instructional forms that it takes, a tactical approach to teaching using PCK, some common pitfalls, and suggestions to enhance the development of PCK for teachers.

The key problem identified in the article relates to the teacher understanding sports and physical activities only from a participant’s perspective.  This problem is often overseen in PE teachers because they had a successful PE experience and enjoyed the physical environment.  The purpose of this article is to overcome this barrier and enhance PE teachers knowledge by giving them the proper tools, such as PCK, which will in turn enhance and give students an all round more productive PE experience

Reasoning

To explain PCK, the authors have broken what PCK is into four parts: 1.  They (PE teachers) keep both broad and narrow goals clearly in mind. 2.  They understand readily what various students already know or can do. 3.  They are highly knowledgeable about curriculum content. 4.  They vary instructional strategies.

They support the four approaches by outlining a tactical approach to teaching games using PCK format.  Another four-step approach is used for this.

1.        Games classification system.

2.        A tactical model.

3.        Game frameworks

4.        Levels of tactical complexity.

Assumptions

This particular article focuses primarily on the development of PCK in teachers.  The assumptions that coincide with PCK are numerous.  The authors mention how difficult it is to change behavior.  As teachers we must persist and acknowledge that change is difficult and pursue new teaching behaviors.  In addition to this the authors also mention how important understanding theory is to meet the cognitive demands of instruction.  And lastly, some advice to the teachers, you must work with peers productively to facilitate change and on that point you must also be flexible.

Conclusion   

In reading this article I learned more about the format of PCK teaching.  This style of teaching is an all encompassing style that accommodates and challenges all types of students.  

Significant Information

PCK integrates 4 forms of knowledge: 1. keep broad and narrow goals in mind  2. Understand what various students already know or can do  3. Teachers are highly knowledgeable about curriculum  4. Vary instructional method

Personal Comments

I thought the article was highly informative and applicable to PE.  This format of teaching is obviously a very effective tool to engage all types of students into PE.  Also, the tactical approach is definitely something I, and the rest of PE 452, will be using in our upcoming practicum’s and teaching careers.