Learning to Respond

Summary 1

Learning to Respond: Supervisor Novice Physical Educators in an Action Research Program

Tim F. Hopper

Summary by Natasha Lerch

Issue/Fucus:

What is the key problem/issue identified by the author?

The purpose of this paper is to describe and interpret an action research project in order to develop a collaborative support system between teacher supervisors and student-teachers. The project had the student teachers instructing 10 lessons to elementary school children and would meet with their supervisors once a week. Their goal was to have effective teaching of games in Physical Education, as a opposed to the "traditional" elementary PE program.

Reasoning:

What do the author(s) offer to explain how they address the issue? What supports their argument?

Hopper describes the action research process stages of PLAN, ACT, and OBSERVE, REFLECT then RE-PLAN, in relation to how the student teachers dealt with class situations. Hopper also explains how the supervisor teachers were able to identify "teachable moments" during class and take advantage of those situations. An example of a "teachable moment" was a situation in which the teacher recognized the skills of an introverted student, and used her to demonstrate the correct execution of a skill. This gave the student confidence and also enabled the rest of the class to view her in a different way.

Assumptions:

What do the author(s) assume about the elements in PE such as students,

teachers, games content, schools? The article also stated that the main difference between the student teachers and the supervisor teachers was experience. Experience teaches you how to deal with situations and pick out teachable moments. As a beginner teacher it hard to look at the whole dynamic of the class not just the "centre".

Conclusion/Personal Comments:

Using the action research process, the student teacher is able to see teaching as a process of planning and revising depending on the reactions of their class. This is an important skill to have when teaching because if your class is not responding to your lesson then you need to make changes. Through all of this you learn from your mistakes and, hopefully, improve from lesson to lesson. Practice makes perfect therefore it is important that the student teacher realises that there will be mistakes made but the it is okay because it is part of the learning process.

Summary 2

Learning to Respond:

Supervisor Novice Physical Educators in an Action Research Project

Tim F. Hopper

By Ben Schweitzer

Issue: The purpose of Tim’s paper is essentially to describe an action research project in which supervisory teachers, who had strong content knowledge from years of teaching experience, over-saw novice student-teachers in an after school community based physical education program. The group had a common theme that was consistent to the project and that was, “effective teaching of games in physical education.” The group consisted of ten student-teachers, who each taught 10 lessons to children aged 7-9 or 10-12, 3 supervisors, and one program coordinator. The action research process followed the stages of PLAN, ACT & OBSERVE, REFLECT then RE-PLAN.

An important reminder in this paper is that through-out this action research project there was a constant need for supervision where the supervisor focused on teaching the teacher, not simply evaluating the teacher’s teaching. The main difference between a novice teacher and an expert (Hopper, pg. 1) is that novices’ tend to have knowledge structures that are surface level and less differentiated; expert teachers’ knowledge of pupils, classroom events, and subject matter is broader, deeper, more complex, more differentiated, and more integrated.

In this project both supervisors and student-teachers were entered into situations that were new to them. The supervisor began the lesson as the initial teacher and the student-teacher would take on more responsibility in the following lessons. Although the intent of this project was to improve the abilities of the student-teachers, the quality of the lessons for the pupils was not compromised.

Minutes, which were taken during weekly meetings between supervisors and student-teachers, were developed into a journal to help keep track of progress.

Personal Comments:

At one point during this paper it was stated that student-teachers tended to “tell” the children too much in an attempt to define exactly what should happen so that the children would not make mistakes. This caught my attention because it is something that I believe is often over looked by inexperienced teachers and coaches. Children learn from their mistakes as do everyone else. I think it is crucial that we allow children the opportunity to make mistakes so long as we, as teachers or coaches, are there to correct them and guide them to reach their goal. Explaining TOO much can hinder the learning process, by overloading the children with information and even confusing them.