Graduating student teachers' beliefs regarding the philosophy and pedagogy of physical education within the New Zealand curriculum.

摘要

In the mid to late 1990’s, physical education curriculum writers in New Zealandchallenged the dominant skill mastery approach that was omnipresent in secondary schoolphysical education. The resulting curriculum documents, Health & Physical Education(HPE) within the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education [MOE], 1999) and itsrevision, the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (MOE, 2007), reflected acritical/humanistic position with much broader curricular aims and objectives. Thispresented many challenges for Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE)programmes in New Zealand, where it is contested that students entering teachereducation programmes do so with strongly held beliefs that may be difficult to alter.These entrenched beliefs have the potential to act as filters through which PETE studentsacquire knowledge and, therefore, may hinder their ability to consider other views ofteaching and learning. Research suggests that unless these historical personal beliefs arechallenged, teacher education programmes may be considered as weak interventions.Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the beliefs of a cohort ofgraduating physical education teachers around the philosophy and pedagogy inherent inthe NZC (MOE, 2007), having recently completed a four year critically oriented PETEprogramme.A mixed methods (MM) design was employed in the study. A quantitative surveyquestionnaire preceded a series of qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted onfive purposively selected participants. The survey questionnaire was used to identify anyinconsistencies between the participants’ beliefs and the intentions reflected in thecurriculum document and the supporting literature. An emphasis was placed on thequalitative phase of the study, which investigated the key areas of interest identified in thesurvey questionnaire. Interview data was then analysed using the process of constantcomparison.Analysis revealed that the PETE programme may have had some impact on thephilosophical and pedagogical beliefs of the graduating students, and may haveencouraged the participants to explore personal philosophical positions and questionparticular decisions regarding their personal beliefs. However, further examinationrevealed that the participants were still grappling with the philosophical underpinnings ofthe HPE learning area and the pedagogical approaches promoted to support itsimplementation.This research supports the notion that unless historical beliefs about teaching andlearning are deliberately and coherently challenged and confronted through PETEprogramme content and pedagogy, these entrenched beliefs may indeed act as knowledgefilters and prevent graduates from making more informed decisions about differingconceptualisations of physical education curriculum and practice.