Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Physical Education

Sub-Department

College of Education

First Advisor

Lynda Nilges-Charles

Abstract

It is of interest to physical education teacher educators to prepare pre-service teachers (PTs) to promote learning based on the five National Standards for K-12 Physical Education (NASPE, 2013). These National Standards reflect value orientations. However, limited empirical evidence exists that examines what value orientations PTs endorse and how physical education teacher education (PETE) programs influence their value orientations. The purpose of this study was to 1) examine the initial value orientations of PTs at entry into the course of student teaching, 2) describe how their value orientations change/develop and/or are maintained across the course, and 3) explore factors that might influence value orientations as they switch their placement from an elementary to secondary school or vice versa. A mixed method design, comprised of quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques, was used. 14 Participants were all in their final student teaching semester. Participants were asked to complete the VOI-SF for quantitative data across the three terms of the student teaching semester (beginning, middle, and end of the semester). Six out of the 14 PTs were selected to collect data from the qualitative sources including, 1) formal and informal interviews, 2) writing assignments, 3) class observations, and 4) lesson plans throughout the three terms. Descriptive analysis of the quantitative data was conducted to identify PTs’ priorities for value orientations across the three terms. Furthermore, a Kruskal Wallis H test was conducted to see if there were any statistically significant changes in PTs’ value orientation priorities across the three terms. In addition, the qualitative data provided deeper insights into the value orientations of the PTs. Qualitative data were analyzed qualitatively using constant comparison (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Quantitative results indicated that 1) PTs endorsed Disciplinary (DM) and Learning Process (LP) value orientations at entry into the course of student teaching and maintained the DM and LP as higher priorities across the three terms, and 2) their priority for the Social Responsibility (SR) value orientation remained the lowest but significantly increased among the three terms. Qualitative results from four primary themes indicated that 1) PTs mainly advocated DM, LP, and EI value orientations at entry into student teaching, 2) acculturation and professional socialization influenced their initial value orientations at entry, 3) their priorities for DM, LP, and EI were maintained, and their priority for SR greatly intensified across the course of student teaching, and 4) a cooperating teacher and contextual factors, such as student behavior/attitude and learning ability, class schedule, and school levels, were facilitators and/or barriers that influenced PTs value orientations. Implications of this study for physical education teacher education includes (1) recognizing the strong discipline mastery orientation of PETE students and planning the teacher education curricula accordingly, (2) recognizing the role of late field experiences like student teaching in the development of the social responsibility value orientation and (3) recognizing the role of acculturation and professional socialization in the development and maintenance of the disciplinary mastery, learning process and ecological integration value orientations.

Rights

© 2015, Heesu Lee

Download

Share

COinS