Influence of Personal and Lesson Factors on Caloric Expenditure in Physical Education

Background: Increasing caloric expenditure in physical education is considered an effective school-based approach to addressing the child obesity epidemic. This study was designed to determine synergistic influences of student characteristics and lesson factors on caloric expenditure in elementary and middle school physical education. Methods: The study used a multi-level design. Level-1 factors included personal characteristics: age, gender, and body mass index. Level-2 factors included lesson length, content, and school level. Based on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention age-gender adjusted growth chart, students in 87 classes from 14 elementary and 15 middle schools were pre-screened into Overweight , Healthy weight , or Thin groups. One boy and one girl were randomly selected from each group in each class as data providers (264 elementary and 294 middle school students). Caloric expenditure was measured in 243 physical education lessons using accelerometers. Results: Analysis of variance revealed and hierarchical linear modeling confirmed separate age by body mass index, age by gender, and content by lesson-length interaction effects, suggesting that the personal and lesson factors influenced caloric expenditure independently. Older male and heavier students burned more calories in all lessons. Students burned more calories in 45-60 min sport skill or fitness lessons than in shorter (30 min) or longer (75-90 min) game or multi-activity lessons. Conclusions: The hypothesized cross-level interaction was not observed in the data. Caloric expenditure can be optimized in 45-60 min sport skill or fitness development lessons. It can be recommended that schools adopt 45-60 min lesson length and provide skill and fitness development tasks in physical education to maximize caloric expenditure

Curriculum Matters: Learning Science-Based Fitness Knowledge in Constructivist Physical Education

Teaching fitness-related knowledge has become critical in developing children\u27s healthful living behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a science-based, constructivist physical education curriculum on learning fitness knowledge critical to healthful living in elementary school students. The schools ( N = 30) were randomly selected from one of the largest school districts in the United States and randomly assigned to treatment curriculum and control conditions. Students in third, fourth, and fifth grade ( N = 5,717) were pre- and posttested on a standardized knowledge test on exercise principles and benefits in cardiorespiratory health, muscular capacity, and healthful nutrition and body flexibility. The results indicated that children in the treatment curriculum condition learned at a faster rate than their counterparts in the control condition. The results suggest that the constructivist curriculum is capable of inducing superior knowledge gain in third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade children

THIRD THROUGH FIFTH GRADE STUDENTS’ MENTAL MODELS OF BLOOD CIRCULATION RELATED TO EXERCISE

Students’ prior knowledge plays an important role in learning viewed as a conceptual change process. In physical education, positive changes in students’ lifestyles may come from changes in their conceptual understanding of the physiological effects of exercise on the body. Among physical education teachers, charged with teaching health content related to physical activity, a better understanding of students’ mental models of blood circulation and how it pertains to exercise may be useful in order to promote an effective instruction-induced conceptual change. The purpose of this study was to examine third to fifth grade students’ mental models of blood circulation related to exercise. The students (N=107) were interviewed during their regular physical education class on their understanding of blood circulation during exercise. The interviews were analyzed using descriptive and axial coding and the emerging categories and topics were examined. The results revealed an initial mental model (when you exercise, your blood goes everywhere in your body) and three synthetic mental models described through the ‘blood journey’ metaphor. These results are discussed in relation to: (a) the gradual nature of students’ mental models, (b) the developmental and non-developmental progression of students’ mental models, and (c) learning failures during the process of conceptual change

Learners\u27 Motivational Response to the Science, PE, & Me! Curriculum: A Situational Interest Perspective

Background: The Science, PE, & Me! (SPEM) curriculum is a concept-based physical education curriculum that offers students coherent educational experiences for constructing health-related fitness knowledge through movement experiences. The purpose of this study was to evaluate students’ motivational response to the SPEM curriculum from the situational interest perspective. Methods: The study used a cluster randomized controlled design in which 30 elementary schools in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the eastern United States were randomly assigned to an experimental or comparison condition. Although all students in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades in the targeted schools were eligible to participate in the study, a random sample of students from the experimental (n = 1749; 15 schools) and comparison groups (n = 1985; 15 schools) provided data. Students’ motivational response to the SPEM curriculum or comparison curriculum was measured using the previously validated Situational Interest Scale Elementary. Data were analyzed using structural mean modeling. Results: The results demonstrated that the experimental group (as reference group) showed significantly higher enjoyment (z = 2.01), challenge (z = 6.54), exploration (z = 12.195), novelty (z = 8.80), and attention demand (z = 7.90) than the comparison group. Conclusion: The findings indicate that the SPEM curriculum created a more situationally interesting context for learning than the comparison physical education curriculum

The Ethic of Care in Teaching: An Overview of Supportive Literature

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of three theoretical frameworks that appear related to teachers who manifest an ethic of care. An in-depth review of related literature develops Noddings' theory of the ethic of care, focusing on defining care in teaching. It is further supported with theories of moral development, the theory of relational knowing, and the role of self in teacher development. This article provides support for considering and incorporating the development of an ethic of care as fundamental pedagogical content knowledge to be included in pre-service teacher education

When Avoiding Confrontation Leads to Avoiding Content: Disruptive students’ impact on curriculum

In some high schools, teacher-student confrontations constitute a typical, if unwanted, aspect of the school context. These confrontations are situations in which individuals disagree and are unwilling to negotiate or compromise their positions. Confrontations can range from loud, verbal disagreements to subtle refusals, such as ignoring directions or exhibiting noncompliance.(FN1) Confrontations occur between students, between students and teachers, and between students and administrators. They appear to arise when students perceive they are not being treated fairly, or because they do not find the content useful, or simply because they are bored and recognize that confrontations add excitement to an otherwise humdrum school day.(FN2) Confrontations heighten the stress in teachers' lives. They create an unpleasant context by requiring teachers to assume a defensive posture that directly affects their ability and desire to serve or care for the students in their classes. Confrontations are a negative aspect of context that have the clear potential to limit students' opportunities to learn

Curriculum: Forming and Reshaping the Vision of Physical Education in a High Need, Low Demand World of Schools

This paper highlights events and issues in the development of physical education as a school subject. From the origin of physical culture in the German and Swedish “Battle of the Gymnastics Systems” to the advent of the New Physical Education in 1927, physical education curriculum has been a contested terrain. This remains true today as physical educators must compete for school funding and other resources with highly valued subject areas. Unfortunately, serious contextual constraints continue to hamper the efforts of highly motivated, effective physical educators to teach physical education content in schools. Perhaps in the future, better opportunities can be found in other venues where physical education can one day be perceived as a high need, high demand priority for children and their families

Analyzing Curriculum as Participant Perspectives

For this study, curriculum was defined as a holistic set of perspectives that interact to create the educational environment. The Goodlad et al. (1979) domain concept was used as the theoretical structure for the examination of content in three elementary physical education programs. Two of the programs used a movement education curriculum (Logsdon et d., 1984) while the third was structured based on a traditional activity or sport and games approach. Data collection consisted of an examination of documents (ideological and formal domains), interviews with teachers and students (perceived and experiential domains), and observation (operational domain). Data were analyzed using constant comparison. The ideological domain was found to be the most influential curriculum perspective in these programs. Major differences were detected in the use of shared decision-making and in the students' cognitive involvement with the content

Instructional strategies to facilitate the learning of field-dependent children

Three instructional strategies were examined to assist field-dependent children to compensate for cognitive limitations in memory storage capacity and system flexibility. The interpretive study was conducted with field-dependent (FD) 7-year-old children within an analytical movement education curriculum taught by a field-independent (FI) teacher. Research questions examined (a) the extent to which the strategies increased the learning behaviors of FD children and (b) the perceptions of the FD children when learning using the strategies. Children were tested using the Children's Embedded Figures Test to determine their cognitive styles. Observations and interviews were collected over a four-month period. Emergent themes were analyzed using constant comparison. Results indicated that the Explicit Organization strategy facilitated the memory organization and storage of FD children. The Variable Format and the Student Pairing strategies appeared to contribute to active learning by enhancing the interest and motivation of FD children. FD children were more involved in the tasks increasing their ability to focus mental energy necessary for system flexibility. Discussion centered on the FD children's modification of the Student Pairing strategy to decrease demands on memory storage capacity and preclude the development of memory access strategies

The use of hierarchical problem solving subroutines in the solution of exercise science problems

Hierarchical problem solving strategies employed in solving science problems were examined in this study. Hypothesis testing was used as the theoretical base for the study of differences in problem solving within a computer simulation framework. Undergraduate and graduate students in exercise science were asked to solve a series of problems associated with physiological assessment and exercise prescription formulation. Protocol analysis and the Pitt coding system were used to analyse verbal data, and group differences were examined statistically. Both graduates and undergraduates responded correctly to a substantial portion of the questions. However, graduates displayed the ability to define and delineate the problem better than undergraduates. Both groups used all six problem solving strategies, although the graduates often provided a significantly greater number of responses within subroutines of the strategy. Although the graduates appeared to be more efficient problem solvers, they did not consistently exhibit the ability to extract and summarize critical patterns typically associated with expertise