Diagnostic Competence of Physical Education Teachers and their Influence on Adaptive Teaching Structure in Sport

Introduction Adapting classroom teaching to the individual learning needs and requirements of students necessitates teachers to be capable of an adequate evaluation of their students’ learning performance requirements... [ view full abstract ]

Introduction

Adapting classroom teaching to the individual learning needs and requirements of students necessitates teachers to be capable of an adequate evaluation of their students’ learning performance requirements (diagnostic competence) (Artelt & Gräsel, 2009, pg. 157). To achieve an adaptive teaching structure, one must be able to derive suitable classroom measures (didactic competence) and combine them with diagnostic competence. This makes individual support possible and represents a significant foundation for the planning and realization of lessons (Brühwiler, 2017, pg. 123). How adaptively physical education teachers structure their lessons, and what the respective significance for diagnostic competence is, has hardly been researched in the physical education setting to date and will be examined within a sub-study of the DFG project ‘diagnostic competence of physical education teachers’ (Seyda, 2016-2018).

Methods

Ten physical education teachers (170 students) from primary schools in Germany were selected from a pool of 43 teachers (754 students): five with high and five with low diagnostic competence (contrastive approach). The quality of diagnostic competence was calculated from teacher questionnaires and the physical testing of students using the ranking component (Spinath, 2005). The teachers were systematically observed during 3 physical education lessons regarding the adaptive teaching structure (CLASS©) (Pianta, La Paro & Hamre, 2008) and also interviewed (evaluation utilises the documentary method).

Discussion

The degree to which differences or commonalities can be identified in the adaptive teaching structure or student assessments, and which orientation physical education teachers demonstrate regarding the structuring of lessons, will be evaluated by a comparative analysis across all interview cases (due to the documentary theory) and is also used to identify the teaching context. In a follow up the results will be compared within the two groups (high and low diagnostic competence) and the results of the interview evaluation will be presented at the conference.