Where does your teaching practice fall on the spectrum?

5/10/2013

Over the last several months I have been looking for different books, outside the realm of PE, to read and get new ideas from that are transferrable to my own teaching practice. One of these books, Drive by Daniel Pink, has been a wonderful read that I've thoroughly enjoyed. As I go for my morning runs, I listen to the audiobook version and get loads of great ideas and important thoughts to consider and reflect on in regards to how I run my PE program.

Thanks to Lynne Cazaly for her wonderful graphic of Daniel Pink's book. Over the next few weeks, I am going to be blogging on what specifically I am able to take away from Drive and explain how I can apply it to my teaching practice. I will also reflect on some important concepts that Daniel Pink writes about and how these concepts need to be carefully considered when we have an in-depth look at how we teach and assess in PE.

For the moment, I want to reflect on control and compliance vs. autonomy and engagement in regards to our instructional practice in PE. It is important to constantly evaluate where our instruction falls on this spectrum. All the science out there indicates with certainty that humans thrive when they feel that they work within environments that foster autonomy and freedom. Whether you work in business, education, engineering and so forth, the key to productivity is autonomy. If this is the case for the workforce in general, what are the implications for our students as they embark on their learning journeys in school? If the science supports the notion that adults are more engaged in their work and more productive in general when they work in environments that promote and foster autonomy, it is obvious that students thrive in the same types of environments within the walls of their own schools.

Now, this leads me directly into our teaching and assessing in PE. I have been a strong advocate for allowing students to design their own learning and to be fully engaged in helping to develop the assessment criteria that we use in PE, both formatively and summatively. Have I always done this? Absolutely not. When I reflect on my style of instruction early on in my teaching career, although I thought I was a decent teacher, I certainly did not give my students a lot of freedom. There is a certain fear that comes to mind when giving more control over to the students. Will they actually learn or will they fluff around? How can students be responsible for deciding on their own learning engagements? The questions abound ten fold when it comes to giving students ownership and control over their learning.

I think it is an absolute necessity to involve students in assessment design in PE. Again the science clearly indicates that humans gain much higher levels of motivation that is sustainable over time when they have more freedom and autonomy in their work environment. This science is no different for our students. Our number one goal, in my opinion, should be to create intrinsically motivated students. Intrinsic motivation is at the very heart and essence of success in school and in the workplace. If we can help to develop intrinsically motivated students in our PE classes, everything else comes easy. I guarantee that they will meet and/or exceed all of the student learning outcomes in a unit. They will meet and/or succeed all of the standards and benchmarks that they are required to meet in PE.

How can we help to create an environment that encourages autonomy and freedom in PE?

Give the students more ownership over their learning
Allow them to design the learning tasks they will engage in
Ask them what they want to know, learn, and do in PE
Allow them to simply explore apparatus and other equipment needed in a unit
Give them opportunities to share their learning with their peers
Let them fail at a task, but be there to ask provocative questions to help them persevere through this difficulty
Allow them to have a strong voice in how they want to be assessed
Celebrate every student's success in PE regardless of skill level

I ask you again to assess where on the spectrum your teaching practice falls. At what times do we need more control? At what times can we give up control? All important factors to reflect on when trying to improve our instructional practice in PE. Let me know your thoughts.

2 Comments

Ashley Casey link

5/12/2013 06:46:28 pm

Andy, as a read the first few paragraphs I come to see the synergy between your experiences and mine...with one caveat, I’m not sure I was prepared to give students freedom or indeed felt that freedom was a good option...at least not in my early career. Autonomy? Well there was something for the last lesson of the term and which was normally expressed in terms of a “kick about” football match. Not what I consider high-quality teaching now! Still, I was young and I learnt.

However, I still feel that there is a gulf between my aspirations and the reality of my classrooms...there are things I would love to do but am too scared or too busy (is that an excuse for not making something a priority?). There are some things I would like the autonomy for myself to work into my teaching but the expectations of the school, in my case the University, indeed of the learners themselves are such that this is not an easy step to take. That said, I also think that ‘ease’ is often an excuse for not doing something and the more difficult to challenge the easier it is to call upon the insurmountability of the problem as a reason for not even trying. However, as they say, “the longest journey starts with a simple step”.

This consideration of yours around Daniel Pink’s “drive” seems to be one of those first steps...although I believe for a moment that this is your first journey... but the place of Daniel’s work in your classrooms is yet to be decided. The notion of autonomy and mastery are yet to be defined within your classroom and and the notions of constraints, of fairness, of doability, of self-direction are all things without an absolute definition...and you must find your place for them. What motivates you and what motivates the students you work with is different to other schools, other classrooms, other countries... and it is your uniqueness that will make your reflections and your blog interesting. It is not the ways in which we can borrow your ideas that will make this journey interesting. It is the way we can learn from your experiences and apply them in our own contexts... Manipulating them, adjusting them, making them work for us or indeed eradicating them will make this a truly collaborative project...and this is the one thing that seems to be missing from real social networking. I fear that, as we have discussed ourselves, twitter and other networks has become a vehicle for exchange rather than a real collaborative learning space where ideas are exchange and our experiences are re-experienced and understood a different context. I look forward to reading this blog as it progresses and wish you all the best with it.

Ross Halliday link

7/18/2013 04:23:19 pm

Andy,
Great post and it sounds like I need to add Drive to my reading list. I love the graphic which gives a real insight into whats in there.

To the post though. I have to say that I thought I became a teacher when I graduated. I was mistaken. I have come to realize that I will always be "becoming" a PE Teacher. I my early days I viewed control and compliance as the key to survival. My teaching was very much focussed on me and what I did. As I have overcome the early years of knowing the ropes so to speak I have come to realize that it's absolutely all about the kids.

With this in mind I feel that, lesson by lesson and term by term I am handing over learning more to the students. Things don't always work the way I had planned and I make plenty of mistakes, but they are always for the right reasons. I am not afraid to make mistakes in the way that I used to be.

I reckon this needs to be instilled in new teachers. The students we teach are not the enemy to be tamed, they are insightful, creative and smart and they deserve the respect we demand from them.

We need to provide a supportive and exciting framework for learning, then let them go and see what happens.

LEADERSHIP, LEARNING, & PErsonal Growth

Where does your teaching practice fall on the spectrum?

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives