Don’t Sweat Gym! An Analysis of Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

The delivery of curriculum to students through instructional classes represents the major professional task of teachers.It occupies the majority of their time.It is considered the main function of teachers from the public perspective.The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the work of the 11 high school physical educators from curricular and instructional perspectives.Every teacher in this study worked in a district that had an official curriculum syllabus for physical education.The teachers taught four to six classes each day.Thus, in the broad sense, this major professional task of delivering curriculum through instruction was similar institutionally for these teachers, as it is for teachers everywhere.Curricular issues will be discussed first, followed by instructional issues. Curricular IssuesCumcular literature in physical education has tended to be theoretical rather than empirical.The main emphasis has been on curricular models and value orientations (Ennis 1992b; Jewett & Bain, 1985; Siedentop, Mand, & Taggart, 1986; Steinhardt, 1992).The paucity of empirical research provides a meager database on curricular practices in school physical education, particularly the type of database that would result from extensive observation of curricula in practice.Our knowledge of what actually goes on in the name of physical education in schools results primarily from activity surveys (07Sullivan, Sweeney, & Taggart, 1989) and what one might infer from the more extensive teaching research literature based on direct observation (e.g., Anderson & Barrette, 1978; Metzler, 1989; Silverman, 1991).Steinhardt (1992) suggests that the multiactivity, sports-oriented curriculum is most typical for high school physical education, yet there is little evidence to inform researchers about the various ways that such efforts are conceptualized and delivered.There are few studies that have attempted to describe and evaluate curricular models (for a recent example, see Grant's, 1992, paper on the sport education model).