Abstract:
This study's purpose was to compare Sport Education (SE) to the Multi-Activity (MA) model to determine if SE created a superior motivational climate, encouraged teachers to use more indirect teaching styles, and discover if SE supported or combatted Hegemonic Masculinity (HM). Achievement Goal Theory, Mosston's Spectrum Theory, and Connell's Theory of Hegemonic Masculinity underpinned this investigation. Quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis were utilized. The video data bank employed by Parker and Curtner-Smith (2005) of one male and one female Preservice Teacher (PT) in the southeastern United States teaching 10 MA and10 SE units in an early field experience (EFE) was recoded with two systematic observation instruments, the Physical Education Climate Assessment Instrument (PECAI) and the Instrument for Identifying Teaching Styles (IFITS). The interpretive techniques of non-participant observation and extensive notetaking, document analysis, stimulated recall, formal and informal interviews were conducted with two additional PTs (also 1 male/1 female in the southeast), each teaching two units of SE during their student teaching. Descriptive statistics and lesson-by-lesson profiles were generated for PECAI and IFITS data. A chi-square test for independence and independent t-tests were employed to compare the motivational climate created and the different teaching styles employed in SE vs MA during the EFE. Analytic induction and constant comparison were applied to develop themes reinforcing or combatting HM during the two PTs' student teaching. No significant differences were found between the motivational climates created or teaching styles used in SE and MA during the EFE. HM was reinforced during the SE units of the PTs' student teaching. Possible reasons for these findings could be the inexperience or prior socialization of the PTs leading to conservative deliveries of the SE model or the curricular scaffolding and pedagogies of SE that limit the motivational climates that can be created, the teaching styles that can be used, or the opportunities to contest HM. Future research should explore an interconnection of these topics and employ multiple methodologies and focus on multiple and more extensive units of SE with veteran teachers who possess a teaching orientation and more experience imparting well taught SE.
