Selecting and sequencing instructional tasks to facilitate student learning (i.e. content development) is an important skill for physical education teachers. Research has shown that teachers often have little content development following an informing task. In addition, depth of specialized content knowledge (SCK) as expressed by the SCK-index is…

Purpose: Practice-based teacher education (PBTE) has been proposed as an approach to combat forms of teacher education that create prescriptive understandings of teaching that are disconnected from practice. In physical education, PBTE is becoming more prevalent. Some have argued that many of its elements have been in use for some time, whereas…

Teacher education programs need to prepare future teachers to adapt their teaching for students varying in motor ability, experience, and prior knowledge. The purpose of this case study was to examine (a) preservice teachers (PSTs) adaptations in lesson plans; (b) whether the adaptations were modifications or refinements; and (c) the…

Purpose: To investigate (a) if a coaching clinic (CC) impacted student-coaches' behavior and academic learning time during a basketball Sport Education season and (b) if 3v3 game performance improved as a function of the coaching clinic. Method: Preservice teachers (n = 85) were randomly assigned to a CC or a comparison group and taught a…

Background: It is widely recommended for teachers to provide positive feedback to foster the development and maintenance of children's motivation and perseverance. However, not all positive feedback has positive consequences and an important differentiation can be made between positive person-oriented feedback (i.e. 'you are very talented') and…

Purpose: We investigated the effect of a content knowledge workshop on a teacher's content development in terms of selected task types, task adaptations, and in turn children's task performance during a six-lesson crawl swimming unit in elementary school. Methods: One physical education teacher taught two 6-lesson units of the front crawl before…

Purpose: Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs aim to maximize the application of skills learned in physical education (PE) in other settings. We investigated students' generalization of participation in fitness activities from PE to organized fitness programs during lunch recess. Method: Voluntary participation of 153 (74 girls, age…

Purpose: To investigate the effect of an obstacle course based physical education program, designed according to contemporary insights on motor learning, on motor competence (MC) of 6- to 7-year-old Flemish children. Method: Pupils from 16 primary schools were randomly allocated to either control (n = 173, 50.3% boys) or intervention group (n =…

Objective: To investigate the role of specialised content knowledge in instructor training on the teaching and learning of basic life support (BLS) in secondary schools. Design: Cluster randomised controlled trial. Setting: Data were collected in three Flemish secondary schools during physical education classes. Method: Three secondary schools…

Purpose: The context personalization approach refers to matching educational content with characters, objects, and themes of students' out-of-school interests. Considering the positive effects of individual interest on the regulation of student-incontext experiences, this study used the context personalization approach to match physical education…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between students' individual interest, achievement goals, perceived competence and situational interest, by using a cluster analysis in swimming. Three hundred and eighty-two secondary school students (M[subscript age] = 14.8, SD = 0.9, 52.4% girls, aged 13-17) enrolled in swimming…

Transnational research involves research in one country that benefits that country, and where the findings are compared to the extant studies in the larger field. It also involves the search for common effects and situational influences (i.e., country and culture-specific) toward a particular research topic. In this study we examine the…

Background: In Belgium, and elsewhere, the use of portfolios as a reflective practice for pre-service primary and secondary teachers has long been established in higher education. Reflective thinking is recognised as an effective process for examining daily practices, awakening students to the key elements of their profession, and fostering…

This paper reports on an investigation examining provision of physical education continuing professional development (CPD) in European countries undertaken to identify the types of practices being employed. We begin by providing a brief overview of what we currently know about CPD internationally in general education and physical education. Data…

The public dimension of the body became paramount in the first half of the 20th century, when the image of the modern man, with his virile stereotypes, became a cliché, in strict connection with nation building first and totalitarian ideologies later. Yet, different cultural and educational trends advocated for life reform and liberation of the…