Preservice Teachers’ Adaptations to Lesson Plans in a Methods Class: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

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 appropriateness of these adaptations in lesson plans as a function of three conditions to reflect during a secondary methods class in volleyball and badminton. Twenty-one (12 female, 9 male) PSTs made adaptations in lesson plans to six core practices, namely goals and assessments, rules and routines, active supervision and monitoring, management, task presentation, and content development. In this methods class, focus was put on the latter three. The PSTs adapted their lesson plans after being a student-participant (PST-S) or a student-teacher (PST-T) with or without a personal feedback meeting (FM) with content experts. Adaptations were collected through the track changes function in Word. Data were descriptively and inferentially analyzed. Results indicated PSTs made a mean 6.7 and 6.8 adaptations per lesson plan for volleyball and badminton, respectively. In both domains, PST-T with FM made significantly more adaptations to management and task presentations compared to PST-S (p < 0.05). For volleyball, PST-T with FM made significantly more modifications, refinements, and appropriate adaptations compared to PST-S. For badminton, PST-T with FM made significantly more modifications and appropriate adaptations compared to PST-S. This case study demonstrated that a feedback meeting with content experts facilitated PSTs adaptations to core practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• teacher education
• core practices
• reflection-on-action

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).