Exploring physical education teachers’ awareness of observed teaching behaviour within pedagogies of affect

ABSTRACT

Background

Affective learning has been recognised increasingly as a significant outcome of physical education. This focus on the affective domain comes at a time when there is increasing concern about health and wellbeing of children and young people and, in particular about the rising prevalence of mental health issues. The literature established that a number of approaches that could produce affective learning outcomes that may offer a positive contribution to children and young people’s health and wellbeing. These approaches to physical education could be characterised as pedagogies of affect. One underpinning theory informing pedagogies of affect is Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Pedagogical research grounded in SDT has shown the significance of need-supportive teaching behaviour in physical education as it has a direct impact on pupils’ positive affective learning outcomes. However, little has been known about what is happening right before need-supportive teaching behaviour occurs during class.

Purpose

This study aims to address the research questions of how aware are teachers of their own need-supportive teaching behaviour and why do they behave in the ways they do in practising pedagogies of affect.

Methods

Data were generated through filmed videos and self-confrontation interviews. We filmed two indoor lessons which the same teacher delivered to the same classes. Within a month after the observations, the teachers participated in the self-confrontation interviews about their teaching behaviour and concerns that arose during the observed lessons while watching selected recorded video clips. The scenes were selected when teachers were offering meaningful choices of activities, offering feedback including either aspect of need-support or control, and interacting with pupils individually. This paper reported data from five physical education teachers in Scottish secondary schools. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes in relation to teachers’ awareness of observed teaching behaviour.

Findings

We highlighted how the teachers responded through the following three themes: (1) recognised benefits of offering meaningful choices; (2) different intentions of offering feedback and individual interactions; (3) the need for supporting pupils with behavioural issues. The first theme indicated teachers’ knowledge in terms of being able to explain why offering meaningful choices works effectively in terms of pupils’ affective learning. The second theme demonstrated teachers’ intentions behind offering feedback and individual interactions. There were teachers’ intentions of securing their pupils’ confidence, motivation, positive mindset, and wellbeing as prioritised outcomes. In contrast, teachers offering feedback to keep running a lesson might not be effective for pupils’ affective learning. The third theme highlighted teachers’ expectations of pupils’ behaviour to implementing need-supportive teaching, especially for pupils with additional support needs. Meanwhile, we remain alert to the possibility that some of the teachers’ interactions with pupils who have additional support needs could be construed in SDT terms as controlling teaching.

Conclusion

We conclude that how well teachers are willing to learn from their pupils and how well teachers know the contextual factors about pupils such as their feelings, needs, and interests could be a fundamental requirement for implementing need-supportive teaching behaviour for pupils’ mental health and wellbeing within pedagogies of affect.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-determination theory
• self-confrontation interview
• Scotland
• mental health
• affective domain

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.