Negotiation patterns of a preservice physical education teacher and his students during sport education

Abstract

Previous research on negotiations between physical education teachers and students has been purely qualitative. The purpose of this study was to produce a quantified negotiation profile for one preservice teacher (George) while he taught three sport education (SE) seasons. The specific research questions we attempted to answer were as follows: (a) What forms did negotiations between the preservice teacher and his students take during the SE seasons? (b) To what extent did negotiations take place across the SE seasons? (c) How did negotiations differ between grade levels? The 47 lessons in George’s 6th, 7th and 8th grade SE season on handball were filmed and coded with the negotiation instrument, an event-recording systematic observation instrument designed to classify and categorize negotiations as they occur. A number of descriptive analyses were completed and Kruskal–Wallis tests were employed to determine whether there were differences between grades. Results revealed that negotiations initiated by George and his students were relatively infrequent and that there were few differences between the SE seasons. The types and foci of the negotiations initiated by George and his students were similar to those described in previous qualitative studies, as were the tactics used to initiate the negotiations. The patterns were of the negotiations in this study were also similar to those in previous qualitative research focused on SE. Suggestions for future research and the use of the negotiation instrument as a training tool are made.