Development of concerns about student learning in physical education teacher candidates during student teaching /

Abstract

The discussion about teacher concerns, or what Teacher Candidates (TCs) focus on while teaching, has existed since the 1960's. Fuller first suggested a developmental conceptualization of concerns of teachers that led to a categorization of self, task, and impact concerns. The model was first introduced as stages that a teacher progressed through in their career but it has been suggested that it should be viewed as a contextual model. The purpose of this study was to describe the development of TC concerns during their student teaching internship and to investigate the influence of video technology on TCs impact concerns. Three physical education teacher candidates participated in the study during an entire semester of student teaching. Data collection included observations, journals, interviews, and the TCQ-PE. Findings indicated that TC concerns moved in a contextual model instead of hierarchally. Though the concern ratings varied throughout the study, impact concerns were always present. The emergence of a new category, conflict of belief, was also documented in this study. A case of one TC is included to illustrate the value of understanding how TC concerns develop and ways to address those concerns.