No abstract

The article seeks to establish the usefulness of situated learning theory as a means of thinking differently about the alleged abstraction of school learning in a range of subjects including physical education, and the issue of transfer of learning. Following a discussion of Lave and Wenger’s notion of situated learning as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, the article explores the potential of Siedentop’s sport education model as a means of providing young people with educative and authentic experiences of sport as legitimate peripheral participants. It is concluded that sport education may have the potential to provide educative and authentic experiences of sport, but that further detailed empirical investigation is required to establish the conditions in which this potential might be realized.

Full inclusion refers to educational practices where all students with disabilities are educated in regular classes along with nondisabled peers. Six elementary physical education specialists (5 females, 1 male) were studied to obtain their views of inclusion practices and perceived outcomes. Teacher interviews and observations revealed four main themes: (a) multiple teaching styles, (b) student outcomes, (c) teacher frustrations, and (d) differences in inclusion practices. Results indicated that schools provided little support, and teachers reported that they were inadequately prepared to teach effectively with inclusive classes. These teachers had strong feelings of guilt and inadequacy as they continued to try to be effective for all children.

The development of feelings of identity, the sense of belonging to a team, and the growth of social skills are experiences that sport, if properly conducted, is well placed to offer (Siedentop, 1994). Evidence suggests that some characteristics of traditional, multiactivity forms of physical education work against realizing these goals (Locke, 1992). Siedentop's Sport Education (SE) model is one attempt to overcome this shortcoming by recasting units as seasons and maintaining persisting groups as teams throughout the season. Extended units intended to foster team affiliation while promoting affective and social development are common objectives in physical education. We report on a 16-week SE unit that includes over 70 Year-5 students (9-to 10-year-olds) from one UK school. Our findings show that the opportunity to become affiliated with a team was an attractive feature of the pupils' physical education experience and that, under the framework of SE, there was an obvious investment made by the Year-5 Forest Gate students in relation to their sense of identity and involvement as members of a persisting group.Key Words: Sport Education, team affiliation, persisting groupsIn a recent article in JTPE, Siedentop (2002) noted that there is now a considerable body of research literature on Sport Education (SE), much of it indicating that this instructional model has been used successfully to assist young people to become "literate, competent and enthusiastic sports people" (p. 411). Because of the growing visibility of SE in the research literature, the key features of SE are increasingly well known, including extended seasons in place of short units of Sport Education 107 activity, formal competition, a culminating event, festivity, record keeping, and affiliation with a team.Although each of these features has been shown to be an important part of students' experiences of SE, Siedentop (1998) indicates, "The use of persisting groups (teams) is one of the model's most important features" (p. 414). A review of the general educational-research literature suggests a paucity of research on the experiences of students who remain in sustained, distinct groups or teams over long periods of time (Siedentop, 1995;Wynne & Walberg, 1994). In the context of SE, Siedentop (1995) believed that persisting groups, that is, sustained membership of a team for at least the course of a season, are not only a necessary condition for personal growth but also fundamentally important to achieving goals characteristic of the model. As Metzler (2000) explained, this extended affiliation allows team members the opportunity to work toward common goals, make group decisions, experience successes and failures as a group, and construct a group identity.Team affiliation in and through SE is not solely a matter for team sports but it is also indeed applicable to other activities in the physical education curriculum, including dance (Graves & Townsend, 2000), tennis (Grant, 1994), and gymnastics (Bell, 1994). Affiliation through the SE model is enha...

No abstract