An examination of Greek physical educators’ implementation and perceptions of Spectrum teaching styles

Abstract

The main purpose of the present study was to examine Greek physical education (PE) teachers' selfreported use of the Spectrum of teaching styles and their perceptions of the benefits of adopting these styles for their students. An additional goal was to explore the teachers' perceived ability to implement these teaching approaches. The participants of the study were 219 (132 males, 87 females) PE teachers. Using an adaptation of Kulinna and Cothran's (2003) Spectrum of teaching styles questionnaire, the PE teachers reported greater implementation of the command, inclusion, and practice styles than the self-check, learner-initiated, and self-teaching styles in their teaching. The PE teachers also perceived that the reproduction and production clusters of teaching styles were equally effective in promoting fun, skill learning, and motivation for learning in their students. Results also revealed that the teachers' self-perceived ability was highest for command style use and their perceived benefits of the styles for their students were highest for the practice approach. The findings of the present study reinforce that a variety of personal experience factors can influence PE teachers' tendency to implement a specific teaching style.

Multi-Teaching Styles Approach and Active Reflection: Effectiveness in Improving Fitness Level, Motor Competence, Enjoyment, Amount of Physical Activity, and Effects on the Perception of Physical Education Lessons in Primary School Children

“…Previous research reported that the reproduction teaching style is the most common approach and that it is widely used in PE [18][19][20]. Some reproduction teaching styles (e.g., command, and practice) are mainly based on learning by imitation of models of movement, and they are effective when working on complex tasks, cardiorespiratory fitness and/or in conditions presenting high emotional involvement [17,21].…”

Transformative Learning and Teaching in Physical Education

“…For example, large-scale international comparison surveys (Hardman & Marshall, 2005;Pühse & Gerber, 2005) suggest teachers themselves remain in control of the events that take place in physical education classes. Additionally, large-scale studies researching the styles of teaching favoured by participants (Curtner-Smith et al, 2001;Kulinna & Cothran, 2003;Syrmpas et al, 2016) discovered that teachers prefer to take control of the decisions in regards to what happens before, during, and after the teaching episodes that comprise lessons. Concerns regarding the prevalence of 'direct' teaching have intensified in recent years as the possibility of, and expectations for, physical education lessons to address a wider range of learning experiences have emerged across the Anglophone world (Bailey et al, 2009).…”

Greek preservice physical education teachers’ mental models of production and reproduction teaching styles

“…Recently, Greek researchers have found that PE teachers (Syrmpas et al, 2016) and preservice PE teachers (Syrmpas and Digelidis, 2014) have reported using spectrum teaching styles from the reproduction cluster more often than those from the production cluster. Similarly, a number of studies in the UK (Curtner-Smith and Hasty, 1997; Curtner-Smith et al, 2001), the USA (Cothran et al, 2000; Kulinna and Cothran, 2003) and Finland (Jaakkola and Watt, 2011) confirmed the preference of using reproduction-based teaching styles in practice.…”