Content Knowledge Acquisition in Physical Education: Evidence From Knowing and Performing by Majors and Nonmajors

Japanese Physical Education Preservice Teachers' Specialized Content Knowledge

“…This indicates that elementary to high school physical education and extracurricular activities have little to do with the SCK among preservice teachers. This finding is consistent with previous studies conducted in the United States (Tsuda et al, 2019;Ward et al, 2018). This study provides further evidence confirming the finding that learning how to play is not sufficient to develop SCK (Tsuda et al, 2019;Ward et al, 2018), and this was also true in a different education context like Japan.…”

“…The results show that Japanese physical education teacher education programs need to be more intentional in teaching SCK for preservice teachers as previous studies conducted in the United States found that only when SCK is specifically taught, do teachers improve their SCK levels (Kim et al, 2018;Tsuda et al 2019;Ward et al, 2018). In the studies conducted by Tsuda et al (2019) and Ward et al (2018), two groups of students who learned how to play a sport and learned how to teach a sport. In these studies, learning how to teach a sport is different from learning instructional strategies and management, which are typically taught in method courses.…”

“…Thus, if more preservice teachers with longer playing experiences scored the index score three, that would demonstrate potential associations between CCK and SCK. In a previous study conducted in the United States, the associations among CCK, skill performance and SCK were examined in four different content areas including basketball, volleyball, tennis, and badminton (Tsuda et al, 2019). The results showed that there were no consistent associations among these variables.…”

“…Content maps were used to measure the SCK of participants (the detailed description of content maps can be found in Ward, Lehwald, and Lee, 2015). Content maps have been validated in a number of studies (Tsuda et al, 2019;Ward et al, 2018;Ward et al, 2017). A content map is a graphic organizer of SCK that defines the content that could be taught to students in an instructional unit of a particular duration (e.g., 5, 10, or 20 lessons; Ward et al, 2015).…”

“…The studies also showed that learning how to play a sport/activity in college did not help them improve their SCK unless SCK was specifically taught. The studies concluded that teaching SCK during physical education teacher education programs is essential to equip preservice teachers for their future professions (Tsuda et al, 2019;Ward et al, 2018).…”