Purpose: This study examined the effects of a specialized content knowledge workshop on developing teachers' content development and adaptive competence in teaching badminton. Method: A quasi-experimental design was employed with three middle school physical education teachers who taught five or six badminton lessons before and after the content…

The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable common content knowledge (CCK) instrument for pre-service teachers who teach fundamental tennis in secondary schools. The instrument, called the tennis CCK test for pre-service teachers (CCK-Tennis), was administered to 117 undergraduate students who were enrolled in physical education…

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effects of improving a physical education teacher's content knowledge and, in turn, the teacher's instructional effectiveness and student learning in an upper elementary physical education setting. Four classes were randomly assigned to either a comparison condition (n[subscript 4th] = 9 students;…

Badminton is a popular sport played across the lifespan. This article introduces a knowledge packet for the teaching of badminton to upper elementary students. The knowledge packet consists of a content map, task descriptions, and an assessment. The content map illustrates progressions and sequences of tasks. The descriptions of the tasks,…

Tennis is a lifelong physical activity that is played from young childhood to adulthood. Tennis can be used to meet several of SHAPE America's National Standards and Grade-level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education in elementary school. Specifically, tennis is tied to outcomes relative to "striking with a short implement" in the…

Purpose: Little is known about how teachers acquire specialized content knowledge (SCK). We examine the hypothesis that SCK is not acquired from K-12 physical education and from extracurricular activities characterized by playing; instead, SCK must be explicitly taught to teachers. Method: Students were enrolled in either basic physical activity…

Background: Lack of content knowledge (CK) is problematic in teaching in classroom subject areas and in physical education. There is a dearth of data-based research on interventions aimed at helping teachers acquire CK and, in turn, on the effects of CK on student learning. Aim: To investigate the effect of professional development, in the form of…

Background: Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an interaction of several knowledge bases upon which the teacher makes decisions about what and how to teach. To date, there are no studies in physical education directly documenting relationships between specialized content knowledge (SCK) and PCK. Such relationships have not been empirically…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Play Practice (PP) instruction on the performance of table tennis skills. Fifty-six college students in four intact classes were taught by two instructors using PP and Skill-focused Instruction (SI). A nonequivalent control/comparison group experimental design with pre and post measures was…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a content knowledge (CK) workshop on the enacted pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of teachers and in turn the effects on student learning. Method: A quasiexperimental design was used to examine 4 questions: (a) How does student learning differ as a function of PCK? (b) How does…