Exam 2: Describing Instructional Models for Physical Education

To be valid means that a model actually helps students learn what it is designed for, in the contexts for which it is an appropriate way to teach.

If a teacher shares most or all of the assumptions behind a particular model, she is more likely to agree with and use the model in her teaching.

Context plays an important role in the design and implementation of all models, and is just as important for teaching; therefore, it must be considered in the selection and implementation of an instructional model for physical education.

Craft knowledge can come from many sources: one's own experiences, interactions at professional conferences, conversations with teaching colleagues, reading journals, and physical education-related World Wide Web sites.

Task structure informs students how the learning task will be organized, how they will be grouped, how long it will last, what the performance criteria are, and what the expectations are for student conduct during the task.

In passive engagement, students typically receive the content from other sources (usually the teacher) in the form of information given to them. It is characterized by student listening, watching, and reading.

In a peer directed, modeled task presentation, one student provides a model for another student, a group of students, or the whole class.

Validation can come from any or all of three primary sources: research, craft knowledge, and intuition.

Active engagement involves direct personal participation by students. It is characterized by student movement, thinking, questioning, and decision making.

Every instructional model contains unique terminology used to describe its theoretical framework, design, and operations. We refer to that terminology as a technical language, from which all teachers have a shared meaning for words and terms applied in a model.

The cognitive domain includes the recall of facts, the learning of concepts, and the ability to make decisions.

The participant student prefers: class discussions, alternative assessments, individual learning activities, teachers who provide opportunities for analysis and synthesis, and enthusiastic task presentations.

A model's theme comes directly from its rationale and might also describe the major learning process used in the model.

Once a model has been developed from a unified theoretical framework, it is possible to conduct research on how best to implement the model, and to test the model's ability to promote the kinds of learning for which it is designed.

Teacher and student operations that suggest ways to teach and learn in each model are called benchmarks.

Indirect teachers promote more student thinking and creative movement exploration by posing questions and problems, rather than telling (or showing) students how to move in certain ways.

The scaled-down model allows the observer to more easily see, in miniature, what the larger object looks like from many perspectives, without having the real object in hand.