STANDARD 5: Impact on Student Learning

Physical education teacher candidates utilize assessments and reflection to foster student learning and to inform instructional decisions.

I believe a major part of education is communication. Students need proper instruction as well as useful feedback. I have learned many different ways of how to criticize students. Our society tends to look at criticism as a negative thing, especially among youth. I have integrated the "positive first method" in the way I teach and coach. This means that anytime any sort of criticism or feedback is given, I start off with something they are doing well to avoid a negative response and keep their self-efficacy high. It is also necessary to explain why they should do it the correct way and the impact it will have on the skill being performed. Overall I think communication is very important in order to properly educate students. They need to know the right way and the wrong way of performing the skill, see it done both ways, understand the risks and safety concerns, as well as have a desire to do it correctly. All of those things can be integrated through proper communication when instruction and giving feedback.

Below are the charts showing improvements between pre and post assessments in each of the three domains.

In the cognitive domain the students had to take a test on the rules, court diagram, and vocabulary associated with tennis. The average score percentage more than doubled between the pre and post test. The pre test average was only 38% because it was a brand new unit and the post test average was 89%. The median and mode for these tests actually tripled between the pre and post test.

In the affective domain, students evaluated tennis as a lifetime activity that can be pursued in their local community. The pre-assessment score was 50% and the post assessment score was almost double that at 90%.

In the psychomotor domain, the student's skill level was evaluated throughout the lesson. The pre-assessment was based off of a combination of a peer evaluation and a self-assessment. Naturally students were very generous with their assessments and the pre assessment score was 4.27 out of 5. For the post assessment I evaluated their skills during gameplay on the last day of the unit. The average post assessment score was 4.42 out of 5. This domain shows the least amount of progressions via data, but I think that is in large part because the students were in control of the pre-assessments.