On April 9th a group of PETE educators, representing several institutions in the U.S., and scholars from other countries (e.g., Mexico, UK, Canada, Ireland), joined together online for a discussion about building PETE community during a crisis, with specific reference to the current COVID-19 pandemic. We topped off at 158 participants and remained steady with 150+ PETE educators and graduate students engaging, positively for over 1.5hrs!
To listen to the conversation click here to access the podcast.
The group that led this was initially supposed to present at the SHAPE America conference in SLC in 2020, but due to the cancellation and then the significant restructuring of higher education courses we felt we needed to check in with each other. Moderators for the conversation included Emily Jones, Chad Killian, Jennifer Krause, Risto Marttinen, Jaimie McMullen, Kason O’Neil, and K. Andrew R. Richards. We were inspired by PHE Canada, who had a similar session last week. The moderators wanted to create a space to build community and check in with faculty across the U.S. and beyond. We posed a series of topics to discuss in our first call and look forward to many more in the future.
It was interesting to see that a crisis that separated and distanced us socially actually brought us together as a community like never before. This was among the first times that the U.S. PETE community has attempted to come together all at once in a synchronous, online format.
The four main topics we discussed were:
o How can PETE faculty members continue to support and connect with one another and undergraduate and graduate students?
o How are you addressing field and experiential courses?
o What online resources are available to help us continue to teach effective PETE courses?
o How is COVID-19 impacting the research enterprise in physical education now and into the future?
In this blog I will attempt to summarize some of the key points and discussions, while also posing questions for the readers to push the conversation further. By writing this blog, I am not endorsing any resources here, just simply passing them off for you to do with what you want. Also, I attempt to attribute credit to the speakers when summarizing the conversation, but was not always able to identify the speakers, so please feel free to credit yourself in the comments where appropriate.
We have created a place for PETE educators to share their resources with each other by uploading documents, assignments, and other content into a shared google drive. Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s24yn8PEQzWTGg2HYxpRQIadCCgcrUuv?usp=sharing Please add your content so we can begin to build a repository of resources to help one another.
In the first question “How can PETE faculty members continue to support and connect with one another and undergraduate and graduate students?” Emily Jones led a discussion and reminded us that there are serious concerns here, including (but definitely not limited to): students losing jobs, needing to take care of sick family members, lack of access to reliable Wi-Fi. In some instances, for example, students are using hot spots for classes at home because they don’t have access to Wi-Fi and are running up their data usage as all classes are now online. Many scholars chimed in via the chat to share that the expectations we may be setting are not consistent with what students are able to do, in some cases because they have anxiety or are caring for loved ones, and in others because they do not have access to reliable technology. Some comments pointed to the fact that if technology is needed to access your classes it becomes a social justice issue. Seriously considering asynchronous learning over a mandated synchronous class meeting was suggested. To be honest, my biggest concern in running the Zoom as a facilitator was that I didn’t even know how to raise my hand to get called on during the conference. This is simply a skill I’ve never needed to use in zoom calls so how do we expect our students to just miraculously figure this out without additional support?
Some of our colleagues shared ideas like starting a Zoom class with an upbeat song to try and break up the monotony of the classes. Others discussed the importance of taking into consideration all of the other things the students are doing outside of class that may hinder their performance in class and making appropriate adjustments to our expectations.
Another great idea was to develop a “mentor match” which pairs mentors (i.e., graduates of the program and cooperating teachers) with preservice teachers to connect with during this strange time and to learn from them on how to navigate on-line PE. These relationships could also lead to live chats with in service teachers during class time, watching and analyzing teaching videos, and presenting scenarios to the preservice teachers (e.g., what would you do in this situation?)
The second main topic, which was a lively conversation as it may actually be the most affected part of PETE education, was moderated by Chad Killian and focused on this question: “how are you addressing field and experiential courses?”
There were various different video resources shared by colleagues including Atlas, a video repository for the National Board-Certified Teachers that includes 20min videos with a teacher synopsis added. Other resources included the Teaching Channel, Sim School (which to the best of my understanding is virtual teaching with simulated students developed through artificial intelligence), and Dynamic PE, which has short, 3-5min teaching videos. Many commented on FlipGrid; here is an example from Helena Baert. Rumor has it that SPARK University is supposed to upload videos this upcoming week that should be free for faculty members to access. While many of these options are attractive, some require expensive licenses to purchase and are not realistic options for all institutions. That said, maybe we need to consider creating a data base of quality videos (full lesson plans) to share amongst our community. Bill Anderson did this at Teachers College in the 1980’s…why have we not continued this?
Some colleagues shared resources of what assignments they have changed in their student teaching. You can find one via a blog here, SUNY Cortland shared some of their resources here, and other programs are keeping their student teachers “in the field” by virtually meeting with their cooperating teacher to implement online PE and continuing to get credit for student teaching.
A lively discussion occurred on the chat about edTPA. This was interesting as some states have not adopted edTPA and thus are not constrained by an additional layer of bureaucracy that could keep students from gaining their teaching license. For example, in Idaho, edTPA is being waived and teachers can be hired for one year without passing content exams (temp hire) – then they have one year to pass edTPA while teaching. In other states such as California, university faculty members are going straight up to the Governor and asking them to pardon these requirements this semester via executive order.
The third topic was: “what online resources are available to help us continue to teach effective PETE courses?” The discussion was led by Jennifer Krause. It would be silly for me to miss out on some shameless self-promotion here. Here is a link to a podcast we produce with weekly episodes breaking down PE research, theory, pedagogical models, and curriculum from across the world. You can find the podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, but most people listen here. Here is a google doc that breaks the episodes up by topic. And if you’re reading this blog you have arrived at our website that also acts to support faculty members: www.theHPEwebsite.com
Specific courses were listed as well, and for those of you looking for resources related to teaching Motor development or movement education, here are 16 FMS posters from SUNY Cortland. Other ideas were to do a Zoom class with 4 guests including a PE teacher, an adapted PE teacher, an online PE teacher, and a student teacher, to talk about the struggles and successes from different viewpoints. For teaching hours, one colleague created a list of 150 topics and had students sign up for one, create a 5-10 minute video on the topic, and post the link to share with the class. The PETE program then shares these videos with their local school district and gets feedback from teachers and administrators related to future video presentation topics. To me, this sounds like on-line service-learning! Or you could create your own podcast specific to your class like Adam Keath. Or you could use Pecha Kucha (a global health class).
Open PhysEd created a few webinars that are helpful for PETE students. Other resources are available at inclusive wellness, and ConnectedPE has some online free professional development as well. Here is a link for free screen recording for students. David Daum is also working with SHAPE America to create structured videos that are sequenced and planned to keep the E in PE. Be on the lookout for SHAPE America’s YouTube channel in the future.
And, as a reminder, if you are making online videos for your students, research suggest to keep them to 4-7 minutes to be most effective.
The final discussion topic was led by K. Andrew R. Richards and asked: “how is COVID-19 impacting the research enterprise in physical education now and into the future?” This discussion had a lot of great ideas, and brought up some struggles with research productivity being impacted during the pandemic, particularly for pre-tenure faculty members. Colleagues posted about various university policies on freezing tenure, the use (and non use) of student opinion questionnaires and having them on tenure applications, and giving a tenure rollback that grants another year during the probationary period. One colleague spoke about how almost all universities are expecting the faculty members to take the hit (waiting for tenure, pushing back a potential raise and job security) instead of adjusting requirements and having the university take on the “burden” of this crisis. The reality is, that some faculty with no kids at home or elderly family members to take care of are not equally affected by this crisis when compared to faculty with young kids at home who suddenly are asked to become home school teachers, continue in their full-time jobs, and are expected to produce research at the same level. Being untenured is a tough place to be pushing for change…a call was put out for senior scholars to be vocal about this topic and support the junior scholars who may not have the same status or security, which limits their ability to speak out. Clearly, this is a lot to think about and I have a feeling we will be coming back to this topic in a future meeting.
Mike Metzler brought up a great idea for a research collaboration for those interested in SOTL research, and said “this presents a once-in-a-career opportunity to study the impact of COVID-driven changes to teaching and learning--like many of the things mentioned here.” Metzler and colleagues are doing a study of this at Georgia State. Adding to ideas for research Hal Lawson suggested: “If the projections are accurate (how long physical distancing may last), research and scholarship options include: Research Reviews, Collaborative policy briefs, Comparative case studies with identical and similar innovations and more.”
It may be that researchers will move toward survey research, using adults as participants and collaborating in groups. This is the trend in our recent review of research in PE over the past 20+ years. A move could be done to seek to conduct research on professional development virtually. Or as Collin Webster suggested, to take advantage of open access data sets and other sources of previously collected data. Some may want to look forward and design a study to start in the fall if we are still restricted to on-line learning and compare a variety of measures to the following spring when we surely (I hope) will be back to normal.
So, we’ve come to the end of what was an amazing example of community in PETE. We really want to do this again and to do so, we need your feedback. Fill out this survey and explain to us if you’d be willing to participate again, and talk about other topics, or perhaps some of topics discussed today in more detail.
But, before I go… here are some questions that will get you thinking, and perhaps a conversation topic for a future meeting. Some of these are mine, some of them are copied from the chats.
Questions:
(1) Are we providing a one-size fits all approach to PE now that we are online?
(2) Where is the scope and sequence of PE? Right now, we see a lot of PA prescription, the vast majority of which is a disjointed set of activities without any real sequence or scope behind it. This is not, and has not been the PE we teach in PETE programs. Let’s not let it become the PE we are left with after COVID.
(3) I think with the HPEatHome we have to help our students be informed consumers. Just because it is on there doesn’t mean it should be used. So much comes back to the purpose of PE - and how teachers can stay true to their professional mission with how they approach online teaching and learning. (chat)
(4) I believe we should not focus on the online 'resources or tools' themselves... but zoom out a little and focus on the digital pedagogy...(this was a great post, and I think we were drowning there for a bit, but now that we are swimming again, we should really zoom out and focus on digital pedagogy. We could be here for a while).
In health,
Risto