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This study described 476 recruits’ physical education backgrounds and beliefs about the purposes for physical education. Beliefs about purposes are formed in part by physical education experiences and are important to examine because they are difficult to change and because they influence students’ receptivity to teacher education. Most recruits recalled programs that focused on traditional team sports, games, and fitness programs, with less emphasis on individual sports and expressive or noncompetitive activities. Few differences by sex, race, or socioeconomic status were found. Recruits’ reported purposes were coded into nine categories; the top purposes were learning skills, named specific activities, and fitness. The discussion focuses on the possibility of the existence of a de facto national curriculum and factors to consider if changes in physical education curriculum are desired.

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This study was designed to investigate how the classroom ecology (interactions among task systems) and program of action influence participants’ understandings of misbehavior in a middle school physical education setting. One teacher and 14 students participated in a 10-day basketball unit with 47- minute classes. Data included fieldnotes, stimulated recall using videotapes, and semi-structured teacher and student pre- and post-unit interviews. Data were first analyzed inductively by constant comparison (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and then by using Doyle’s (1986) classroom ecology model to understand the inductively generated categories. Data trustworthiness involved prolonged engagement, member checks, and triangulation. Results indicated that the teacher’s weak managerial task system, coupled with vague and incomplete instructional tasks, interacted with a student social system grounded in various forms of talk as social tasks to support a social program of action. Both teacher and student actions jointly created a primary social vector characterizing the overall program of action.

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