Design and validation of a questionnaire to assess the Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Colombian Physical Education students in the practicum

Abstract

Background and Study Aim. In the training of Physical Education teachers, the practicum is considered a final stage of the training. The practicum implies an amalgamation and connection of the different knowledge acquired at the University and that, when contrasted with the real classroom practice, plays a fundamental role in the future professional development. The purpose of this study was to design and validate a questionnaire to measure the Pedagogical Content Knowledge of the Physical Education teacher trainee in the context of the practicum.
 Material and Methods. The participants were 146 practicum students of the Bachelor's degree program in Physical Education from four Colombian universities (115 men, 31 women, with an average age of 25.7 + 5.2 years). A non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in two phases, the first one: content validity and the second phase related to the analysis of psychometric properties.
 Results. A Content Validity Ratio of .92 was presented, which indicates a very high content validity based on Lawshe's model and with a sample of 10 expert judges in the field. In the exploratory factor analysis by the principal component analysis method and varimax rotation, 7 dimensions were proposed, with 36 items explaining 66.78 of the total variance of the instrument. The internal consistency was very satisfactory (α=.9).
 Conclusions. The questionnaire provides a valid, trustable, and specific instrument, which allows identifying the knowledge that a Physical Education practice student has about pedagogy, context, evaluation, teaching strategies, students, experience, and content. Furthermore, understanding this type of knowledge is a precondition that can allow improving the curricular designs of Physical Education degree programs.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the Physical Education Field. A systematic review of the literature 2011-2022

“…As mentioned above, the selected investigations were classified into three categories: Pedagogical Content Knowledge in School Physical Education, Pedagogical Content Knowledge in School Sports and Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Physical Education Teacher Training Programs; in Table 2 they are organized according to these categories and the authors who refer to them and, subsequently, a description of each one is presented. Fierro, Feu, et al, 2018;Almonacid-Fierro, Merellano-Navarro, et al, 2018;Ayvazo & Ward, 2011;Castejón Oliva & Fuentes Guerra, 2017;Chang et al, 2020;Ward, 2013) Pedagogical knowledge of the content in School Sport (Araújo et al, 2017;He et al, 2022;Iserbyt et al, 2016Iserbyt et al, , 2017Iserbyt et al, , 2020Kim & Ko, 2020;Sinelnikov et al, 2016;Ward et al, 2015) Pedagogical knowledge of content in physical education teacher training programs (Backman et al, 2019;Backman & Barker, 2020;Cañadas et al, 2019;Dervent et al, 2020;Farias et al, 2022;García-Rico et al, 2021;Herold, 2019;Herold & Waring, 2017;Le Paven et al, 2021;Marcon et al, 2012;Marquis & Metzler, 2017;Meier, 2020Meier, , 2021Montoya-Grisales et al, 2022;Musard et al, 2022;Mustell et al, 2022;Sutherland et al, 2016)…”

“…That is why, the programs that train PE teachers must emphasize the acquisition of skills in aspects such as: the execution of contents and teaching (Marquis & Metzler, 2017), especially from school practices (Herold, 2019); in learning from university service (García-Rico et al, 2021); the use of the joint action framework in didactics (Musard et al, 2022); in knowing how to use the game as a didactic resource and as teaching content (Cañadas et al, 2019) and, in valuing the CK of the movement from a constructivist perspective (Backman et al, 2019). In addition, understanding the PCK is a prerequisite that can allow improving the curricular designs of bachelor's programs in PE (Montoya-Grisales et al, 2022).…”

“…The PCK is likely to be approached and worked on in any discipline or science that needs to establish how effectively what should be taught reaches the students (Montoya Grisales & Arroyave Giraldo, 2021), studies have been found on university teaching (Díaz Pacheco, 2017;Medina et al, 2016;Mentado Labao et al, 2017;Parga-Lozano & Moreno-Torres, 2017); physics (Brines Brines et al, 2016;Campo Nava & Ramírez Díaz, 2019;Melo et al, 2017Melo et al, , 2020, biology (González & Rossi, 2015;Ravanal Moreno & López-Cortés, 2016), among others. A matter that from the didactic aspect puts the reflective action of the teacher to the test based on the contents of a personal order, theoretical or practical required by PE students (Montoya-Grisales et al, 2022), in the field of the PCK has been conceptualized as:…”