Welcome to the Learning to Teach Physical Education Research Program in Kinesiology at The Ohio State University. The purpose of the research program is to serve as a platform for collaboration among physical education researchers to conduct rigorous, often innovative, educationally relevant research on teaching effectiveness in physical education. The Learning to Teach Physical Education Research Program has as its central focus the improvement of pedagogical content knowledge in teaching physical education. Pedagogical content knowledge occupies a central place in our research program because we believe that it represents one of the most significant challenges to teaching and learning in physical education. The component of pedagogical content knowledge that we focus on at present are knowledge of content, of students, of context, and of pedagogy. In teacher education we focus on the pedagogies of practice-based teacher education and helping preservice and inservice teachers adapt their instruction to meet student needs. Collectively, projects in the Learning to Teach Physical Education Research Program use multiple methodologies, and involve multi-institutional teams across the United States and globally. We welcome inquiries from scholars, teachers and prospective graduate students. Inquires can be addressed to the program director, Dr. Phillip Ward at ward.116@osu.edu.
Our Scientific Goals
- To investigate the relationships between the sub-components of pedagogical content knowledge in physical education.
- To investigate the relationships between pedagogical content knowledge and student learning in physical education.
In accomplishing these goals we hope to:
- Develop evidenced-based best practices for use in professional development in pre-service and continuing education.
- To foster global collaborations among researchers studying content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in physical education.
- To train graduate students, visiting scholars and physical education teacher education scholars to support the next generation of researchers on this topic.
For more information contact:
Phillip Ward Ph.D. Director of the research program: ward.116@osu.edu