Authentic learning tasks within physical education teacher education redesigning the curriculum
Teaching PE requires an integrated set of knowledge, skills and attitudes and for optimal development students should be exposed to various meaningful learning situations. However, the current School of Sport Studies PETE curriculum seems to be suboptimal due to compartmentalization and fragmentation of knowledge, skills and attitudes, thereby hindering optimal transfer of what is learnt in PETE to what is done in the field. In addition, the PE profession is subject to continuous change (e.g. PE as an examinable subject, PE teachers as liaison officers between school, community and sport clubs) while there is also an increasing demand for reflective practice and life long learning. Altogether, this has prompted a rigorous redesign of the PETE curriculum. The curriculum redesign process was based on the principles of the four component instructional design (4C ID) model (Van Merrienboer, Clark, Croock, 2002) Central in this approach are authentic learning tasks: situations that emerge from the actual PE profession. First, a skill hierarchy was created that served as a foundation for further curriculum design. Second, a blueprint was worked out, providing a global thematic overview of the four year curriculum. Then, education was worked out in detail through the design of authentic learning tasks. The design process has resulted in a more coherent curriculum in which authentic learning tasks form the backbone and in which knowledge, skills and attitudes are optimally integrated. The 4C ID model provides a promising starting point for curriculum (re)design for PETE. Within this presentation an overview of the curriculum will be provided and the suitability of the 4C ID model as well as various organizational and educational challenges are discussed.