Monday, July 09, 2007

Sports coaching lesson assessment

Just in case people think that I am terribly biased against paddling coaches from a certain organisation, let me show some simple assessment methods taught in NIE for us to assess a PE lesson.

Quantitative methods- distribution of time
  • Instructional/management/motor engaged time

Qualitative - lesson delivery
  • Appropriate teaching style
  • Activity suitability
  • Lesson progression
  • Selection and reinforcement of learning points
  • Quality of demonstration
  • Meeting students' need and expectation
  • Use of questions for understanding
  • Questioning technique
  • Type, frequency and quality of feedback.
How does the paddling coaches from over there measure up? They will fail horribly if their lesson is assessed in quantitative terms by measuring up their management time (undesirable) against the student's active learning time (the more the better).

Qualitative assessment will show that they do have the content, but the teaching is atrocious. Objective of skills are often not clarified, they jump from teaching one skill to another without revealing reason, relevance or relationship, they either say too little or say too much without using keywords, students' expectations (most of the time it means 'having fun') are definitely not met, questions not asked and technique on questioning clearly not understood, feedback non-existent or negative (it often sounds like praise but you can tell the insincerity), and the language used is poor, authoritative, condescending and unbecoming of instructors.

Now, let them try to prove it to me otherwise.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are not wrong in your beliefs, your reasoning here backs it up. Problem is that in this situation, which you inherited not of your own free will, any imposition of such beliefs would equate to interfering simply because you weren't the intructor. Now what if the CSSC decided to let you school know that they thought you interfered? That would have gotten some unnecessary flak for yourself...

Pls make sure you get your school SCF affiliated and start to teach all kayaking to your school kids yourself. Spare us all these agony...

Anonymous said...

Sometimes, stuck with a course I dun like, I still think there's always something to learn from every course, even though you do not like how it's conducted. Everyone is there to learn... including yourself. Your students learn about kayaking, while you may learn about how to improve your teaching skills by observing the mistakes of others.

Take a step back, just sit and observe, dun need to get too worked up with it. There are times I think I know a lot and only think that my way is the best and most correct way. But then I also realise, that if I remain open and receptive, I may discover new things in the process, and fine-tune my knowledge. However, if I insist on doing things my own way, I will only end up frustrated, and worse, in the process, give others a bad impression of me. People may feel that I'm too proud or arrogant.

If you feel your way is better, teach it to ur students after the lessons at another day. Expose your students to both styles, and if you are good, they can make their own judgement, tell the difference and appreciate the value-added stuff you have for them.

Wolfie said...

True true...everyone learns. For the money we paid, the kids should get a better deal though.

Anyway, no one will be bothered if they 'complained' to my school. 3 other ODAC teachers are with me, out of which 2 are HODs, and they back me up in my assessment of the course.