Planning Decisions of Physical Education Teachers

Forty-six PE teachers participated in the study. Among them, 27 had an experience of more than five years in teaching (12 women and 15 men) and 19 beginning teachers (12 women and 7 men). Teachers were presented five scenarios of instructional situations. They were asked to read each scenario and write a response detailing how they would react if the situation occurred during their teaching. Four hundred thirty-four proposals of actions were gathered and analysed since an answer could have many different proposals. The actions proposed were analysed from audiotapes of teachers’ interviews. They were classified according to an inductive technique. The opinions of experienced teachers, men and women, differed than those of their beginning colleagues, as indicated by the number and content of categories. Four categories of decisions dealt with the content of education: «adaptation of the exercises to the student», «creation of levels groups», «gradation of the difficulty», and «same activity for all.» The teachers had strategies immediately available to deal with the students’ individual differences. According to their personal characteristics, experienced teachers displayed a greater variety of application of sound principles of teaching.