A Critical Examination of Movement Content Knowledge Courses in Physical Education Teacher Education Programs

Despite increasing policy emphasis on improving teacher quality, little is known about how teachers acquire their movement content knowledge in physical education teacher education (PETE). To address this question we examined: (a) movement content courses designed to teach K-12 physical education content in the PETE curriculum, (b) the purpose of the movement content courses, (c) the focus of the movement content course syllabi, and (d) pedagogical tasks used to teach movement content knowledge. Data were collected from websites, program coordinators, and course syllabi in 26 PETE programs and analyzed using descriptive statistics or one-way chi-square test. A primary conclusion from this study is that not a lot of common content knowledge is taught in the PETE curriculums we examined. A second conclusion is that specialized content knowledge does not represent a significant focus in the movement content classes. These findings both support and challenge current policy initiatives that address teacher quality in PETE.