Planning the first stage of the class year. The perspectives of pe student-teachers and supervisors

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to investigate sources of knowledge used on the pre-acting decisions, made on the first stage of the class year, after a Physical Education preparation course and an induction period.

Methods

In a first moment data were collected from a universe of 169 student-teachers, and, in a second moment, from 36 student-teachers and 28 supervisors, by means of an open questionnaire focused on some selected decision dimensions: themes discussed in school conferences, work documents, planning elements, goals for teachers and students, choice and organization of contents, organization of students, collected information, choice and organization of learning experiences, use of collected information to formulate learning objectives.

Conclusions

The results indicate that after the induction period, the student-teachers incorporate a more specific conception about those decision dimensions, but the nature of the decisions they made is not similar to their supervisors’. The work documents produced, the planning elements, and the collected information were the main characteristics of the decision dimensions of both student-teachers and supervisors; however, the student-teachers gave priority to all documents, elements or information concerned with the evaluation process on this first stage of the class year, while the supervisors only focused on those dimension for characterisation and organization.