Patt Dodds

Cognitive and Behavioral Components of Expertise in Teaching Physical Education

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize research on teaching expertise from physical education and other fields, although this is not an exhaustive review of the literature. After an introductory section about expertise in general and teaching expertise in particular, two examples of expertiserelated topics in physical education are discussed (the importance of personal performance skills and the importance of observational skills). The principal portion of the paper presents major findings about teaching expertise. Finally, methodological problems in undertaking research on teaching expertise are explained.

A Critical Incident Study of Preservice Teachers' Beliefs about Teaching Success and Nonsuccess

Abstract Written critical incident descriptions were collected from prospective teachers to understand what they see as salient features of their own successful and nonsuccessful teaching. Researchers reliably extracted, sorted, and categorized these features from descriptions until categories for success and nonsuccess stabilized. Participants (195, from two universities) produced 300 nonsuccess (19 categories) and 413 success (20 categories) features, providing teacher educators with indirect evidence of things their students already have learned about teaching. Many success and nonsuccess features grouped around students (over half), teacher (about a third), learning tasks, and environment. The largest number of responses in a single category was student noncompliance (29.7% of all responses) in the nonsuccessful teaching dimension.

Doctoral Programs: How to Choose, Apply, Survive, and Thrive

Abstract Three college friends—an elementary physical educator, a fitness club manager, and a district physical education director—meet for coffee ten years after graduation. They are well-established professionals with masters degrees, but they yearn for something more. Conversation about the possibility of doctoral studies and different career pathways within the same broad profession leads to brainstorming about the time, energy, and monetary investments needed for doctoral work.

Training Health Fitness Professionals in Human Interaction Skills: The Link to Physical Education Graduate Education

The author argues in a personalized statement that exercise science graduate degree programs ought to include attention to the questions of how people develop and maintain persistent exercise habits, and how health fitness professionals can help them do so. Recommendations are made for two-tiered graduate preparation in exercise science: masters degrees that focus on preparation of health fitness professionals trained in human interaction skills as well as exercise physiological bases for conducting fitness programs, and doctoral degrees that continue to focus on preparation of researchers and faculty members trained to expand the knowledge base in exercise physiology and to prepare both the new masters and doctoral candidates though graduate education programs.