Elementary physical education specialists: a commitment to student learning

There are' 'too few studies which explore the subjective world of teachers in terms of their conceptions of what is salient" (Lortie, 1973, p. 490). Familiarity, Lortie argued, has dulled our curiosity about how teachers perceive their work. This monograph is intended to refocus our attention on the lives of seven teachers, to understand what it is they do in schools with young children, how they do it, and why it is these teachers continue to struggle, day after day and year after year, to provide quality experiences for children in the gymnasium despite the presence of factors that question the validity of their work. The specific purpose of this study was to investigate the work and beliefs of effective elementary physical education teachers. We attempted to do that in several ways by looking first at how they started the school year, how they planned to accomplish the long- and short-term goals they had established; and we interviewed them several times to learn about their perspectives on teaching: what they cared about as teachers and what kinds of expectations they had for their students