Gary Kinchin

A Pilot Study (PS) is a small-scale research project conducted before the final full-scale study. A PS helps researchers to test in reality how likely the research process is to work, in order to help them decide how best to conduct the final research study. In piloting a study, a researcher can identify or refine a research question, discover what methods are best for pursuing it, and estimate how much time and what resources will be necessary to complete the larger final version of the study. There is, however, a paucity in literature that focuses on using, reading and representing PSs. This article discusses the importance of a PS to test and identify how methods and ideas would work in practice when undertaking a qualitative PhD thesis. The proposed PS in this paper addressed many challenges, and the researcher reflected on different perspectives of their work including ethical, cultural, social and professional issues. By the end of the PhD thesis, undertaken with the guidance ...

Democratic education (DE) sees young people not as passive recipients of knowledge, but rather as active co-creators of their own learning and valued participants in a learning community. This study investigates tutors’ understanding and implementation of DE in the Egyptian Higher Education (HE). It investigates HE tutors’ conception about learners controlling their educational process by being fully embedded in it. Data for this qualitative paper was collected from 20 tutors from two Egyptian universities via one-to-one interviews and focus groups. This study highlighted the inference of political events in Egypt, since 2011, on HE students in their way of thinking and reflecting and addressed the need of DE to be a part of the educational paradigm. This paper concluded that DE is based on placing students in the centre of their learning and empowering them. Also, tutor-student dialogic approach and tutor-student trust are essential approaches to implement DE.

The development of feelings of identity, the sense of belonging to a team, and the growth of social skills are experiences that sport, if properly conducted, is well placed to offer (Siedentop, 1994). Evidence suggests that some characteristics of traditional, multiactivity forms of physical education work against realizing these goals (Locke, 1992). Siedentop’s Sport Education (SE) model is one attempt to overcome this shortcoming by recasting units as seasons and maintaining persisting groups as teams throughout the season. Extended units intended to foster team affiliation while promoting affective and social development are common objectives in physical education. We report on a 16-week SE unit that includes over 70 Year-5 students (9- to 10-year-olds) from one UK school. Our findings show that the opportunity to become affiliated with a team was an attractive feature of the pupils’ physical education experience and that, under the framework of SE, there was an obvious investmen...

... Templin , TJ & Schempp , PG (1989) Socialization into physical education: learning to teach ( Indianapolis ... and coaches and experiences of school life and PE and sport, during what ... View all references) termed the 'apprenticeship of observation,' shape views on what constitutes ...

Recent reviews illustrate the considerable literature on Sport Education. However, research on the experiences of non-specialist physical education teachers attempting Sport Education is limited. The focus of this research was to investigate non-specialist teachers’ views on Sport Education and identify what possibilities might exist regarding Sport Education in the context of primary schooling. Eight teachers (four males and four females) from four primary schools in Ireland volunteered to take part in this study. Following in-service in Sport Education, all teachers delivered a unit of work in their schools. Data were collected using individual teacher and focus-group interviews, and each was visited during implementation. Findings indicated Sport Education was an entirely new teaching and learning experience for these teachers which they found to be professionally rewarding and pedagogically refreshing. Teachers discussed high levels of enjoyment displayed by their pupils. An enthusiasm for exploring the integrative potential for Sport Education was evident, and many teachers wished for more examples of how the characteristics of Sport Education could be further integrated across the primary curriculum.

Recent reviews illustrate the considerable literature on Sport Education. However, research on the experiences of non-specialist physical education teachers attempting Sport Education is limited. The focus of this research was to investigate non-specialist teachers’ views on Sport Education and identify what possibilities might exist regarding Sport Education in the context of primary schooling. Eight teachers (four males and four females) from four primary schools in Ireland volunteered to take part in this study. Following in-service in Sport Education, all teachers delivered a unit of work in their schools. Data were collected using individual teacher and focus-group interviews, and each was visited during implementation. Findings indicated Sport Education was an entirely new teaching and learning experience for these teachers which they found to be professionally rewarding and pedagogically refreshing. Teachers discussed high levels of enjoyment displayed by their pupils. An enthusiasm for exploring the integrative potential for Sport Education was evident, and many teachers wished for more examples of how the characteristics of Sport Education could be further integrated across the primary curriculum.

... If, on starting to play baseball, I do not accept that others know better than I when to ... On the other hand, someone who is an excellent tennis player can gain extrinsic goods such as ... of practice that sport education seeks to repre-sent does not exist merely as an ideal, but must ...

Background: Coaches developing young talent in team sports must maximise practice and learning of essential game skills and accurately and continuously assess the performance and potential of each player. Relative age effects highlight an erroneous process of initial and on-going player assessment, based largely on subjective opinions of game performance. A more objective assessment of each player's progress by measuring essential skills during practice is warranted to guide and improve coaching and assessment of talented children. Purpose: To measure the effects of the coaching intervention on performance and learning during a group technical practice. A second purpose was to repeatedly measure each player's passing, first touch and an awareness response and to measure the reliability of peer assessment as an immediate source of objective feedback. Setting: Weekly coaching sessions at an English professional soccer club academy. A total of 22 practices occurred during the second half of a soccer season. Participants: Academy boys aged 10–12 years, with five players participating throughout the study. The coach was a European ‘A’ licence holder and an experienced physical education teacher. Intervention: The coach and players defined the practice requirements and how to perform each skill successfully. Players were taught to observe, assess and record the performance of their peers. After the practice, players charted their objective scores and bonus game play was awarded based on self-set goal attainment. Research design: A single-subject, multiple-baseline experiment was used to assess the effects of the intervention on performance of the three skills and the reliability of the performance measures. The design and intervention enabled the repeated measurement of all players’ performance and learning during each phase and condition of the experiment. Data collection and analysis: Baseline data were collected from video recording of practice and intervention data were collected from recording and live by a player and the coach. Percent correct scores for each skill were plotted on graphs for visual analysis. Agreements between live and primary video data were calculated to evaluate the reliability of peer-assessed scores. Findings: The intervention was shown to improve the level and consistency of performance in all five participants, which, for most players and skills, was maintained when the intervention was removed. Players were willing and able to reliably assess their peers and collect objective data on each player's performance. They enjoyed receiving and charting their scores and reported a greater confidence in these skills in competitive situations. Conclusions: The findings suggest this formal accountability, feedback and reinforcement procedure provides a promising method to maximise practice and learning and accurately assess the progress of talented youth soccer players. Further research is recommended to examine the congruent validity of performance measures from more complex learning tasks to discriminate talent and tackle relative age effects. Implications for future talent development coaching and coach education include the potential for repeatable and measurable systems (a technology) to track performance and learning during coaching–practice to help develop and determine the most able children.