european college of sport science

Friday, June 26th, 2009
The aim of this presentation is to present teacher evaluations of the use and effectiveness of ICT in PE. How do teachers evaluate ICT
usage with regard to learning outcomes and learning environments in PE?
Methods: The presentation is based on results of a national teacher survey,
“Skolefagundersøkelsen 08” (National School Subject Survey 08). The objective of this survey was to map curriculum teachers’ evaluations
and usage of ICT in the context of their own lower secondary classroom practices in their respective schools. Of the 991 teachers responding,
89 of them were PE teachers.
Results: Findings from the survey show substantial differences between teachers’ evaluations in different curriculum subjects as well as
individual differences within one particular subject. PE stands out as the curriculum subject with the highest degree of consensus.
ICT is not practised nor regarded as an important and generic tool for achievement in PE. Attitudes to ICT are more negative in PE than in
any other curriculum subject.
While in PE exist a negative consensus view on ICT, this view is also found in other subjects like Arts and Crafts, but teachers in this subject
also regard ICT as an efficient tool for learning in certain aspects of the subject, e.g. artistic inspiration and documentation of creative
processes. No aspects with the same dimension are found in PE.
Discussion: Less use of ICT and a negative attitude towards ICT is found more among PE teachers than among teachers in other subjects.
This reflects PE teachers’ views on what are the essential and core subject values and goals for learning. They do not identify learning
goals that best and uniquely can be served by ICT usage and express at the same time a fear that ICT intensive activities in PE may direct
pupils’ foci from essential and core subject values and goals for learning.
With regard to the relationship between ICT and PE, this study tells us that we need future qualitative case studies to see if we can indeed
identify parts of PE that best and uniquely can be served by what kind of ICT usage. If we can’t, then we must ask ourselves if PE supports
the acquisition of ICT competence to a relevant extent or if this could better be accomplished in other subjects.
VOCATIONAL PERSONALITY AND PROFESSIONAL BURNOUT IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHERS
BRUDNIK, M.
UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION: Professional development of man consists of three strata: objective, constituted by a given contents of the job to be
performed, social, or the social environment, and personal, associated with autoperception, a sense of value and life accomplishment.
The intertwined spheres form a harmonious entity called by John L. Holland the vocational personality. A profession that does not correspond
to the predispositions of an employee may cause chronic stress, a sense of defeat and also convince him of his low value. A
mismatch between an employee and his professional environment often contributes to the development of burnout syndrome (Banka
1995).
Using a macro-path of professional burnout in PE teachers plotted in a four-phase typological model (Brudnik 2008), the author analyzed
burnout in teachers working in accordance with their vocational personality as well as those not matched to their professional environment.
METHOD: The survey was carried out in May 2006-June 2007 among male PE teachers N=771. The employed tools were: Maslach Burnout
Inventory and Holland’s Self Direct Search; the statistical methods included data clustering (K-mean method) and U Mann Whitney
test.
RESULTS: Of 771 investigated subjects, males characterized by good and lacking match to practice their profession: N=664 (86.1%) and
N=107 (13.9%). Burnout of professionally matched and mismatched PE teachers is illustrated using a four-phase typological model.
The macro-path of professional burnout of PE teachers bifurcates at Phase F1 (Brudnik 2008). The results suggest that a decisive factor in
the macro-path bifurcation is the degree of match between the investigated teachers and their professional environment.
Matched teachers experience burnout in keeping with path I, reacting to stress with emotional exhaustion (the Maslach’s path). In the
mismatched group, stress primarily triggers depersonalization of pupils (F1) – the Golembiewski’s path, what is indicated by cluster II.
(N=31), which illustrates disillusionment with one’s work associated with increasing depersonalization of pupils at a low level of emotional
exhaustion. The subsequent cluster (IV, N=23), Phase (F2) represents emotionally exhausted teachers, who treat their pupils as objects (IV,
N=23).
While undergoing burnout, mismatched teachers (F3) lose the sense of their work (Z=-5.191, p