Chapter 5: Introducing Innovation to Those Who Matter Most—The P–12 Pupils’ Perceptions of Model-Based Instruction

Abstract

Rogers (1995) defines a social system as a group of people who share similar expertise and job responsibilities, and apply them in more or less similar settings—such as physical education teachers who conduct programs in P–12 schools. The social system comprises those who are making decisions to adopt an innovation as well as individuals or groups who act as change agents to influence decisions that lead to rejection, adoption, or discontinuance of an innovation (Rogers, 1995). The actions of change agents can take two forms—those that are made intentionally and explicitly to influence the adoption decisions of someone who is considering an innovation, and actions that are made for other reasons but still exert an influence on innovation adoption decisions. There is an identifiable set of potential intentional change agents for preservice teachers who would adopt model-based instruction (MBI) as the kind of pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 2004) needed for “best practice” in physical education: (a) physical education teacher education (PETE) program faculty members, (b) other students in the program, (c) cooperating teachers, (d) P–12 pupils, and (e) PETE students themselves. It is very likely that people in each of these groups have formulated opinions about MBI and would use their preferences to intentionally encourage or discourage a preservice teacher’s use and adoption of MBI. Students in a PETE program also come in contact with large numbers of P–12 pupils who they instruct in several lead-up practicums and the student teaching experience. It is unlikely that P–12 pupils become sufficiently aware to formulate a well-defined conceptualization of MBI that they would then use to intentionally influence a PETE student’s decisions about that approach. However, P–12 pupils are not tabulae rasa when it comes to formulating preferences for the content, structure, and pedagogy that they experience as learners in physical education (McCullick, Metzler, Cicek, Jackson, & Vickers, 2008); they have and will express those preferences in ways that have the potential to indirectly influence a teacher’s decision to reject, adopt, or discontinue any new content and/or instructional