Assessing content and pedagogical knowledge in physical education of mentees from the special education Department University of Education, winneba

Abstract

The aim of every teacher is to bring about a relatively permanent change in behaviour of learners they teach. For a teacher to be effective both the content knowledge and pedagogical skills play a vital role in their professional. Based on these observations the researcher deemed it necessary to assess the content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge in physical education of mentees originally from the Special Education Department in the University of Education Winneba. A purposive sampling technique was used to select all mentees from the Special Education Department who took courses in the P. E Department and therefore taught P.E during their out segment programme. This is because this type of sampling technique remained the only choice to help obtain the kind of data generated for the study. The researcher used purposive sampling method to select 25 student -teachers who responded to questionnaires designed in Likert format rating Strongly Agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree on physical education pedagogical content knowledge. Mean and standard deviation were calculated for the variables and inferential statistic of linear regression analyses was applied to show the significant influence. With Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient a significance level at 0.05 was reached with the finding that SPED mentees of the University Of Education, Winneba show a weak correlation between PEPCK and the other variables. The main recommendations are students who may desire to work in special schools as PE teachers should read PE as main area of study and take special education as their second subject. On the other hand Adapted Physical Education should be introduced as an elective subject in the physical education department to help solve the special need issues.