The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education is the definitive guide for future K-12 physical educators, as well as current teachers and administrators, and is an appropriate resource for learning to teach at both the elementary and the secondary levels.

Preparing Future Teachers for Success

The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education is the most up-to-date resource that meets the new SHAPE America National Standards and Grade-Level Outcomes. Fully integrated with all SHAPE America assessments, the text is comprehensive in its coverage of what future teachers need to know about teaching K-12 physical education and offers a flexible, individualized approach to enhance student learning and acquisition of skills.

The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education helps prepare future teachers by providing them with these aspects:

• Insight into student motivation

• A working knowledge of standards-based outcomes and content that will help students achieve the outcomes

• The ability to plan for learning in both the short and the long term

• Management and teaching skills to ensure an equitable environment that fosters student learning in three domains: psychomotor, cognitive, and affective

• The means to assess student learning and program effectiveness

Teaching for Learning Approach

In addition, The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education offers a practical and highly successful teaching for learning approach to curriculum development, which makes it easy to put the contents of the book in action and prepare students to graduate with a high degree of physical literacy. The book’s focus on physical literacy, accountability, and social justice, all key elements to high-quality physical education, will prepare future teachers to step into their jobs on day one, ready to deliver an effective program. The text also supplies a vocabulary of the current terminology used in physical education.

Ancillaries and Book Organization

The Essentials of Teaching Physical Education comes with a test bank, a PowerPoint presentation package that has approximately 15 slides per chapter, and a web resource with reproducible forms and supplemental activities.

The authors organized the book in five parts. Part I focuses on understanding the teaching for learning approach, and part II details the five national physical education standards. Part III delves into unit and lesson planning and developmentally appropriate content and curriculum models, and part IV explores how to establish safe learning environments, develop essential teaching skills, and assess student learning. Part V completes the picture for future students by tackling issues that are important to 21st-century skills and professional development.

The Resource for Developing Physically Literate Students

The result is a practical and well-researched resource that will help current and future physical educators develop physically literate students while providing guidance for accountability and social justice and meeting the SHAPE America National Standards and Grade-Level Outcomes. And that makes it a win–win–win: a win for teachers and future teachers, a win for their students, and a win for the United States as it progresses toward becoming a healthier nation.

Steve Mitchell, PhD, is a professor of physical education teacher education at Kent State University. He has BS and MA degrees in physical education and education from Loughborough University in England and a PhD in education from Syracuse University. Steve has coauthored four other books with Human Kinetics and has numerous refereed journal publications to his credit. He has also made dozens of keynote addresses and scholarly presentations. Mitchell is a member of SHAPE America (formerly AAHPERD), serving on many committees for that organization. He is a past president of the Ohio Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (OAHPERD). In 2005, he received the NASPE Physical Education Teacher Education Honor Award.

Jennifer L. Walton-Fisette, EdD, is an associate professor of physical education teacher education in the School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies at Kent State University. She obtained her BS in physical education from Rhode Island College, MS in sport pedagogy from Ithaca College, and EdD in physical education teacher education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her scholarship explores the critical examination of girls' lived experiences and embodied identities in physical education and physical activity through student voice, assessment, and curriculum development. She is currently exploring how sociocultural issues are included and addressed in PETE programs locally, nationally, and internationally. Dr. Walton-Fisette has published 3 books and more than 20 research articles. She was a member of the PE Metrics writing team on both editions and is actively involved with SHAPE America, OAHPERD, and other associations.