ABSTRACT

Background: A plethora of new terms and digital pedagogies have been making recent headlines in higher education with the promise, or threat, that digital technology will revolutionise the way in which universities operate. Blended learning is part of this digital revolution and institutions of higher education worldwide are increasingly adopting it as a new mode of delivery. The exposure of blended learning as central to mainstream higher education has been heightened exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: Challenged by the argument around the concept of ‘blended’ being ill defined, and also given the lack of practical ‘blended’ experiences in physical education teacher education (PETE), this paper aims to explore physical education teacher educators’ and pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) enactment and experiences of an integrated approach to blended learning.

Method: Three physical education teacher educators and two classes of physical education PSTs participated. The integrated blended approach was designed through a block structure which allowed intended outcomes, teaching and learning activities and assessment tasks to be aligned and interconnected. Data collection occurred over two academic years for the same three physical education teacher educators and two different cohorts of PSTs. Focus groups interviews were conducted with the three teacher educators and a voluntary sample of PSTs. PSTs’ learning blogs were also analysed.

Results: Findings were presented in three categories: Development of strong building blocks; Blended learning ‘releases the teaching and learning from the grips of the lecturer’; and Assessment in a blended (and non-blended) environment. We attempted to go beyond the binary humanist assumption about blended learning by designing an integrated approach with a clear but flexible structure. That is, with an organic alignment and purposeful integration of all its instructional components.

Conclusions: When introducing blended learning in a (physical education) teacher education programme, we suggest designing an aligned and integrated approach structured in blocks, where all instructional components are interconnected and informing each other, enhancing prior knowledge. Given the growing role of digital technology for teaching and learning in educational policies and new PETE curricula, we advocate for the publication of more research-based experiences on blended learning in PETE programmes that might be replicated in other PETE programmes. This would encourage colleagues to explore the implications of digital technology and learn from other PETE contexts and also the sustainability of digital technology as an established mode of delivery.

摘要

背景：大量新术语和数字教学法最近成为高等教育的头条新闻，它们承诺或威胁数字技术将彻底改变大学的运作方式。混合式学习是这场数字革命的一部分，世界各地的高等教育机构越来越多地采用它作为一种新的教学模式。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，混合学习作为主流高等教育的核心的曝光率呈指数增长。

目的：受到围绕“混合”概念定义不明确的争论的挑战，也考虑到体育教师教育（PETE）中缺乏实际的“混合”经验，本文旨在探索体育教师教育者和预服务教师 (PST) 制定和体验混合式学习的综合方法。

方法：三名体育教师和两班体育PST参加。综合混合方法是通过块结构设计的，该结构允许预期结果、教学和学习活动以及评估任务保持一致和相互关联。数据收集发生在两个学年，针对相同的三位体育教师教育者和两个不同的 PST 队列。对三位教师教育工作者和 PST 的自愿样本进行了焦点小组访谈。还分析了 PST 的学习博客。

结果：调查结果分为三类：开发强大的积木；混合式学习“将教与学从讲师的掌握中解放出来”；在混合（和非混合）环境中进行评估。我们试图通过设计一种结构清晰但灵活的综合方法来超越关于混合学习的二元人文主义假设。也就是说，它的所有教学组件有机地对齐和有目的的整合。

结论：在（体育）教师教育计划中引入混合学习时，我们建议设计一种以块为结构的统一和集成方法，其中所有教学组件相互关联并相互通知，增强先验知识。鉴于数字技术在教育政策和新的 PETE 课程中的教学和学习的作用越来越大，我们提倡在 PETE 项目中发布更多基于研究的混合学习经验，这些经验可能会在其他 PETE 项目中复制。这将鼓励同事探索数字技术的影响，并从其他 PETE 环境中学习，以及数字技术作为一种既定交付模式的可持续性。