- What are the major themes or ideas in your content discipline?
As a Physical/Health Educator the major themes or ideas in my content discipline would be overall wellness and lifetime activity. These two themes create the base of the discipline. For a Physical/Health Education program to be effective the students must first understand the major themes. For example, a student cannot achieve overall wellness if they do not know/understand the different components of it (i.e. spiritual, mental, emotional, etc.). The growing movement in the U.S. today is technology. And while this movement has no effect on the major themes in my discipline it does have an effect on the way that the major themes are communicated to the students (i.e. wii fit, dance dance revolution, etc.).
- Does your content discipline rely on specific processes for developing the key themes or ideas?
Yes, in that there are three stages of motor learning and at which there are different skills a student must learn before they can move onto the next stage. Those three stages are the cognitive stage, associative stage, and the autonomous stage. For example, the student must be able to execute an underhand throw before moving onto bowling (using correct bowling form). The processes that my content discipline relies on can be made more efficient with technology use. One way technology is being used in my discipline is using video footage of students performance of a particular skill and then using that footage to place them into a stage of motor learning. The video footage also helps in showing the educator what the student is doing wrong and then allowing the educator time to come up with strategies on how to correct the problem. This is just one of the many ways that technology is helping to improve the specific processes that my content discipline relies on.
- How much of what you know is dependent on the way you learned your subject(s)?
Progression. As a student I learned the skills needed for my content subject in a progression format and that format or way of teaching is integral to the way that I will teach some day. For a student to get to the autonomous stage they must first have mastered the previous stages. The student would have mastered those by using the skill of progression when learning the subject. The education that I received in the recent past is already outdated. Knowing this as an educator I need to become lifelong learner and adjust to the changing technology by learning the new and latest technology to introduce into my classroom.
- Do you think in terms of your content by the chapters in a textbook or do you think in terms of your content as an integrated whole?
An integrated whole. While the chapters in a textbook are a nice guide to follow at times they are not relevant all of the time. For example why spend an extensive amount of time on a chapter about lifestyle diseases if the main problem in the school is underage tobacco usage. Of course you would spend more time on tobacco (because it is the main problem at the school) than you would on something that is not a major issue because the students already have a good grasp on that area. While textbooks are a nice guide there are many other sources for my content (i.e. united streaming, discovery health, etc.). Knowing that there are other resources out there that integrate technology and convey the same message that the textbook does I can choose to intersperse the textbook assignments with technology assignments. This integration of technology is key in reaching the diverse learners in a classroom.
- Does your knowledge of this discipline represent an integration of the concepts and processes that connect them?
Absolutely, to understand wellness one must first have a grasp of the central concepts and processes that relate/connect to the central idea. Example a student must understand the immune system and its functions before moving onto pathogens and how the affect the immune system and the body. This integration of concepts and processes is integral to concept mastery and is only successful when integration takes place.
