Merging observational and interview data to study and improve the adaptability of the products of didactic engineering to ordinary teaching in physical education

ABSTRACT Introduction Our team of researchers proposed volunteer teachers to experiment with reference situations (RS) in middle-distance running, within the framework of a didactic engineering. During the conception stage, these RS were designed to serve as a starting point and an assessment tool of a teaching sequence. During the experimentation stage, teachers were expected to provide students with additional learning tasks and experiences that targeted the learning issues resulting from a priori analysis of the RS by the research team. Purpose In line with previous research in mathematics and PE showing that the transmission of the products of didactic engineering was not self-evident, we focused on the ways teachers had reappropriated the RS and had dealt with their associated learning issues with the support of researchers. We illustrated how mixed methods have been heuristic for this purpose. Methods and results We used a mixed-methods design merging observational and interview data. Eight primary school teachers participated in this study, the first layer of which focusing on the ways they addressed learning issues related to the RS. For each teacher, one researcher recorded four lessons and collected written documents. Then, through a priori analysis of the tasks whose purpose was learning and analysis of teacher and students’ joint action, the researcher recorded in a synopsis if the learning issues were (a) missing, (b) potential or (c) taught. These analyses showed that learning issues were taught little, if at all, by teachers. We restricted to the case of one PE teacher (George) the illustration of the second layer of our mixed-methods design, focusing on how teachers’ practical epistemology impacted the ways RS and learning issues conceived by the research team were transformed or adapted in the class. Observational data were articulated with the teacher’s reflexive verbalisations generated within one self-confrontation interview after two lessons and one semi-structured interview at the end of the experimentation. The results obtained in the case of George helped to understand how and why he had reappropriated the RS in a way that was unexpected to the research team. For example, his experience made him consider that teaching middle-distance running meant above all acting on students’ mental attributes. This experiential dimension of George’s practical epistemology was in line with his progressive way of confronting students with the RS. Moreover, the researcher succeeded in acting on George’s practical epistemology regarding the interest and the possibility of teaching running techniques. Discussion and conclusion Our mixed-methods design proved to be suitable for studying and improving the adaptability of the products of didactic engineering to ordinary teaching in PE in a more dialectical way. Our results challenge the relatively large number of learning issues to be taught, the complexity to teach them and their compatibility with teachers’ practical epistemology, which has nevertheless been shown to be evolving. These findings are crucial in the perspective of a wide dissemination of curricular resources aiming at renewing the teaching of PE in line with the current competency-based approach.