'How I Teach and Coach': The Epistemological Beliefs of Teacher-Coaches

Abstract

Epistemological beliefs (EB), or beliefs about knowledge and learning, help to inform teaching and coaching practices, and may have significant learning and developmental outcomes for students. Therefore, the purpose of this grounded theory study was to better understand the EB of high school physical education (PE) teacher-coaches as it relates to the sources and simplicity of games knowledge and how those beliefs inform their instructional practices when teaching games or coaching extracurricular sports in schools. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 secondary school PE teacher-coaches from south-central Canada. Teacher-coaches believed that games knowledge in both PE and extracurricular sports originate from a variety of internal and external sources, portray games knowledge as both simple and complex, associate PE and extracurricular sports with different knowledge or learning processes, and differentiate their instructional strategies more in PE compared to their coaching practices. This research study has theoretical and practical implications for enhanced teaching and coaching practices, as well as teacher education and coach-training programs, with the ultimate aim of enriching students’ learning experiences in physical education and interscholastic sport.