Students’ experiences and learning in physical education
the present thesis aimed to create useful knowledge for teachers and students’ everyday lives through physical education. To create useful knowledge for the students, it may be beneficial to take a starting point in situations students themselves find important. In this way one may investigate students’ actions and reflections of such situations.
Dag Ove Granås Hovdal
PhD Candidate
You may follow the disputation online. Link for registration as an online spectator at the bottom of this page.
The disputation will be held in Scandinavian languages - not in English.
Dag Ove Granås Hovdal of the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Agder has submitted his thesis entitled «Students’ experiences and learning in physical education» and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Tuesday 15 November 2022.
He has followed the PhD programme at the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Agder.
Summary of the thesis by Dag Ove G. Hovdal:
Students’ experiences and learning in physical education
The Norwegian education programme indicates, through its values, that the school shall help students to live, learn and work together in a complex present time and when meeting with an unknown future (UDIR, 2019).
As such, the present thesis aimed to create useful knowledge for teachers and students’ everyday lives through physical education.
Important situations for students
To create useful knowledge for the students, it may be beneficial to take a starting point in situations students themselves find important. In this way one may investigate students’ actions and reflections of such situations.
Dag Ove G. Hovdal presented following questions in his project “students’ experiences and learning in physical education”:
- What do students experience and learn in/from situations they perceive as important?
- How do situations in PE influence students’ experiences and learning?
Method
The participants consisted of students and teachers from two physical education classes.
The data creation started at the end of the students’ 8th grade and lasted throughout their 9th grade.
The abovementioned questions were investigated through the following:
1. Written narratives by the students at the end of their 8th grade.
2. Interviews of students about the situations they wrote about in their narratives.
3. One interview with each of the physical education teachers concerning their teaching and the PE lessons.
4. Observation and video recordings of 14 PE lessons.
5. Written narratives at the end of each PE lesson.
6. Interviews of the students and the teachers concerning situations in general and situations using video clips from the physical education lessons.
The findings were presented in three articles:
Article 1 investigated situations where students disrupted themselves, other students, or the teacher in the lesson.
The disruptive situations occurred when it was environmental opportunities for them. The students could contribute to, distance themselves from, or try to stop disruptive situations. The students could find disruptive situations fun, annoying, or did not know whether they liked the situations or not.
The teacher had several tools to deal with disruptive situations, but the number of such situations were not reduced over time.
Article 2 investigated situations with social inclusion/exclusion in team activities.
Even though students could dislike the excluding actions of peers, such as dribbling and trying to score goals, such actions were applauded if the actions lead to positive outcomes for the team.
The students could further dislike the excluding actions of peers in some situations, while performing excluding actions themselves in other situations.
The students did not seem to learn being social inclusive in team activities.
Article 3 investigated competitive situations.
The students could both like and dislike the pressure in competitive situations.
Students could increase their effort if it was a competition, but they could also reduce their effort or give up if they thought they would lose. Giving up if one “knew” that one would lose, could further be seen as acceptable.
The articles discussed how the mentioned situations could be used, to facilitate/create situations for learning for the students, so it also became relevant to the students’ everyday lives.
Disputation facts:
The trial lecture and the public defence will take place in Gabriel Scotts Auditorium B1 001, Campus Kristiansand and online via the Zoom conferencing app - registration link below.
Dean, Professor Anders Johan Wickstrøm Andersen, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, will chair the disputation.
The trial lecture Tuesday 15 november at 10:15 hours
Public defense Tuesday 15. november at 12:30 hours
Given topic for trial lecture: «Take the current curriculum for the school subject physical education as a starting point and discuss how the selected theoretical perspectives on learning can influence teaching»
Thesis Title: «Students’ experiences and learning in physical education»
Search for the thesis in AURA - Agder University Research Archive, a digital archive of scientific papers, theses and dissertations from the academic staff and students at the University of Agder.
The thesis is available here:
https://uia.brage.unit.no/uia-xmlui/handle/11250/3027293
The Candidate: Dag Ove Granås Hovdal (1989, Frosta) Specialist teacher in Physical Education, Nord University (2013), Masters degree in Sports Psychology, University of Agder (2015). Teaching experience from Vennesla upper secondary school and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Present position: Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger.
Opponents:
First opponent: Professor Marie Öhman, Örebro University, Sweden / Marie Øhman, Section for Sports and Physical Education, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
Second opponent: Professor Knut Løndal, Department of Primary and Secondary Teacher Education, OsloMet
Professor Kristin Haraldstad, Department of Health and Nursing Sciences, University of Agder, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment committee.
Supervisors in the doctoral work were Professor Bjørn Tore Johansen, Department of Sport Science and Physical Education, University of Agder (main supervisor) and Professor Emerita Inger Beate Larsen, Department of Psychososial Health, UiA and Professor Tommy Haugen, Department of Sport Science and Physical Education, UiA (co-supervisors)
What to do as an online audience member:
The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence online, transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member on this link:
https://uiano.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5AlcuChrzkpGtDBwBJOY1_tk5DWlscJh7Of
A Zoom-link will be returned to you. (Here are introductions for how to use Zoom: support.zoom.us if you cannot join by clicking on the link.)
We ask online audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 10:05 at the earliest and the public defense at 12:20 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask online audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.
Opponent ex auditorio:
The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense. Deadline is during the break between the two opponents. The person asking questions should have read the thesis. For online audience the Contact Persons e-mail are available in the chat function during the Public Defense, and questions ex auditorio can be submitted to Eli Andås at e-mail eli.andas@uia.no