Reconstructing physical education in an urban secondary school to create a more democratic learning environment: Teaching as praxis

This study focused on the interactive changes students in a high school personal fitness class and their instructor/researcher made throughout the process of creating a more democratic learning environment. The framework of the democratic curriculum was influenced by interpretations of works by Apple and Beane (1995), Darling-Hammond (1996), Dewey (1916, 1939), Friere (1970), and Hooks (1994). Baechle (1995), Collingwood (1997), and the course text (Williams, Harageones, Johnson, & Smith, 1995) influenced fitness curriculum construction. This study employed a qualitative design guided by an interpretive/interventionist theoretical discourse (Green, 1993). Documentation of changes emerged from interpretations of students' actions and teacher reflections on her own actions. Investigation occurred over the duration of a 16-week semester in a midwestern urban high school. Methodology included (a) participant observation of daily classes, (b) document analysis of student work, weekly journals, and transcribed student focus group interviews, and (c) analysis of student social responsibility assessments.; Through analysis of the data, trends suggesting greater concentrations of student-teacher interaction were discovered. Initial interactions were primarily composed of resistive student responses and the teacher's subsequent attempts to alter pedagogy to motivate student involvement. To preserve the complex nature of the analysis, data were presented using an earthquake metaphor where greater accumulations of student response were termed earthquakes and the interactional nature of both student and teacher change was called relief efforts.; Three earthquakes emerged throughout the semester, in the first, fourth, and ninth week of the semester. The first earthquake revealed stress on the course expectations, the second on the course accountability system, and the third on the learning outcomes. Intensity, damage, and duration increased with succeeding earthquakes. The democratic purpose of the course, guided by the four research questions, functioned to direct teacher response with positive changes. Two important issues emerged for eliciting student learning and fitness gains. The first revolved around pedagogical changes that supported student improvement and the second involved efforts the teacher made to support students' motivation to voluntarily buy-in to the course structures. In conclusion, this study supports curricula guided by tenets of participatory and community democracy in urban secondary physical education settings.