Sports Expertise as a Predisposing Factor to Decisional Process Among Physical Education Teachers: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper focuses on evaluating the impact of sports expertise as the embodied experience in a sports activity on the decisional process of an expert physical education teacher. Both qualitative and quantitative studies were applied within a mixed-approach using a single case study. A clinical didactics methodology was employed with three important tenses of the teaching practice (already-there, test, after-work). To understand the internal determinants that monitor the teaching practice of our participant, semistructured interview was used, in situ filmed observation and content analysis. Results indicate that personal determinants, the experiential and embodied “already-there” related to sports expertise, have a significant impact on the “personal” relationship to knowledge and the bodily awareness. This can be noticed by the way knowledge is delivered through a high recurrence to direct physical ostension demonstration by the teacher’s body. Sport expertise is a major determinant of teacher’s pedagogical and didactical conducts resulting from a subjective decisional process.