Assessing Physical Education Tutor’s Competencies in Managing Student Classroom Behaviour – A Study in the Colleges of Education in the Northern Regions, Ghana

Abstract

The research study was conducted to find out how professional physical education teachers use their content knowledge on managing students’ behaviour in practical physical education lessons in the 10 colleges of education in the northern regions. The research study employed the descriptive observational and survey methods to collate results for discussions and recommendations by the use of duration recording instrument and open-ended questionnaires to physical education teachers. The research covered levels 100 to 300 in each college which constituted a sample population of eight hundred and forty (840) from 10 classes that were selected randomly for the students’ behaviour management observation. All 13 teachers responded to open ended questionnaires while 8 of them taught for observation on some managerial episodes, namely Game, Roll taking, Waiting, Lateness, and Disperse. The simple random sampling technique was used to select the classes for observation for data collection. The results revealed that physical education teachers use managerial techniques to manage their student behaviours in the class. However, it came to light that some few physical education teachers do not conduct roll call on their students to check absenteeism. It was obvious that teachers spend appreciable time on class management. It is recommended that further research study could be carried out on the conduct of physical education teachers towards the management of practical physical education lessons.