Exploring the Difficulties and Coping Methods that the Student-Teachers Experience During Practice Teaching of Physical Education

Among the subjects taught in the elementary schools, most of elementary school teachers feel difficulties about teaching physical education (PE). This study is interested in the way to cultivate teachers` ability of teaching PE, but especially focuses on student-teachers (ST) according to the perspective of teacher socialization. This is assuming that the way student teachers cope with the difficulties will be able to work even when they encounter such a problematic situation as in-service teachers. Therefore the purpose of this study is to explore the difficulties and coping methods that ST experience during practice teaching through a qualitative research method. Method: This study used a qualitative research method. Participants were six (2 males and 4 females) STs, from the national university of education which is located in a local area in Korea. Data were collected by in-depth interview. The interview was processed for two months from November to December of 2014. The content of the interview, which was carried on through face-to-face interview, mostly includes difficulties what STs have experienced during practice teaching. And then data were analyzed by the phenomenological method. Result: Results of this study were summarized in two aspects. The first, the difficulties that STs have experienced during practice teaching were categorized as following themes: restricted opportunity to teach PE, burden of preparation to practice, limitation of endeavor, and gap between theories and practice. Simultaneously the causes of difficulty are implied in the each of themes. That is, first theme is related to the cultural and structural aspect, second theme to subject aspect, and third & fourth theme to personal aspect. Second, the coping methods against these difficulties were categorized as following themes: content reconstruction, looking for useful data, and accepting acquaintances` advice. Above of all, STs thought that PE must be a happy time to pupils, so they tried to present exciting activities unlike the textbook. And STs showed tendency to depend on the web data. A few STs told that they ask others to help them, but range of acquaintance is very restricted such as friends or university seniors. Conclusion: It is important to understand the experience of ST during practice teaching, because practice teaching presents opportunity not only to encounter a complicated and dynamic context of teaching PE, but also to shapes their identity as a PE teacher. Therefore practice teaching should be deliberately prepared so that all of student teachers have chances to perform teaching PE and to remedy and improve their defects in teaching PE.