Diagnostic competence of physical education teachers (DiKS) - Accuracy of double diagnosis performance to promote realistic physical ability perceptions of children in primary school in physical education class.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Miriam Seyda
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning ; Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 315246907

A good diagnostic competence is an essential condition for an adaptive planning, execution and evaluation of teaching. While some is already known about the diagnostic competence of teachers in the core subjects, the diagnostic skills of physical education teachers (PET) is nearly unexplored. Therefore, a study on the diagnostic skills of PET in primary school is planned. The question will be to what extent PET of the primary school can make a double diagnosis performance and what effect has this double diagnosis performance for the teaching approach of the PET and for the development of realistic ability self perceptions of their students. That means, how accurate are PET to assess both, the physical performance of children as well as the perception of children on their own physical skills abilities, in order to decide whether children estimate their own abilities realistic or unrealistic. This double diagnosis performance represents one relevant condition to promote a realistic view of children own skills. It is needed to arrange settings of learning in accordance with the learning and performance preconditions of the children and to give students specific explanation aids. The empirical examination is carried out in a pre-post design, in which the quality of the diagnostic competence of PET in the assessment of physical performance and physical ability perceptions of children, their relationship to each other (double diagnosis performance), their stability and their importance for the development of realistic self-perceptions ability of children is investigated. To this end, teacher judgments and students assessments are collected via questionnaires and the physical performance level is tested on a motor test. The relation of diagnostic expertise with the teaching behavior in class is elicited on one hand via a questionnaire, in which students carry out assessments of the actions of their PET in physical education class. On the other hand lessons of selected teachers are observed in a qualitative substudy. The selection of teachers is based on the valuation of diagnostic competence made at t1. Teachers who differ in terms of quality of their diagnostic competence are selected (contrastive: high vs. low diagnostic skills). The results of this study not only give a first indication, what the quality is of diagnostic skills of PET in the primary school. They expand the general discourse with a new professional perspective (Sport) and the new perspective of the importance of diagnostic competence for the instructional approach and for the development of a realistic perceptions of the physical abilities of primary school children.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants