The Spectrum of Teaching Styles in Physical Education

Brendan SueSee, Mitch Hewitt, Shane Pill, Brendan SueSee, Mitch Hewitt, Shane Pill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000051438
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Métodos de enseñanza de la educación

This is the first in-depth, practice-focused book to explain 'spectrum theory' and its application in physical education and sports coaching. Spectrum theory identifies 11 distinct teaching styles, with decision making as a central characteristic, and allows teachers to select age and developmentally appropriate styles across social, physical, ethical, emotional and cognitive channels. The book brings together leading thinkers in spectrum theory, to demonstrate how it can be applied to improve teaching and learning in PE and coaching.

Drawing on real-world research in schools and universities, the book considers the history of spectrum theory, and examines its significance across important areas such as physical education teacher education, sport pedagogy, teacher development, models such as Games Sense and Teaching Games for Understanding, skill acquisition and student learning and perception. Every chapter highlights the practical implications of research in real-world settings and considers how spectrum theory can enhance learning experiences.

This book is invaluable reading for all pre-service and in-service school physical education teachers, sports coaches, school pedagogical leaders and college lecturers.

Chapter 1

Introduction to The Spectrum

Mitch Hewitt, Brendan SueSee and Shane Pill

This book came about as the editors reflected on the numerous conversations they have had with teachers and academics over the years about The Spectrum of teaching styles. One of the most common questions asked revolved around the fidelity or accuracy with which they were using a style. Questions such as “Is it Practice Style if the feedback is not private?”, “Is it still Reciprocal Style if the students do not have a criteria sheet but I have given them criteria verbally?”. We realised that many teachers either seemed to embrace The Spectrum or reject The Spectrum based on their perspective. The three perspectives were: you are doing the teaching style as per the text book landmark definition, you were interpretatively pragmatic (Stolz & Pill, 2016) and making it work by leaving parts out (or modifying it), or you were rejecting The Spectrum as the Landmark Teaching Styles were too rigid. Those who thought they were not doing a Landmark Teaching Style often seemed to express views that they were failing and stopped doing it. This made us think that many teachers seemed to hold a classic ‘versus’ approach!

We wished to highlight the many ways that teachers, sports coaches and academics were using The Spectrum by having a new perspective on The Spectrum published. A publication that was more about cases of using The Spectrum. Many of the examples you will find in this book are examples of using The Spectrum brought about because of a new perspective. While these perspectives are not all the same, the commonality is that the contributing authors wanted to use The Spectrum and have made it ‘work’ in each of their environments. In these cases, they have made it work by considering the learner at the centre and adapted by modifying the Landmark Style. However, not all chapters in this book are examples of modifying The Spectrum. Some are about how it has been applied in new ways to examine teaching or teach under graduate teachers or coaches.

Readers of this book will have a range of levels of knowledge about The Spectrum of Teaching Styles. This is not a book just for those who have a high level of knowledge about The Spectrum. We hope that it is a book for pre-service teachers, teachers, teacher educators, academics, sports coaches and people who want to learn more about how The Spectrum can help your teaching. It is also intended to engage and raise issues about The Spectrum.

Brief history and changes

In 1966, Muska Mosston first published The Spectrum of Teaching Styles (from this point on referred to as The Spectrum throughout this text). He did not create The Spectrum in the same way that Newton did not create gravity – it was always there waiting to be discovered. Mosston suggested that The Spectrum grew from “how does all this vast accumulation of knowledge from so many disciplines affect teaching behaviour? How does the philosophy of a theoretician affect every act of the teaching experience?” (Mosston, 1972, pp. 1–2). Mosston was contemplating what educators had learnt over time from research and how had it affected or influenced teaching. He noted that there had been research in psychology, cognitive psychology, motor learning and education and many of the concepts overlapped. Mosston felt that the knowledge, although similar, was played off against other concepts as if only one idea could exist or was superior to the other. This observation is evident when he suggested “the great question is not Skinner vs Brunner, creativity vs conformity and so on, along the path of opposing pair; the question is when conformity? When creativity? When individualised instruction? When media?” (Mosston, 1972, p. 5).

The way that ideas and concepts were played off against each other (or the ‘versus’ approach) asked teachers to abandon ideas (Mosston & Ashworth, 2002) and lead the teacher to applying theories according to his or her personal understanding. This behaviour resulted in “an idiosyncratic approach to the implementation of pedagogical theories” (Mosston & Ashworth, 2002, p. 3); meaning that educational theories are not applied to their full potential. This theorising led Mosston to search for a body of knowledge beyond idiosyncrasies.

The final issue that Mosston was concerned with was what he believed was a lack of consistency or uniformity with common terminology. In his opinion, inconsistency of terminology leads to limits with educational practices as teachers are not always talking about the same thing or there is a lack of agreement. These three issues – a verses approach, idiosyncratic teaching styles, and non-uniformity of terminology, “served as the foundation for Mosston’s paradigm shift” (Mosston & Ashworth, 2002, p. 4). It led Mosston to search for the answer to “what is the body of knowledge about teaching that is beyond idiosyncratic behavior?” This question led him to theorise that teaching is a chain of decision making. This theory is the fundamental proposition of The Spectrum. When teaching is examined in this way, a range of teaching styles emerge and are defined according to the decision making and the behaviours of the student and teacher.

Every decision made by a teacher in every act of teaching has the consequence of inclusion and exclusion. These decisions serve as a powerful and sometimes irreversible antecedent to what actually occurs to the learner, for or against the learner.

(Mosston, 1969, p. 6)

To Mosston, “teaching therefore cannot be a one-dimensional form of behaviour. The richer teacher is the one with the larger repertoire of behavioural models” (Mosston, 1972, p. 5). Mosston believed The Spectrum (1966a) accurately presented the repertoire of behavioural models that gave a teacher mobility and freedom to match teaching to learning objectives. He suggested that:

The teacher who is familiar with a variety of teaching styles is ready to cope with new conditions and to interact successfully with various forms of student behaviour-to cope without threat, to experience without fear, and to bring to all his relations with students a contagious spirit of hope.

(Mosston, 1972, p. 6)

This quote embodies one of the crucial points of The Spectrum (2002). The Spectrum (2002) is not just a range of teaching styles that create a learning journey for the student. It is also a journey for the teacher, as they move along The Spectrum (2002), gradually handing the reigns of learning responsibility and decision making, over to the student, so that they can become an autonomous learner when appropriate, or if the learning objective requires. This is not to say that the teacher must move (as one style is more valuable than another) rather the teacher knows when to move and is able to move along The Spectrum. That is, teachers have ‘mobility ability’.

In Figure 1.1, we show an example where problem solving and creativity are potentially interpreted as having higher value than recall or reproduction of knowledge.

This diagram “was inconsistent with the non-versus premise of The Spectrum-that all behaviours contribute to educational objectives, and that no one behaviour is more important than any other” (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008, p. 20). At this early stage of The Spectrum development, Byra (2000) suggested that Mosston was passing value judgements on teaching styles. Learner decision making and independence (Byra, 2000) were better in his opinion than teacher decision making. As you read this text and think of current syllabus documents you may think that this valuing of creativity over recall or memory still exists 53 years later and that a versus approach is still alive and well. Another example of the bias in value towards one approach over another is represented by Mosston, hoping his Spectrum (2002) “will serve as a contribution to more effective teaching of free students and indeed will lead the learner from command to discovery” (Mosston, 1966a, p xiv). According to Professor Ashworth, Mosston’s use of the word ‘free’ is alluding to what he perceived at the time as an overuse of the Command Style and the desire to free students so that they would experience other styles (personal correspondence, 2011).

Figure 1.1 Diagram of Spectrum – 1966

Source: Reprint from Teaching Physical Education First Online Edition, 2008 are used with permission from Dr. Sara Ashworth, Director of the Spectrum Institute. Free Digital Download Available at: https://spectrumofteachingstyles.org/index.php?id=16

At this early stage of Spectrum development Byra argued that Mosston “conceptualised the command style of teaching as having the least amount of value” (Byra, 2000, p. 230) and teaching styles that involved problem solving or creativity as having the “greatest amount of value” (Byra, 2000, p. 230). However, we argue that Mosston was referring to a hierarchy of the structure of subject matter (Mosston, 1966b, p. 2) and not teaching styles. Mosston goes further when he answers the questions “Is it necessary to experience the entire Spectrum?” Is it necessary to travel from style to style in the order of the Spectrum?” (Mosston, 1966c, p. 4). He addresses these questions by suggesting that one “must move “From Command to Discovery” (the sub-title of The Spectrum) in order to comprehend the intellectual cohesiveness of the Spectrum”. However, we argue that this is not the same as saying one style is more valuable than another style nor is it a hierarchy. We suggest that Mosston is saying to understand all of it (The Spectrum) you need to experience all styles. He expands suggesting that teacher’s need to know the entire Spectrum so that they are “able to make style-preference decisions whenever it is called upon by the learning style of the student … ” (Mosston, 1966c, p. 5). We contend this comment emphasises the need for all styles to be experienced and not the valuing of one style over another. More specifically to the diagram or continuum “The direction of this continuum point to two polarities (the theoretical limits in the Teaching-Learning Transaction) of decision making: Maximum decision by the teacher on one hand and maximum decision by the student on the other; and therefore, the subtitle: “From Command to Discovery”, Mosston, 1969, p. 17). We are aware that this notion challenges other beliefs and, as the title of this book suggests, offers a new perspective.

About the chapters

This book brings together leading and innovative thinkers in the field of pedagogy to offer new perspectives on The Spectrum. It begins with Sara Ashworth, ‘the mother’ of The Spectrum, giving a history and overview of The Spectrum and providing personal insights about Muska Mosston that only she could. She covers the beginning, theory of The Spectrum and its development and the future of where The Spectrum may go.

Those interested in how The Spectrum can be used in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programs will be particularly interested in Chapters 3, 5 and 9. In Chapter 3, Mark Byra explains how he has used The Spectrum at the University of Wyoming and how The Spectrum addresses some of Windshcitl’s (2012) dilemmas when implementing teaching styles. In Chapter 9, Matt Curtner-Smith provided ideas on how to implement The Spectrum for those considering including it in their PETE programs. Through the lens of transformative tertiary physical education, Shane Pill and Joss Rankin also explained how they use The Spectrum in the PETE program at Flinders University as a deliberate mechanism to disrupt the common technocratic and sport-as-sport techniques physical education perspective. Chapter 13 by Yannis Syrmpas and Nikolaos Digelidis emphasised the importance of understanding pre-service physical education teachers’ mental models of reproduction and production cluster styles so that adoption of new styles may be successful. In Chapter 12, Donetta Cothran and Pamela Kulinna explored research that has been done covering what styles were being used, by whom, and what those individuals believed about the styles. They then draw this research to others work around the central themes in an attempt to capture a more complete picture of The Spectrum decision making chain and to suggest new paths of inquiry regarding The Spectrum and its use.

For those interested in using The Spectrum whether as a teacher or a sports coach will find Chapters 6 and 7 useful. Mitch Hewitt’s Chapter 6 positions the coach as an educator and provides a series of practical tennis games and play practices that appeal to the holistic development of tennis players in a variety of learning domains. Brendan SueSee, Shane Pill and Mitch Hewitt’ contributed Chapter 7, examining the Constraints Led Approach (CLA) through the lens of The Spectrum. They demonstrated how the CLA can be seen as a range of teaching styles on The Spectrum.

Teachers will find Brent Bradford, Clive Hickson and Stephen Berg’s Chapter 14 on the Teaching Continuum – a modified version of The Spectrum, aimed specifically at generalist trained primary school teachers – very helpful. It is not designed to replace The Spectrum, rather to provide a foundational framework that can help build success for non-specialist (GT) teachers’ understanding of physical education teaching. In Chapter 4, Brendan SueSee used The Spectrum to interrogate the teaching styles of physical education teachers and how alignment between syllabus aims and goals, and the teaching style/s required to create learning episodes to enable students to meet these goals can be assisted by looking through The Spectrum. Michael Goldberger and Brendan SueSee, in Chapter 11, show how the Reciprocal Style creates a learning episode that improves motor performance, the amount of feedback given and the quality of feedback given by the participants. Staying with Landmark Styles, in Chapter 10, Mark Byra provides a real-world example of using the Inclusion Style in physical education and describes how Incl...