8. The idea of studying my experience

My research interest of this semester is a confusion among different directions of teaching physical education as changing position from a teacher to researcher. This story is important to see how a doctoral education facilitates a student to build an identity as a researcher and teacher educator.

The main question of the confusion is about meaning of teaching physical education.

It is clear that one moment has drawn me to a school to teach. It was just a small basketball tournament in a school among classes. My friends believed me and asked about how our team defeat the game and I answered that we can’t. My team members didn’t give up at all and put their everything in the game. In the end, my team was defeated, and I realized I could have not given up and I should have encouraged my friends, swallowing my tears. It ain’t over till it’s over. I learned it through my body, which lead me to a school as a teacher. I loved students and wanted to provide wonderful opportunities to learn invaluable life skills inside of physical activities as I learned in their age. At this moment, teaching physical education was teaching life skills through sports.

Teaching physical education, however, was not as same as I expected. School was not a place filled with students who love sports. By a rough estimate, thirty percent of students dominate sport activities in class. There were students who have not had enough and appropriate opportunities to love sports and develop skills. If anything, doing sport activities sometimes let down the majority of students, leading to a loss of interest in other physical activities. My teaching experience in the field has taught me that teaching physical education in school requires other approaches for all students. A single approach cannot meet the needs of every student, so I used various pedagogical models such as Teaching Game for Understanding, Sport Education, Humanities-Oriented Physical Education, and Conceptual Physical Education. At this period, teaching physical education meant giving equal opportunities to all students while balancing among various models.  

              After 10 years of teaching, I became a doctoral student. Before I came here, my interest was to study physical education teachers and understand how they build their professional identity and what programs support their continuous improvement in school. The class in the first semester, however, change my perspective. The professor’s teaching implied that doctoral students should be researcher having a concrete theoretical background toward a certain area, while teachers need to adapt their approach to situations and students. And he had a stark contrast perspective to my academic advisor's approach and made me realize that teaching physical education was a political issue with different perspectives. From this procedure, teaching physical education became a political issue amidst different perspectives.

My experiences have led me to believe that as a researcher, understanding the field and having a clear stance are crucial. The debate I faced as a first-year doctoral student raised questions about the meaning of teaching physical education and showed that it is a politically charged issue with varying perspectives.