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In this paper the author examines various levels of curriculum (explicit, covert, null, hidden, and functional) as they may be found in any undergraduate teacher education program. Examples are first given from a model of these curriculum levels applied to teaching physical education. The principal section of the paper focuses on what those levels look like when applied to teacher education, with particular emphasis on the total impact of all curriculum levels acting together as the “real” or functional curriculum which actually works to produce what students learn about teaching physical education.

Although many observation instruments have been developed in physical education, few have enjoyed such widespread use in such a short time as the Academic Learning Time in Physical Education (ALT-PE) model. Not only has this observation system been used in a variety of research settings, but it has undergone an evolution in concept and coding categories. What does this do to the conceptual underpinnings of this observation system? Will the newer version yield similar or different kinds of information? This article attempts to answer such questions by comparing the two versions on the same set of videotaped physical education classes. Results demonstrate that versions I and II both provide similar information about students’ opportunities to learn physical education skills, yet each system has some advantages over the other. Either version can be a useful and appropriate research tool depending on the research question(s) being asked.

This study was designed to investigate how the classroom ecology (interactions among task systems) and program of action influence participants’ understandings of misbehavior in a middle school physical education setting. One teacher and 14 students participated in a 10-day basketball unit with 47- minute classes. Data included fieldnotes, stimulated recall using videotapes, and semi-structured teacher and student pre- and post-unit interviews. Data were first analyzed inductively by constant comparison (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and then by using Doyle’s (1986) classroom ecology model to understand the inductively generated categories. Data trustworthiness involved prolonged engagement, member checks, and triangulation. Results indicated that the teacher’s weak managerial task system, coupled with vague and incomplete instructional tasks, interacted with a student social system grounded in various forms of talk as social tasks to support a social program of action. Both teacher and student actions jointly created a primary social vector characterizing the overall program of action.