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This research was conducted to investigate the role of value orientations in effective elementary physical educators’ curricular decision making. Educational value orientations served as the theoretical base for the research. Three research questions were examined: (a) what were the learning goals and expectations for student performance in each program, (b) why did teachers value these goals, and (c) how well did students understand the goals and expectations of the program? Data were collected through class observations, teacher and student interviews, and the Value Orientation Inventory. Data were analyzed using constant comparison. Results described students’ learning goals and academic and social performance expectations within each teacher’s value profile. Dynamical systems theory was used to elaborate the influence of value orientations in the curriculum decision-making process.

The purpose of this research was to examine and compare physical educators’ value profiles in Flanders, Belgium. The revised Value Orientation Inventory (Ennis & Chen. 1995) was used to collect data from 274 preservice teachers and 637 inservice teachers at the secondary level. Descriptive data on teachers’ value profiles were consistent with data gathered in the United States by Ennis and colleagues. Years of teaching experience and type of teaching degree were related to differences in values, but gender was not. The value profiles of both preservice teachers and inservice teachers reflected the recently introduced curricular innovations and physical education concepts. The teachers in this study placed a high priority on their social responsibility orientation, not supporting the traditional dominance of the disciplinary mastery orientation. The findings suggest that the process of enculturation and social construction (Pajares, 1992) created educational beliefs that are similar to the value orientations observed in other studies.

Based on the value orientation theory, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of value orientation incongruence between physical education teachers and an externally designed curriculum on student learning in a concept-based fitness-centered physical education curriculum. Physical education teachers (n = 15) with different value orientations taught an externally designed, standards-based fitness/healthful living curriculum to their middle school students (n = 3,827) in 155 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade intact classes. A pre-post assessment design was used to determine whether student fitness/healthful living knowledge gains differed in terms of teachers’ value orientations. An ANOVA on class means of residual-adjusted knowledge gain scores revealed no statistically significant differences based on value orientations. The evidence suggests that teacher value orientation impact may be mediated by curriculum impact. This finding supports the observation that a well-designed physical education curriculum may minimize the impact of teachers’ diverse value orientations on the curriculum implementation and student learning.

A limitation of most prior research concerning socialization via sport has been a reliance on cross-sectional/correlational designs. Thus, one purpose of the study was to overcome this limitation by implementing a longitudinal design. A second purpose was to test the efficiency of two theories—self-selection and interaction—that attempt to explain value, attitudinal, and/or behavioral differences often noted between elite and casual athletes, and between athletes and nonathletes. Instructional and competitive league soccer players were interviewed before and after their seasons to ascertain changes in their sport-related value orientations; this procedure was repeated the following season with the competitive league players. The data for the subsamples revealed (a) some initial differences in value orientations, and (b) a slight modification of values during participation over the course of a season. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the study’s purposes, future research, and their meaning for youth sport practitioners.

This research examined content and task decisions of 11 urban secondary physical educators who placed a high priority on social curriculum goals. Transcript data from a stimulated-recall protocol were analyzed using constant comparison to determine the extent to which content and task decisions represented social justice and reform goals of social reconstruction or of citizenship and positive interaction more consistent with social responsibility. Results suggested that teachers’ content decisions were consistent with the goals of cooperation, teamwork, and involvement within the social responsibility value orientation. Task structures for middle school programs involved large group activities, while high school tasks focused on individual activities performed as a member of a small group.