Instructional practices in physical education setting: Teachers' utilization of instructional cues, supervision and frequency of pre-service teachers' participation in netball activities

Instructional cues (IC) regularly occur in physical education (PE) practical lessons. However, not much research has been conducted into the effectiveness of these cues in teaching and learning environment. It is also noted that students generally exhibit low interest in netball activities, not only in the colleges of education but across all levels of education in Ghana. The study was based on pedagogical research in PE setting where we investigated teacher’s utilization of instructional cues in teaching shooting skill in netball. We also investigated issues relating to supervision and the frequency of pre-service teachers’ participation in netball activities. A total of 81 participants were randomly sampled for the study. They were composed of four PE teachers and 77 pre-service teachers from the first-year group of three selected Colleges of Education (CoE) in the Volta Region, Ghana. The study was descriptive in nature. A Senior University Lecturer with vast experience in research inspected self-developed data collection instrument and approved its capability of collecting data for the study. Frequency and percentage analyses of data were performed and presented in tables, graphs and charts. Major findings of the work revealed low level of supervision of pre-service teachers in netball activities. Participation level in netball activities and knowledge of basic netball skills were also found to be low among pre-service teachers. However, in the 60 minutes video-taped lesson, the rate per minute of constructive instructional cues (CIC) were higher than the rate per minute of destructive instructional cues (DIC), indicating that PE teachers were largely able to control destructions during utilization of instructional cues (IC) in teaching practical lessons involving netball shooting skill.