Students' Engagement through Integrative Pedagogies: An Ecological Approach

• João Costa ^[1] ; Marcos Onofre ^[1] ; Maria Martins ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Lisboa
• Localización: Educación física y deporte promotores de una vida saludable. Recursos del medio natural y cultural para intervenir en el sedentarismo y la obesidad: X Congreso Internacional sobre la Enseñanza de la Educación Física y el Deporte Escolar. Pontevedra, 5, 6, 7 y 8 de septiembre de 2013, 2013, ISBN 978-84-939424-4-1, págs. 331-335
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Classroom ecology (CE), underpinned by an ecological educational approach, presents students' engagement as a central pedagogical goal in classroom management, where a dynamic balance between the instructional, managerial, and social task systems frames constantly negotiated programs of action. Pedagogically well-balanced classroom ecologies achieve higher engagement levels by intentionally integrating the students' social system. These integrative pedagogies facilitate negotiation within the instructional and managerial task systems, sustaining curriculum as the CE central piece. In Physical Education (PE), research under the CE raises questions on how and why teachers (do not) achieve pedagogically well-balanced ecologies, especially attending the wider school ecology. This view concurs with increasing concerns from broader educational research on how teachers’ collective work interacts with the classroom context. This work contributes to clarify how a classroom of one teacher portraying an integrative pedagogy is facilitated by the department's collective decisions. A case-study was conducted to analyse, within a PE department, the teacher and one of her classes triangulating all data. Classroom ecology data was collected through teacher's and students' questionnaires, and lessons' observation. Department’s data were collected through observing subject department’s life, analysing its documents, and interviewing its coordinator. Results highlight curriculum and students’ success as common grounds for collective decisions that facilitated integrative pedagogies regarding to curriculum management, development and assessment. High levels of student classroom engagement were observed, as teacher’s classroom practices aligned with departments' decisions. From a mesosystemic focus, reciprocity between both microsystems is pointed as determinant in achieving school-wide students' success in PE.