Evaluating the Content Knowledge in Badminton of Preservice Physical Education Teachers : A Pilot Study

Previous research has demonstrated low levels of preservice teachers’ (PSTs) content knowledge due to their K-12 schooling and teacher education training. We examined two research questions: (a) What are the pre-test scores of PSTs for common content knowledge (CCK), performance (CCK-P), task progression knowledge and error analysis in badminton? and (b) What are the changes in pre-post scores for CCK, CCK-P, task progression knowledge, and error analysis after a badminton content class? Participants were eight male PSTs ranging from sophomore to senior year. All were assessed using pre-and-post tests of badminton CCK, CCK-P, instructional tasks, and error analysis. Data were reported descriptively to determine the difference between pre and post scores on the four variables. The results indicated that PSTs had low pretest scores on all four variables However posttest scores following the completion of the badminton content class demonstrated improvement on all variables except for task progression. Our results highlight the importance of content knowledge training in physical education teacher education (PETE) programs. We need additional research to strengthen the effectiveness of the evidence-base in PETE to build a body of literature that can enhance our practice.