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Classroom team building: investigating the teacher experience through action research

This qualitative exploratory study investigated the implementation of team-building activities into an elementary Physical Education Program. The participating teacher was from an affluent school district and her class consisted of twelve grade four students and seventeen fifth graders. It was proposed that a team-building (TB) initiative, with a teacher facilitator being supported and coached by a knowledgeable instructor, would help identify specific enablers and barriers that existed and provide insights into how to promote team building implementation by classroom teachers. It was also proposed that the study would enable the teacher to reflect on her actions and decisions made as a team-building facilitator to scaffold teacher awareness, growth, and future change. The “researcher,” also referred to as teacher coach, and participating teacher met initially to decide how they wanted the study to proceed and it was explained that the participating teacher had the liberty of guiding and directing the study in ways she deemed suitable and believed fit. Decisions were made that the teacher coach would visit on-site every second week to facilitate team-building activities with the fourth and fifth graders to aid in the facilitation of activities by the participating teacher. The on-site visits were digitally photographed and video-recorded to help build upon the study and work to uncover underlying data and themes. The teacher coach and participating teacher met pre-study, mid-study, and post-study to reflect at length upon the experience and to explore concepts and ideas that arose from the teacher’s reflective journal entries. Data was analyzed using NVivo and CMap, which formulated the following emergent themes: teacher and student development, fostering and enriching classroom and school community, “Ahah!” moments, the TB experience, and insights into a teacher-friendly TB manual. Recommendations for research and practice were considered and presented for researchers and educators.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3002
Date31 August 2010
CreatorsHazeldine, Laura
ContributorsHopper, Tim
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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