Influence of Negotiations on Preservice Teachers' Instruction within the Skill Themes Approach Unit

Purpose: To describe the influence of negotiations on instruction when preservice teachers taught elementary students using a skill theme approach. Methods: Participants were nine preservice teachers from one physical education teacher education program enrolled in a 9-week early field experience. They taught kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students (N = 203). Constructs from the ecology paradigm and previous research on negotiations guided data collection and analysis. Data were collected through nonparticipant observation, informal interviews, critical incident reflections, document analysis, and formal interviews. Deductive and inductive qualitative techniques were employed to code and categorize the data. Findings: A unique and mainly positive pattern of negotiations was revealed as were some new forms of negotiation. Students were also shown to initiate negative negotiations to change content they perceived as gender inappropriate. Conclusion: These findings could be used as the basis for educating preservice teachers to negotiate more effectively when teaching by skill themes.