Instructional actions of prospective physical education teachers to activate learners in physical education lessons

Teacher students must demonstrate professional behavior for the first time during their study-related internships in their own lessons. Assuming that the development of competencies in pre-service teacher education is linked to these behaviors, the question arises as to what exactly characterizes professional behavior in internships. This article takes up this question and examines based on participant observations conducted in the classrooms of 27 physical education teacher students, the teaching actions in relation to the activation of students. Thus, there is a focus on a central basic dimension of qualitative teaching. The interviews were analyzed with a qualitative content analysis. The findings can be categorized into the areas of lesson beginnings, tasks, and classroom discussions. In essence, the findings indicate on the one hand that the actions that stimulate activation are characterized by a high orientation towards an individually justified factual logic and that the students are at the same time concerned about activating the students on the relational level. On the other hand, ways of behavior could be identified with a rather low activation potential, such as working through sequences of tasks without reflection or asking surprise questions. Overall, the article provides for the first time a differentiated insight into the professional actions of physical education teacher students during internships regarding a central basic dimension, from which educational processes can benefit in the long term.