THE SOCIAL CONTEXT AS 18
I think if you’ve got a short lesson of time to do something in, you’ve got less
flexibility in how you approach it. You want to get the core material dealt
with. If you've got half an hour to do it in, then I'm sorry, I'm not interested in
what you've (the students) got to say, you’re getting on with the activity.
Similarly, Carl explained that he would give more autonomy to students if lessons
were longer:
I would probably say that if we had two hour lessons, double lessons instead
of an hour single lesson, you'll have more opportunity to give a bit of choice
and autonomy. But it’s limited how much you can do in twenty five minutes
because you have to get them doing, get them going quickly.
As shown above, many teachers mentioned that they wish more time was allocated to
PE lessons. However, rather than indicating that they wanted more hours in the week
dedicated to PE, they indicated that the length of each lesson was a problem. Most lessons
cited by the teachers were approximately an hour in length, however, as Patricia, a 25 year-
old newly qualified teacher explains:
At the last school I was at, once the pupils have got changed and you'd have to
allow time for them to get dressed again you're left with maybe half an hour,
twenty minutes to do a lesson, which is no time at all.
In this sample, time constraints may provide the biggest conflict between how
teachers have to teach and how they would like to teach, as well as contradicting empirically
suggested strategies. Educational authorities need to consider the possibility of extending the
time available for PE lessons or allocating “double” lessons for PE. This may help the
teachers to fit in all objectives of the lesson without compromising their use of adaptive
motivational strategies.
The Teachers’ Perception of the Students