Dr.Hab., professor I.V. Manzheley
Tyumen State University, Tyumen

Keywords: educational standard, Physical Education discipline, bachelor's physical education competence, physical education environment, conditions and opportunities, project method

Introduction

Competency-based standards implementation in the higher professional education system requires both the education curriculum being significantly revised and new physical education tools, methods and models being found and implemented to help form the physical education competences in bachelors and apply them in practice. In the education plans and the relevant main curricula (MC) content under the third-generation Federal State Higher Education Standards (FSHES) put into effect in 2015, the academic discipline “Physical Education” was moved to Module 1 and broken down into two parts. The base part of the MC allocates 72 hours (rated as 2 academic record points) for the discipline, and the variable part assigns at least 328 hours for an elective course of the discipline. The competences formed by the Physical Education discipline are unified for the whole range of the educational specializations offered in the relevant frame formats and reported as GCC-7 [General Culture Competences] (rating the self-control and self-education qualities) and GCC-8 (rating the physical education toolkits and methods application ability to support fully-fledged social and professional activity of the bachelor).

Results and discussion

In view of the above new standards, we have developed a set of universal and detailed physical education competences to spell out the objectives and detailed content of the theoretical, methodological, education and training systems in application to university students, as follows: adaptive and health improvement; corrective and health improvement; conditioning and motor skills improvement; applied professional; and sport and recreation competences formed as the full-course deliverables of the elective course plus the obligatory course “having an integrative nature and jointly representing a mix of physical-education-and-sport values and aspirations with due knowledge, skills, mental and physical qualities mastered and practical physical-education-and-sport experiences gained and learnt by bachelors” [1]. We grouped the education curricula content in the following modules as required by the universal competences being formed and the relevant project lines (see Table 1 hereunder).

Table 1. Content of the Physical Education Discipline in the Bachelor’s Education Curriculum

The available long-term experience of the physical education competence formation shows that much attention needs to be given to personal practical physical-education-and-sport experience acquisition through different practices in a variety of physical-education-and-sport environments within the frame of the relevant environment-variation approach [1]. It should be mentioned in this context that the environment-variation approach to physical education will be designed to make an emphasis on formation of complicated, open, flexible, dynamic and integrated physical-education-and-sport environment in the higher educational establishment rather than on active direct efforts of the educator to shape up the student’s personality, with the education environment being varied to facilitate the internal physical-education-and-mass-sport-driven self-development and self-control mechanisms in the trainee. The environment-variation approach will be combined with the project method which may be well harmonized with it and is designed to effectively apply the acquired knowledge and practical skills in special practical projects to solve some social or cultural problems.

Project method (PM) means the prudently designed combination of education and cognitive tools to solve one or another problem through self-dependent activity of the student followed by an obligatory presentation of the project outcomes [4].

It is W.H. Kilpatrick who is acknowledged to be a founder of the project method in higher education based on the education philosophy of John Dewey. The project method was broadly implemented in the Soviet school education system in 1920ies, with its local application models being developed by many teachers under leadership of such prominent educators as V.N. Shul’gin, M.V. Krupenina and B.V. Ignatiev. However, the trend to promote the project method as a universal tool to convert the school of education into the school of living was considered the reason for the general public education standards being on the fall at that time and, therefore, the method was condemned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party Decree “On the Primary and Secondary School” (of 1931). This was the reason why the method had been banned for application in the Russian education system for at least the next 50 years. Nowadays, however, we are the witnesses of the project method revival in our country, with quite a few new versions, classes, conditions and application mechanisms for the projects being designed and offered by the national researchers (J.V. Kirimova, E.S. Polat, J. Schneider) [3].

The initiatives to implement the project method in the national higher school have effectively changed the role of the school educator who now acts as a manager of the information and education environment and learning activity of the bachelors and contributor to the creative learning process rather than a holder of ready knowledge [4].

The project methods being applied in the physical education system are traditionally classified as follows: [2]: (a) by their core area (project line) as the adaptive and health improvement; corrective and health improvement; conditioning and motor skills improvement; applied professional; and sport and recreation projects; (b) by the dominant activity as research, practice-centred, information-centred projects; (c) by the target project group numbers as individual, pair, group and mass projects; (d) by the project implementation periods as short-term, mid-term and long-term projects etc.

Every problem is normally fraught with some contradiction, and in the context of the university physical education agenda the contradiction may manifest itself in: mismatches of the actual and desired health conditions; physical conditions; body-builds of the young people so different in the degrees of harmony; mismatches of the real opportunities offered by the real physical-education-and-sport environment and the actual physical activity of the students; and the striking contrast between the fashion for high-profile sport living style and the self-destructing behavioural models popular in some young people’s groups.

The above problems may be rated as the top priority objectives for special projects like “Me and my health project”, “Visual analyzer health correction project”, “University Basket Show” Festival etc. The project may be designed for an individual performance, but the group performance design is applied more frequently and is generally considered more effective. It is important to note that the project method is based on the assumption of the bachelor being prepared for self-education, team work and efficient employment of different sources of information. Generally, this model of physical education is based on the assumption that the educator creates an elective physical-education-and-sport environment [1] that offers multiple incentives and motivations for the student to actively attain the desired results in the class and off-class education process.

Practical experience has demonstrated that the project-and-research activity of the students will be governed by the following principles: variability principle that means that the students are offered such favourable conditions that facilitate their free choice of the physical education self-improvement models; coherence principle meaning the agreement of the relevant formal standard with the physical-education-and-sport needs and aspirations of the students; meaningfulness principle that refers to the meaning (in terms of the personal values and motivations) of the self-controlled physical-education-and-sport activity for every student; constructiveness principle that means that the education and culturing process subjects shall design their contacts on close and positive cooperation; and adaptability principle that refers to the sex-and-age-specific criteria of the bachelors being kept in correlation with their mental and physiological conditions [3].

In the content of the Physical Education discipline curriculum and within the frame of the above project lines, we have developed algorithms for a few projects, including: Posture Correction Project; Body-build Correction Project; Endurance Development Project; Self-massage Project; Mental and Physical Training Project; Occupational Disease Prevention Project; “Beauty, Grace and Health” Aerobics Festival etc.; each of the projects being supported by the relevant guiding documents to facilitate the project implementation process.

In the practical, educational and training sessions the students will be offered to choose one of the project topics proposed by the teacher or formulate the target problem or topic on their own. It is recommended that the students rated with relatively low degrees of preparedness for self-controlled work are involved in the short-term and group projects or, in case that they opt for the long-term projects, clear reference points need to be specified in the process for them; whilst the most active and prepared students may be recommended to opt for mostly the individual and long-term group projects.

The students’ project implementation activity may be designed and managed within the frame of the following algorithm:

1) Problem formulation and survey of the situation in the context of the “actual” and “expected” project conditions in application to the concrete project beneficiary. Prior to the problem formulation, the teacher will provide the background information striving to present it in the context of the personal agenda of the subject student. To succeed in clarification of the personal physical-education-and-sport-related agenda of the student, the teacher will apply the relevant goal activation, notional analysis and convincing methods and tools.

2) Setting objectives based on the personal agenda is the stage when the teacher highlights the subjectively valuable senses making an emphasis on the key incentives of the project activity for the student. In the dialogue with the teacher or through an inner dialogue, the student will find answers on a few important questions including but not limited by the following: “What is the project objective?”; “What are my personal benefits from the project?”; “How the project experience may be used in my life and career?”; “How can I do that?”; “What can I achieve?” etc.

3)  Project design to attain the above objective is the stage of the project development with due consideration for the acceptable contingencies. The teacher may help the student (with the teacher’s contribution being reasonably limited) in the individual project design to solve the detected problem and/or attain the objective with the following important points being clearly specified: the starting point and the interim and expected project deliverables; the project objective and the means and methods to attain the objective; scopes and intensities of the physical workloads under the project with the relevant timeframe specifications; and the reference points to assess the project performance, with the relevant performance control and self-control criteria and methods.

4) Project implementation through self-controlled or joint efforts. Depending on the subject student preference and preparedness, the project may be implemented in the class hours (with 10-15 minutes being scheduled at the end of every class session for this purpose) or off-class hours, including the relevant sport/ mass entertainment events, sport training sessions or personal free time. With this purpose in mind, the students will be involved at the start of the academic year into the upcoming event planning work to schedule the relevant physical education/ health improvement/ sport/ mass entertainment events, including the relevant sport festivals, health-improvement decades etc., the planning process being supported by the teacher-assisted workshops and practices to establish constructive cooperation in and help guide the project design work performed by the students.

5) Process control and corrective actions. Reasonable educational control, cross-control and self-control (through self-control daybooks etc.) tools will be applied in the project performance process depending on the student’s degree of preparedness to the physical self-improvement efforts. In case that the student fails to attain the expected project objective, the relevant adjustments will be made to the project implementation plan.

6) Project success assessment and the project experience sharing stage. The project success will be rated depending on the degree of the project objective being attained, with assistance and under control of the teacher. The project implementation report may be presented in the form of test exercises, knowledge tests and the self-control daybook analysis. The final project report will be defended by means of the project being presented at the relevant practical/ methodological session, workshop or research/ practical conference.

Our practical application of the project method to the Study Group 1 students mastering the elective courses of basketball and aerobics resulted in their physical-education-and-sport activity and the physical-education-competencн levels being significantly improved as manifested by the results of the relevant group projects including the “Beauty, Grace and Health” Aerobics Festival and the “University Basket Show” Festival. The project results were compared to the academic successes of the students attending the same elective courses but non-involved in the project activity. Baseline criteria showed some growth in both of the study groups; whilst the increased competency levels were demonstrated by only 15.0% of the young men and 7.3% of the young women of Study Group 1 (see Table 2 hereunder).

Table 2. Physical education competency variation data, %

In the context of the present situation in the university physical-education-and-sport environment, the project method is considered to be highly beneficial for formation of the university students’ competences as it motivates the young people to articulate and set forth their personal agendas in the university education and physical-education-and-sport training process. The project method may be highly effective under the physical education curricula when supported by the following: the relevant programmatic, methodological, financial and technical provisions for the education and instruction process; the teachers’ training courses to help them master the project method organization, management and constructive cooperation tools; prudent integration of the class and off-class project works; and reasonable design of the university physical-education-and-sport environment to encourage the project operations in an open and students’-demand-sensitive format.

References

1. Manzheley I.V. Sredo-orientirovanny podkhod v fizicheskom vospitanii (Environment-oriented approach in physical education) / I.V. Manzheley // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury, 2005. – № 8. – P.7-11.
2. Manzheley I.V. Innovatsii v fizicheskom vospitanii. Uchebnoe posobie. (Innovation in physical education: study guide) / I.V. Manzheley, Tyumen, TSU, 2010. 144 P.
3. Manzheley I.V. Samostoyatel'naya rabota studentov po distsipline «Fizicheskaya kul'tura»: uchebnoe posobie. (Self-study of students on the subject "Physical Education": study guide) / I.V. Manzheley, A.G. Molodkin. Tyumen. Vector Book, 2006. 82 P.
4. Novye pedagogicheskie i informatsionnye tekhnologii v sisteme obrazovaniya: Ucheb. posob. dlya stud. ped. vuzov i sistem povysh. kvalif. ped. kadrov. (New pedagogical and information technologies in education system: study guide for students of ped. higher education institutions and advanced training systems) // Ed. by E.R. Polat. Moscow: Akademiya, 2000. – 272 P.

Corresponding author: mangeley60@mail.ru

Abstract

The problem of formation of bachelor's physical education competences in terms of educational standards of the third generation was considered in the work. The universal physical education competences and the modular content of the "Physical education" discipline were presented. The essence of the environmental approach to physical education and the idea of the project method were described. The project method in the practice of physical education was systematized. The algorithm of implementation of the project method and conditions of its effective use were stipulated. The experimental data were provided.

The ratio of the problem and its practical solution in the university physical education-and-sport environment makes the project method particularly attractive for the formation of physical education competences of students, encouraging young people to find their own results of study and extracurricular physical education and sports activity. The effectiveness of the project method in physical education is ensured by program-methodical and material and technical support of the educational process; training of teachers to organize project activities and constructive interaction; integration of academic and extracurricular activities; arrangement of an open physical education and sports university environment in compliance with the students' needs.