NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area, Sahtu Settlement Area, Dehcho Region, North Slave Region, South Slave Region, Qikiqtaaluk Region

Tags: well-being, teachers, physical education, current practice

Objective(s): To clarify the current state of PE within the NWT; to identify what aspects are effective for teachers in fostering acceptance, engagement, and enjoyment in their students; and to identify what supports and resources are needed to achieve higher successes.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.4748. The objective is to provide the educational community with the data required to understand the current state of physical education (PE) delivery and the teaching supports needed as the system moves forward. The results of this study will 1) clarify the current state of PE within the NWT, 2) identify what aspects are effective for teachers in fostering acceptance, engagement, and enjoyment in their students, and 3) identify what supports and resources are needed to achieve higher successes. This project fills a gap in the understanding of how PE is presently being delivered, highlighting success stories from current PE teachers that can be shared within the educational community, as well as identifying areas of needed support to facilities future improvements. This new knowledge will create a collection of positive commentaries, derived from experiences NWT PE teachers, for distribution within the Territorial teaching community. Also, new knowledge will be made available to school boards, teachers and government offices to support new initiatives focusing on increasing activity, and overall student well-being. Potential participants will be recruited through the use of an already existing database of NWT teacher’s email accounts. This database is operated by the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association (NWTTA), who have graciously offered to distribute the Invitation and Recruitment Letter via an email on behalf of the PI to NWT Teachers, containing the hyperlink to the online survey. An invitation email will be sent out by the NWTTA at the beginning of the study period, and two reminder emails (two weeks in, and two days before the closing of the survey) will also be sent out by the NWTTA. The PI will never have any form of access to the database, or the personal email accounts being utilized for distribution of the survey. In the event that a potential participant does contact the PI through the provided email in the invitation, personal correspondences will be deleted by the PI upon resolution of the question. Contact via email does not guarantee participation, only that the Invitation and Recruitment Letter in the email was read, and a question arose. That is to say, contact via email does not compromise the anonymity of the participants in the survey. Voluntary participants will complete the online survey, submitting their final responses to the SurveyMonkey survey, which will remain live for one month. Upon the completion of the data collection phase, data will be downloaded and deleted from the SurveyMonkey servers. This will occur no later than one month after the closing date of the data collection, tentatively August 2020. Upon download from SurveyMonkey, data will be stored on the PI’s personal, password-protected computer. Data will be processed utilizing the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) data program on a password-protected computer and will focus on answering the study’s three research questions. The current state of PE in the NWT will be analyzed through the data collected in the quantitative responses, which will examine teacher's perspectives of effectiveness and will also collect demographic questions. By analyzing participant’s responses ranking the effectiveness of the curricular PE activities in creating acceptance, engagement, and enjoyment in their students, a picture of what current practices are effective in PE classrooms will be created. This picture will be enriched by responses collected in the semi-structured open-ended questions. The qualitative open-ended responses will illuminate what is currently effectively working, and areas of needed support for the future betterment of PE deliverance in the NWT. Communications have already begun with senior administrators within the Beaufort-Delta District Education Council (BDDEC) through their offering of support and guidance on the initial project development, and in future developments of reviewing research documents and recruitment practices. Through BDDEC, the project will be presented to the other Territorial school-board senior administrators for review and feedback. The Northwest Territories Teacher's Association (NWTTA) has also agreed to support this project in the same fashion. Both are essential partners, as research will involve teachers from across the Territory. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from July 31, 2020 to August 15, 2020.