Reflecting on My Social Issues Lesson Plan

The unit plan that I am editing for this class is "Social Issues in Sport Psychology." This is a unit that typically falls at the end of a semester, frequently gets cut out of the semester if the course is running late, and differs from the rest of the semester because it toes the line between psychology and sociology. The lessons that are involved in this unit are: (1) gender issues in sport psychology, (2) cultural issues in sport psychology, and (3) sport across the lifespan. This can be disconcerting for a Sport Psychology professor who is more comfortable in the realm of Sport Psychology theory as sociology. It requires applying many of the main topics used through the rest of the semester to major social institutions. Additionally - it requires dealing with controversial topics such as racial, gender, age, and sexual orientation inequities.

As a result, I wanted to start from scratch in developing a unit plan for Social Issues so that I could have a well-thoughtout and cohesive plan to teach. I know the content material and generally feel comfortable with the intersection of social issues and Sport Psychology because my research agenda focuses on social issues. In this revision, I am trying to make the unit plan student-centered. I have never used Understanding by Design (UBD) before in my lesson planning, so the framework is new (and slightly challenging) for me. One of the ways I am trying to make the unit plan student-centered is by focusing on the multiple intelligences. In the past, I have only tried to draw on the differences between audio and visual learning. Now, I really want to focus on bringing in all 8 multiple intelligences.

Many of my students are future Physical Education teachers or future coaches. Most don't know it yet, but many of them will also be parents of future youth sports athletes. In order to make the project student-oriented and authentic, I wanted to recreate their project. During the past two semesters teaching this course, I have assigned a paper where students need to read a number of articles that discuss some of the negative issues related to youth sport. Instead, I would like to take this opportunity to have my students write informed position papers and increase the age range to across the lifespan. Students will be asked to submit rough drafts of the position papers and assigned to debate groups. During the following week, students will be required to debate the pros and cons of participation in competitive athletes throughout the lifespan (youth sport, high school, college, master's level). I think this assignment is more authentic in the development of these future coaches, educators, and parents in their understanding of the influence of sport on individuals across the lifespan.

In the creation of their position papers and preparation for debate, each debate group would be expected to submit their positions for a class developed wiki and use an audio-visual for their introduction, such as a video. Additionally, each age level debate group would have to debate the pro and con side. There would be a 5 minute introduction, 2 minute rebuttle, and 2 minute conclusion for each group.

I think this lesson does follow UBD - but I need to focus on writing this project with each step. The debates will require an understanding of definitional information, and begin to provide answers for the unit and essential questions of the course and unit. It is entirely project-oriented. I think it has the potential to be a great assignment. I am just not entirely convinced I can make the sell to my students.