Buckle up for the sixth out of a series of 12 blogs about Mosston & Ashworth's Spectrum of Teaching Styles. In this blog, we (Alba and Risto) explain the Inclusion Style of teaching from the Spectrum of Teaching Styles.
This blog is based on episode 261 of the podcast Playing with Research in Health and Physical Education. This blog is almost verbatim from the podcast, so if you prefer the audio version, here is the link for episode 261. You can also listen to the first episodes of this series in the following links #254, #255, #257, and #259 or read the first five blogs #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5. All of the podcasts are listed by category on a google doc that you can find as the pinned tweet on the account @theHPEpodcast on Twitter. Alternatively, you can find it here. You can find the website where you can download the book for free and find more information and resources at the end of this blog.
Today we will talk about Style E-The Inclusion Style. In this style, all of the learners participate in the same task but students select the level of difficulty that they will perform. So, the teacher designs multiple entry levels of difficulty to encourage continuous inclusion and enhance participation. Learners continue to self-assess their own performance against the teacher’s criteria to be able to select the most adequate entry level amongst the options of difficulty.
We think the best way to explain what inclusion style looks like, is the traditional idea of having a rope that is tied at the same height horizontally and asking kids to jump over it. As kids make it over, you keep lifting the rope higher and higher and eventually only 1 kid is able to make it over. USING the inclusion style, this rope would be at ground level on one side, and high on the other, making a diagonal or slanted rope. In this way…students can progressively choose their challenge and be successful in jumping over the rope-thus making it inclusive of the student that can barely jump (they would be at the lower part) and equally challenging the student who is really good at jumping (they would be at the higher end of the rope).
In the inclusion style, the teacher still makes all the subject matter and logistic decisions and defines the possible levels of difficulty of the task. While students are practicing the teacher walks around acknowledging the choices made by the students, clarifies any needed aspects, and affirms the accuracy of their self-assessment. Teachers should also redirect the students' focus to performance details on the criteria card in case those are missed or done incorrectly by the students. It is important to note that the teacher can guide the students through questions but does not change the students' level or assess their task performance. This is the role of the student. So, the learners in this style survey the available levels of the task, select the entry point, practice the task while self-assessing based on the teacher’s criteria, and makes the needed adjustments.
In the inclusion style, teachers can teach the same content in a way that all learners are included in the task. So, this style focuses on inclusion and continued participation by teaching students to identify the aspects of that task that make it easier or more difficult to improve their performance. The subject matter objectives are focused on
designing options to provide different entry points to the students in the same task
accommodating individual performance levels
increasing participation and practice time, and
providing students with the opportunity to make content adjustment decisions by self-assessment sequence process.
The behavior objectives have all to do with making decisions regarding levels of practice and content adjustment based on self-assessment. Students in this style learn to accept that there are individual differences in performance abilities dealing with the discrepancies between performance aspiration and reality.
So, what does this look like in PE? Let’s say you are in a disc golf unit teaching students how to throw the frisbee accurately from different distances. You can set up options for students to perform the same task by changing the size of the target and the distance of the throw. In one option you have a larger target and lines on the floor where students can choose to throw from closer or farther to the target. The second option can be a smaller target, once again with different places to start from (closer or farther from the target).
In the inclusion style, the learners will look at the options available in the tasks designed by the teacher and make a decision about where they want to start. The student throws the discs trying to achieve the objective proposed---in this case---hitting the target. Normally, the first choice is a safer choice that leads students to complete the task successfully. After performing the task, the students decide if they want to repeat their decision and stay in the same place or if they want to use an extension by going to an easier option or a more challenging one. Students continue assessing their success with the criteria developed by the teacher and making decisions about the situation they want to perform the task.
The inclusion process continues, and students choose the challenges they want to engage in and learn how to recognize their limits. The teacher should walk around providing individual feedback. It is important that the feedback is more general questions such as how they are choosing their level or how they are making their decisions of completing the task. It is not the role of the teacher to provide value feedback at this point. Meaning that the teacher should not be telling learners which level they should choose or if their choice is good or bad. Making these decisions is the role of the student who should choose the level they engage in based on what they feel more comfortable with and not to please the teacher. Even if the student directly asks the teacher which level they think is the best, the teacher should guide the student to make their own decisions appropriately. Reflecting on the idea of teaching students to make choices about their performance, we can affirm that the inclusion style does not only emphasize cognitive and physical development but also emotional.
It's important to note that this does not mean that teachers should ignore the performance of the learners. If students continue to have performance errors after a few tries, the teacher should provide feedback to clarify these errors helping to improve their performance and increase students' success.
It is important to explain to the students what inclusion is and the objectives of this style when you decide to implement it in your class. Mosston & Ashworth suggest using the example of the horizontal and slanted rope to explain the concepts of exclusion and inclusion to students. So, the students can experience the activity of the rope guided by questions positioned by the teachers. What I mean here is that the teacher starts with the horizontal rope asking students what they want the teacher to do after they jumped the rope the first time. This will lead students to ask to raise the rope, which should be done horizontally until no student can jump over. Once that happens, the teacher explains the concept of exclusion and asks the students what can be done to include everyone. Once the idea of the slanted rope comes up, the students should experience making the choices of where they want to jump over. After this talk, the teacher can transfer these concepts to another content, in the case of our example, the disc golf unit. The idea is that when students experience the concept of inclusion they will understand the purpose of the approach being used in the PE lesson-meaning, the inclusion style.
In starting to conclude this episode I will briefly go through the steps of implementing this style. You can find more detail about ways to implement the inclusion style in the book.
First talk with the students about the major objective of what you are doing. So, introduce the idea of inclusion.
Clarify the roles and expectations both of the teacher and the students.
Set the tasks with extensions in a way that all your students will be able to be successful. Make sure you have enough options to increase students’ engagement and participation.
Explain the different options and the degree of difficulty. Help your students make decisions by being clear on what success looks like. When you teach the criteria of what success looks like, learners will be able to better make decisions about when to move to the next task. This can reduce frustration and improve self-efficacy.
I will finish off with a quote from the book that really stood out to me: “If inclusion is a true goal of physical education, then what counts is frequent successful participation of every student by creating conditions for multiple entry points! The primary teaching behavior for accomplishing this goal is the Inclusion style.” (p.165)
That’s all we have for you on this one. Once again, I encourage you to download the book that is free. You can find great examples of how the spectrum is applied in PE and resources that can help you successfully integrate the different styles of teaching in your classes. I’ll be back soon with blogs explaining the next teaching styles, so stay tuned.
Thanks for reading!
Alba and Risto
For more resources see below:
Full Cite: Mosston, M., & Ashworth, S. (2008). Teaching physical education: First online edition, 2008. https://spectrumofteachingstyles.org/index.php?id=16
Visit: https://www.spectrumofteachingstyles.org
Twitter: @spectrumots