Physical Education
Domain 1, Physical Education, tests whether you can apply motor development, motor learning, fitness science, and program design to realistic K–12 teaching scenarios rather than simply recite definitions.
Core content the questions target
- Health-related fitness has five components: cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition. Skill-related fitness is separate: agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time, speed.
- Motor development moves from reflexive to rudimentary to fundamental to specialized movement (Gallahue). Fundamental skills split into locomotor (run, hop, skip), stability/nonlocomotor (balance, twist), and manipulative (throw, catch, strike).
- Motor learning follows Fitts and Posner's stages: cognitive (many errors, needs cues), associative (refining), autonomous (automatic, can attend to tactics).
- Feedback: knowledge of results tells the performer about the outcome; knowledge of performance describes the movement itself. Beginners benefit from frequent, specific performance feedback.
- Practice design: blocked practice aids early acquisition; random and variable practice improve retention and transfer. Whole practice suits simple or highly organized skills; part practice suits complex, low-organization skills.
- Overload, progression, specificity, and reversibility govern training adaptation.
- Assess with formative checks that adjust instruction and summative rubrics with explicit criteria; FitnessGram reports criterion-referenced Healthy Fitness Zones, not norm comparisons.
- Under IDEA, students with disabilities receive IEP or 504 accommodations; modify space, equipment, rules, or time before considering exclusion.
Worked example
A 16-year-old with a resting heart rate of 60 bpm should train at 70% of heart-rate reserve. HRmax = 220 − 16 = 204. HRR = 204 − 60 = 144. Target = (144 × 0.70) + 60 ≈ 161 bpm. Remember that 220 − age is only an estimate; the Tanaka formula (208 − 0.7 × age) or a graded exercise test is more accurate.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing health-related and skill-related components - power is skill-related, not health-related.
- Calling an outcome cue "knowledge of performance."
- Treating 220 − age as exact for every student.
- Using blocked practice when the goal is retention.
- Forgetting SHAPE America's guideline that students be active at least 50% of class time.