Koh, Koon Teck

There has been an increasing growth of external coaches employed by schools in Singapore to train and prepare their athletes for inter-school competitions. As these coaches come from different educational and professional backgrounds, their standard of coaching has varied. This study focused on the behaviour and interactive decision-making of experienced and inexperienced basketball coaches.

A review of the literature revealed that there are differences between experienced and inexperience teachers / coaches both in the classroom and in the sports setting. This study compared five experience and five inexperienced secondary school male basketball coaches as they are planned and executed a 30 minute "Pick and Roll" practice session. All practice sessions were videotaped . Interval recording procedures ( four second observe / one second code) were employed with the Arizona State University Observation Instrument (A.S.U.O.I.) to collect coach behaviour data. Coaches were also interviewed and audiotaped immediately after the practice session. Their responses were analysed using Sherman's Model of Interactive Decision-making instrument, to determine coaches' decision-making patterns.

Analysis of the data revealed that experienced coaches exhibited significantly more concurrent instruction behaviour (U=2.0, p<0.05) than inexperienced ones, where as inexperienced coaches asked a significantly greater number of questions (U=0.0, p,0.05) than their experienced colleagues. With regard to interactive decision-making, results indicated that both experienced and inexperienced coaches carried out practice mostly according to their plans (Path 1). When they encountered serious problems, however, inexperienced coaches were significantly more willing to change plans (Path 5) than their experienced counterparts (U=3.0,p<0.05).

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between sport experiences and psychological needs satisfaction of Singapore high school athletes who were involved in inter-school competition. A total of 1250 school athletes from 22 sports participated in the study. The athletes were between 13 and 18 years old and had an average of 3 years of experience in school sport (SD=.18). Cluster analysis was employed to identify homogenous groups based on the seven developmental experiences domains of the Youth Experience Survey (YES 2.0; Hansen & Larson, 2005). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether differences existed among the clusters in terms of psychological needs satisfaction (i.e., sense of autonomy, perceived competence and relatedness). The results of the cluster analysis showed that there were different subgroups of athletes with distinct developmental experiences, and they varied in the degree to which their psychological needs were satisfied. Generally, subgroups that had high levels of positive experiences and low levels of negative experiences in sport had better fulfillment of psychological needs. It is important to ensure that policies and programmes are formulated, delivered and monitored effectively to promote positive experiences for youth who are involved in competitive sports.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the physical activity patterns measured through pedometers among primary, secondary, and college students. A sample of 571 school children wore pedometers for 5 consecutive weekdays and one weekend day. Results showed that male students were more active than female students across all categories, except during co-curricular activity (CCAs). Primary school students were more active than secondary school and college students. Taken together, the findings of this study support the idea that, as children get older, the differences between boys and girls reduce drastically until the college level, at which point boys are equally as inactive as girls.

With the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) focus on using ICT in resourceful and innovative ways to improve teaching and learning (MOE, 2014), PE teachers should be trained and equipped with strategies to create environments where students are given more autonomy to decide ‘what’ to learn and ‘how’ to learn, according to students’ ability to use Information Communication and Technologies (ICT). For example, making available e-learning materials related to the lesson before and after the class affords students opportunities to learn more readily on their own than when these materials are absent. Using video recording to provide visual and verbal feedback from the teacher or among peers for skill performance during a lesson is just one of many ways ICT can be used to maximise students’ learning and develop the affective, psychomotor, and cognitive domains set out in the PE syllabus. The advantages of providing students with opportunities to harness ICT can be directly beneficial for skills acquisition and indirectly for honing life skills.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations between perceptions of coaching behaviours, psychological needs, achievement goals and motivational indicators (enjoyment and effort) at an intraindividual level. A total of 264 high-school basketball players aged between 14 to 17 years old from 19 schools in Singapore took part in the study. The participants completed a battery of questionnaires measuring perceived coach’s leadership style, achievement goals, behavioural regulations and competence, needs satisfaction, and enjoyment. Cluster analysis found 3 distinct groups differing in perceived coaching behaviours among the basketball players. The three clusters differed significantly on the indices of intrinsic motivation, perceived needs satisfaction, and achievement goals. This study shows that distinct groups of players could be identified in terms of perceived coaching behaviours and these perceptions may impact the amount of enjoyment and effort exerted during training and competition, perceived competence, achievement goals and autonomy.