Skill-Related Task Structures, Explicitness, and Accountability: Relationships With Student Achievement

The purpose of this study was to determine relationships of task structures, explicitness, and accountability with student achievement in physical education. The subjects were teachers of 10 physical education classes and their 202 students. Each class participated in instruction that was videotaped, and the students were pre- and post tested. Videotapes were coded to collect data on each skill-related task including the task presentation time, skill being taught, explicitness of the task presentation, primary and secondary accountability systems used, level of student participation, and total task time. Among the many results, for the volleyball forearm pass, significant relationships were found for the total number of tasks and time spent in tasks when expectations included outcome, situation, and criteria-product. For the volleyball underhand serve, significant relationships were found for the total number of tasks and time spent in tasks when accountability included teacher feedback with follow-up and monitoring of off-task behavior.