Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to assess the major technical problems in teaching basketball practical session of Grade 11 in Alamura Preparatory School. To undertake this study, descriptive survey design with mixed method was employed. The sources of the data were 63 Grade 11 students, health and physical education (HPE) teachers, 3 principals, and 1 department head. Stratified random sampling technique was employed to select students from Grade 11 natural and social science students by considering sexes. Health and physical education teachers, principals and department head were selected by using availability sampling technique. Moreover, classroom monitors were selected by using purposive sampling technique. Even though questionnaires were the main data gathering instruments, focus-group-discussion, observation and document analysis were also used to enrich the data gathered through questionnaires. The data gathered by using these tools were analyzed by using both descriptive statistics like percentages, rank order, average mean and grand mean. The finding of the study revealed that the cooperation and commitment of school principals and the quantity and quality of technical equipment for basketball practical session were found not to be encouraging. Even though there were student's textbooks in the school understudy, there were no syllabus, reference books and teacher's guide in the school at all. The findings of the study also illustrated that though health and physical teachers' basic skills (shooting, ball handling, passing, pivoting, receiving, boxing, etc.) in basketball technical  practical session  were encouraging, they have weak pedagogical skills to relate the theoretical aspect of the syllabus with its practical aspect in the basketball field to promote individual practice and they were not technically competent enough to teach basketball  practical session in light of  individual and team  practice due to lack of attention on how to utilize the rules of basketball. The finding of the study also shows that even though students nearly accept and implement comments given by their teachers, they have low speed in playing basketball and they were practicing common personal and technical fouls and violations while playing basketball during practical session and week peer assessment experiences were recognized in the school under study.

Key words: Basketball technical practical session, basic skills, pedagogical skills, technical equipment.