Background: Mosston’s “spectrum of teaching styles” which composes of 11 pedagogical approaches in physical education (PE), has been popularly promoted for maximizing students’ learning in the Western countries. However, very few of them have been put into practice and studied in Hong Kong. This article concerned a report of a pilot study on one of the teaching styles, reciprocal teaching. Aims: The study aimed to examine students’ and teacher’s experiences when engaging in learning and teaching in reciprocal teaching. Sample: 3 classes of 80 male students (Form 3 : 31 students, Form 2 : 26 & Form 1 : 23)from a local secondary school and their PE teacher were invited to participate in the study. Methods: Attached to the action research perspective, 3 teaching units of gymnastics, swimming and handball were conducted in the form of reciprocal teaching. Data composed of students’ reflective journals and interviewas well as teacher’s self review were collected at the end of the teaching units. Findings: both the teacher and students experienced reciprocal teaching positively. Students perceived their learning as active and comfortable. They were satisfied with their mastery of skills, taking peer tutoring roles, engaging in observing, taking care of others and seeing their partner’s improvement. They also encountered with those dissatisfying experiences of boring, simple and repetitive learning content, difficult skills and the undesirable learning attitude of some of the students that they feared of ending up with discipline problems and learning nothing. Their articulation with their improvement in collaboration, communication and presentation skills, building up confidence, team spirit and learning attitude of trying hard was found. Conclusion: The reciprocal teaching might solve some of the current PE problems of passive learning, little collaboration and weak accountability of learning as well as empowering students in their learning. Students’ worries concerning reciprocal

This study investigated the effects of supplemental instruction, a peer-assisted learning approach, on students, learning competence and academic performance. The supplemental instruction intervention facilitated by senior students focused on developing students' use of study skills and enhancing their motivation and academic performance. Pre- and post-intervention learning competence measures (the 10 scales of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory) were available for 430 first year undergraduate business students (Supplemental Instruction, n = 109; Non-Supplemental Instruction, n = 321) from a university in Hong Kong. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that supplemental instruction had a significant effect on academic performance, both directly and indirectly via enhancement of student learning competence, after controlling for pre-intervention learning strategy scores and previous academic achievement. This study provides evidence that supplemental instruction can be a very effective instructional strategy for promoting undergraduate student learning.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070903390786]