Catherine D. Ennis

  • Professor
  • Kinesiology, UNCG

[Dr. Ennis passed away in 2017. The following biographical statement represents her work during her activity at UNC Greensboro.] Catherine Ennis is a professor of teacher education and curriculum and instruction in the Department Kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Lynchburg College (VA), a Master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Previously she held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Maryland-College Park. Professor Ennis’ research focuses on curriculum theory and development in physical education with specific applications to urban school settings. She has published over 60 research articles in refereed education and physical education journals and delivered over 150 presentations to international, national, and regional audiences. Dr. Ennis has co-authored two books, The Curriculum Process in Physical Education (1995, McGraw-Hill) and Student Learning in Physical Education: Applying Research to Enhance Instruction (2003, 2nd edition, Human Kinetics). Dr. Ennis has been the pedagogy section editor for Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport and is a member of the Editorial Boards for Contemporary Educational Psychology; Quest; Sport, Education, and Society; Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, and European Physical Education Review. She has been the principal investigator for NIH grants totaling more than $1.5 million.

There are 57 included publications by Catherine D. Ennis :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Alone in a Crowd: Meeting Students' Needs for Relevance and Connection in Urban High School Physical Education 1999 5096 Student engagement is a critical issue in education. A key component of engagement is the student's sense of membership. When students believe in and feel a part of the purposes of school and physical education, they are more likely to engage in acti...
Analyzing Curriculum as Participant Perspectives 1990 9430 For this study, curriculum was defined as a holistic set of perspectives that interact to create the educational environment. The Goodlad et al. (1979) domain concept was used as the theoretical structure for the examination of content in three el...
Cognitive style and gender differences in children's motor task performance 1990 3659 Memory storage capacity and system flexibility of 7 year-old children were examined through performance on a novel ball-intercepting task. Field dependence/independence served as the theoretical base for the study. The task required students in 56) t...
Cognitive style differences within an analytical curriculum: Examples of success and nonsuccess 1991 2301 This research was conducted to examine field dependence/independence cognitive style differences exhibited by young children. In analytically-oriented movement education curricula. It was hypothesized that an analytical focus demands mental energy, m...
Communicating the Value of Active, Healthy Lifestyles to Urban Students 1999 2468 Major obstacles 10 educational effectiveness exist for many low-income students of color who attend urban public schools. Many obstacles appear to be correlated with low incidences of physical activity in children and adolescents. Three factors - imm...
Constructing cardiovascular fitness knowledge in physical education 2014 856 In physical education, it has become necessary for children to learn kinesiological knowledge for understanding the benefits of physical activity and developing a physically active lifestyle. This study was conducted to determine the extent to which ...
Content knowledge transformation: An Examination of the relationship between content knowledge and curricula. 1995 6195 Theories associated with teacher knowledge suggest that teachers transform subject content knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge in teaching to enhance the content comprehensibility. It is assumed that the connection between teacher content kn...
Content specificity of expectancy beliefs and task values in elementary physical education 2008 1036 The curriculum may superimpose a content-specific context that mediates motivation (Bong, 2001). This study examined contentspecificity of the expectancy-value motivation in elementary school physical education. Students' expectancy beliefs and perce...
The Context of a Culturally Unresponsive Curriculum: Constructing Ethnicity and Gender Within a Contested Terrian 1998 2583 The purpose of this research was to examine retrospectively the impact of federal mandates for forced school desegregation and coeducational programs on the curricular and teaching decisions of veteran teachers. A series of three narrative interviews...
Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum for Disengaged Girls 1999 14006 Findings from physical education research conducted over the last two decades suggest that girls' experiences in and perceptions of physical education in many team sport-based programs are less than satisfactory. Team sports taught within a tradition...
Creating urban classroom communities worthy of trust 2002 5873 Developing trusting relationships between teachers and students in urban secondary schools everywhere is a challenging task that is essential to maintaining an effective learning environment. Trust involves a fragile web of relationships nurtured thr...
Curricula of Mutual Worth: Comparisons of Students' and Teachers' Curricular Goals 1998 4028 Teachers' educational values appear to influence their decision-making, but they are not the only decision-makers in the classroom. Students are also actively deciding on courses of action, yet educators know very little about students' values or the...
Curriculum matters: Learning science-based fitness knowledge in constructivist physical education 2012 401 Teaching fitness-related knowledge has become critical in developing children's healthful livingbehavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a science-based, constructivistphysical education curriculum on learning fitness knowled...
Curriculum Theory as Practiced: Case Studies of Operationalized Value Orientations 1992 9815 This research was conducted to investigate the role of value orientations in effective elementary physical educators' curricular decision making. Educational value orientations served as the theoretical base for the research. Three research questi...
Curriculum: Forming and Reshaping the Vision of Physical Education in a High Need, Low Demand World of Schools 2006 17015 This paper highlights events and issues in the development of physical education as a school subject. From the origin of physical culture in the German and Swedish “Battle of the Gymnastics Systems” to the advent of the New Physical Education in 1...
Development of an instrument for assessing educational value orientations 1988 5438 The concept of values as persistent universal beliefs has been developed extensively in the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology.1 According to Kerlinger, the interest in the under-standing and measurement of b...
The development of a multi-skill test in lacrosse for college women 1977 268 The purpose of this study was to examine the development of a test to provide an objective measure of selected lacrosse skills. The items for the test were chosen on the basis of relevance, objectivity, and discriminating power. Lacrosse skills meeti...
Discrete Thinking Skills in Two Teachers' Physical Education Classes 1991 6431 Integrating thinking skills such as focusing, information gathering, and organization into all subjects is becoming increasingly important in elementary schools. The nonacademic subjects of physical education, art, and music can provide opportuni...
Domain specifications and content representativeness of the revised Value Orientation Inventory 1993 1743 Value orientations represent theoretical belief systems that guide teachers' curricular decision making. Research using the Value Orientation Inventory (VOI) to examine physical educators' value orientations in school settings found inconsistencies b...
Ecological Integration as a Value Orientation for Curricular Decision Making 1990 1663 Historically, various educational theories have used ecological themes. I The relationship between the human and the natural world is foremost symbiotic. Because human beings are part of nature, their actions influence and ate influenced by the natur...
Educational Climate in Elective Adult education: Shared Decision Making and Communication Patterns 1989 4853 Educational climate represents the social and contextual qualities of an organization as perceived by the participants. The theoretical construct of educational climate encompasses a range of variables which have been categorized as ecology, milieu, ...
The Ethic of Care in Teaching: An Overview of Supportive Literature 2005 35751 The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of three theoretical frameworks that appear related to teachers who manifest an ethic of care. An in-depth review of related literature develops Noddings' theory of the ethic of care, focusing o...
An examination of the multidimensionality of situational interest in elementary school physical education 2008 243 It has been demonstrated that situational interest in physical activity may derive from five dimensional sources, Novelty, Optimal Challenge, Attention Demand, Exploration Intent, and Instant Enjoyment. The purpose of this study was to examine the mu...
Goals, Interests, and Learning in Physical Education 2004 9955 Student achievement motivation has become a complex construct in physical education because of the competitive nature of sports and physiological discomfort associated with exercising. With updated national standards, physical education has been unde...
Impact of teacher value orientations on student learning in physical education 2017 1487 Based on the value orientation theory, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of value orientation incongruence between physical education teachers and an externally designed curriculum on student learning in a concept-based fitness-ce...
Implementation challenges for a constructivist physical education curriculum 2011 1227 Background: Curriculum fidelity describes the extent to which a curriculum is implemented faithfully as planned. Curriculum fidelity issues may arise when teachers implement the curriculum inconsistently due to differences in philosophy, barriers in ...
Implementing Curriculum Within a Context of Fear and Disengagement 1997 3264 The purpose of this study was to examine situational and personal contextual factors that teachers and students reported as enhancing or minimizing student engagement in urban high school physical education classes. In this ethnographic study, 21 ...
The Influence of Value Orientations in Curriculum Decision Making 1992 27515 Value orientations play an important role in secondary physical education curriculum decision making by influencing the teacher's curriculum content priorities relative to student needs and interests, school context, and subject matter goals. Five...
Influences of personal and lesson factors on caloric expenditure in physical education 2012 268 Background:Increasing caloric expenditure in physical education is considered an effective school-based approach to addressing the child obesity epidemic. This study was designed to determine synergistic influences of student characteristics and less...
Instructional strategies to facilitate the learning of field-dependent children 1991 4207 Three instructional strategies were examined to assist field-dependent children to compensate for cognitive limitations in memory storage capacity and system flexibility. The interpretive study was conducted with field-dependent (FD) 7-year-old child...
Is in-class physical activity at risk in constructivist physical education? 2007 928 Constructivist physical education emphasizes cognitive engagement. This study examined the impact of a constructivist curriculum on in-class physical activity. Caloric expenditure in metabolic equivalents (MET) and vector magnitude count (VM) data fr...
Knowledge and Beliefs Underlying Curricular Expertise 1994 8448 Curricular expertise is reflected in teachers' abilities to select and convey content appropriate to the learner within a particular contextual setting and situation. Teachers' knowledge and beliefs are instrumental in the curriculum decision-maki...
Learning Characteristics of Field-Dependent Children Within an Analytical Concept-Based Curriculum 1990 12577 The purpose of this research was the examination of the field-dependent/independent cognitive style as it related to learning within a Logsdon-based movement curriculum. Subjects consisted of 104 children scoring in the 1st- (field independent) and 4...
Many-Faceted Rasch Modeling Expert Judgment in Test Development 1998 3381 The purpose of this study was to model expert judgment in test and instrument development using the many-faceted Rasch model. A 150-item value orientation inventory-2 (VOI-2) assessing the value of physical education curriculum goals was developed an...
Measurement invariance of expectancy-value questionnaire in physical education 2012 4502 Expectancy-Value Questionnaire (EVQ) measures student expectancy beliefs and task values of the domain content (Eccles & Wigfield, 1995). In this study the authors examine measurement invariance of EVQ in the domain of physical education between elem...
New Directions in Undergraduate and Graduate Education in Kinesiology and Physical Education 2010 3252 New opportunities exist in graduate and undergraduate kinesiology programs for both enhancement and innovation. Professional master’s degrees prepare students for careers at the intersections of academic disciplines and the business world. Interdi...
Pedagogic Strategies Perceived to Enhance Student Learning in Athletic Training Education 2002 2642 Objective: To investigate students' and instructors' educational experiences in Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP)-accredited athletic training education programs and specifically to determine to what extent peda...
Prior knowledge determines interest in learning in physical education: A structural growth model perspective 2016 2420 Research has shown that interest in knowledge facilitates students' academic achievement in learning. Because individual interest is often based on how much one knows, in other words existing or prior knowledge, studying adolescents' interest in heal...
Properties of Purpose Concepts in an Operational Middle-School Curriculum 1987 2552 The curriculum activity initiated during the 1960s to define the structure of knowledge in physical education (Austin, 1965; Brown, 1967; Brown & Cassidy, 1963; Mackenzie, 1969; Pye & Alexander, 1971; Stanley, 1969; Tillotson, 1969; Ulrich & Nixon...
Reconceptualizing Learning as a Dynamical System 1992 3213 Few educators believe that the complex processes contributing to learning in classrooms occur randomly or chaotically. Quite the contrary, most argue that there Is an order in classrooms that is stable and repeatable and ultimately allows students t...
Refining the Value Orientation Inventory 1997 1707 Educational value orientations reflect teachers' philosophical beliefs about schooling and serveas the basis on which teachers make their decisions. Five value orientations have been identifiedempirically among physical educators: disciplinary master...
The role of value orientations in curricular decision making: A rationale for teachers' goals and expectations 1992 2345 This research examined the role of value orientations in curricular decision making from the perspective of high school physical education teachers and students. Educational value orientations served as the theoretical base for the research. Teachers...
A Sense of Connection: Toward Social Constructivist Physical Education 2003 18992 In social constructivist educational theory, the classroom is seen as a community of learners. According to social constructivists, learning occurs through peer interactions, student ownership of the curriculum and educational experiences that are au...
Situational interest, cognitive engagement, and achievement in physical education 2009 5179 Students’ learning has been the center of schooling. This study examined the contribution of situational interest motivation and cognitive engagement in workbooks to student achievement in learning health-related fitness knowledge. Situational intere...
Students and teachers’ perceptions of conflict and power 1997 12921 Social and economic changes have altered the traditional view of the teacher as the primary power holder in the classrooms making way for a reciprocal power relationship with students in which students and teachers share control of the learning envir...
Students' Experiences in Sport-Based Physical Education: [More Than] Apologies are Necessary 1996 17055 Those of us who have been participants in sport for much of our lives often find it a time-consuming and irrelevant task to defend the joys and rewards of physical activity to the uninformed or the uninitiated. Some physical education teachers are...
Teachers’ Responses to Noncompliant Students: The Realities and Consequences of a Negotiated Curriculum 1995 6187 This research examined the context in urban high school physical education classes that influenced 10 teachers' conceptualizations of realistic educational goals for their students. Ethnographic data in the form of field notes and interviews were ana...
Teachers’ value orientations in urban and rural school settings 1995 2546 The purpose of this research was to describe physical educators' value orientations for curricular decision making in urban and rural teaching settings. The revised Value Orientation Inventory (Ennis & Chen, 1993) was used to collect data from 495 ph...
Teaching value-laden curricula in physical education 1996 4472 Research on physical educators' value orientations has identified five orientations: disciplinary mastery, learning process, self-actualization, social responsibility, and ecological integration. An interpretive research design was used to compare ...
A Theoretical Framework: The Central Piece of a Research Plan 1999 23392 Establishing a line of research always begins with a plan of action that I call a research plan. For untenured faculty members, developing and implementing a research plan may seem more like racing through an orienteering course than creating a syste...
Urban Secondary Teachers' Value Orientations: Delineating Curricular Goals for Social Responsibility 1994 5943 This research examined content and task decisions of 11 urban secondary physical educators who placed a high priority on social curriculum goals. Transcript data from a stimulated-recall protocol were analyzed using constant comparison to determin...
Urban Secondary Teachers’ Value Orientations: Social Goals for Teaching 1994 4493 The research examined the intended planning and teaching decisions of 11 secondary physical education teachers to determine their rationale and goals for a socially focused curriculum within social reconstruction or social responsibility value orient...
The use of hierarchical problem solving subroutines in the solution of exercise science problems 1991 2317 Hierarchical problem solving strategies employed in solving science problems were examined in this study. Hypothesis testing was used as the theoretical base for the study of differences in problem solving within a computer simulation framework. Unde...
The use of problem solving skills in computer-aided instruction: an evaluation 1988 2795 When computer programs are designed to elicit problem solving skills by the user, this basic premise should be tested in an objective manner. The Health and Fitness Assessment program was evaluated as an interactive program with a substantial emphasi...
Using a computer simulation to compare expert/novice problem-solving subroutines 1991 3753 Hierarchical problem-solving strategies employed in solving exercise science problems were examined in this study, which also tested the validity of an educational computer simulation. Hypothesis testing was used as the theoretical base for the study...
What Works in Physical Education: Designing and Implementing a Quality Educational Program 2003 2431 When coupled with effective teaching practices, the National Standards for Physical Education (NASPE 1992, 1995) enhance students' physical skills and conceptual understandings associated with human movement (Allison et al. 2000; Mohnson 1998). The ...
When Avoiding Confrontation Leads to Avoiding Content: Disruptive students’ impact on curriculum 1996 2730 In some high schools, teacher-student confrontations constitute a typical, if unwanted, aspect of the school context. These confrontations are situations in which individuals disagree and are unwilling to negotiate or compromise their positions. Conf...