Health and Physical Education Curriculum

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Master of Education in Health and Physical Education
Enhance your pedagogical knowledge and develop an innovative skill-based health education curriculum through relevant coursework.

The Health and Physical Education concentration consists of 34 credits.

Students seeking licensure in this concentration will have additional courses to complete (up to 44 credits). Students may need additional professional development credit for licensure depending on their previous coursework.

Summer 2025 Schedule   View Course Catalog

Summer One

  • 4 credits
  • This course contains the professional body of knowledge necessary for the effective teaching of diverse learners for student success. It focuses on understanding theories and strategies that address the needs of a diverse population that compose today's classrooms in the public school systems. Included in this course will be diversity issues, planning techniques, effective teaching strategies, differentiated instructional and assessment strategies, motivational concepts, and informal and formal assessment practices. Most importantly, this course is focused on practices that impact student learning positively and engage students in the content.
  • 4 credits
  • This health education course prepares health educators to teach using a skillsbased approach that prepares students for a health literacy. More specifically this course will study the foundational organizations, SPAs, NHES, tools, resources, and individuals or groups that are helping propel health education forward. This course will introduce the overarching aspects to teaching health education in the 21st century and prepare students for the advanced preparation of health education (methods).
  • 2 credits
  • This is an applied course focusing on teaching motor-skill acquisition techniques and strategies in a variety of standards-based activities and sports. Content includes theory, standards- based best practice for the elementary, middle, and secondary level. This course will also cover specific pedagogical and skill content focusing on equipment organization and management, skill progressions, common problems/corrections of basic and intermediate-level skills and tactics, and techniques for providing supportive student feedback.

Fall One

  • 4 credits
  • This advanced physical education course prepares physical educators to teach using a contemporary teaching approach that helps prepare students to be physically literate. More specifically this course will study teaching methods applicable to 21st century physical education with emphasis placed on the preparation and presentation of a research-based unit and lesson plans (K-12). The course provides advanced exposure to curricula, materials and resources, and an opportunity to apply engaging teaching strategies, instruction and student evaluation. Prerequisite: EDUC 542
  • 4 credits
  • This course focuses on the social and emotional needs of K-12 learners in today's classrooms. Teachers will gain both a deeper understanding of complex emotional and behavioral issues, and a clear sense of how to apply principles of social and emotional learning to students in their own classrooms. (Students seeking licensure may take the EDUC 6800 transcripted credit course.)
  • 1 credit
  • This one credit course can be added on to the fall semester. During this seminar, students will complete 50 hours of clinical experience in a classroom. Students will be placed in the clinical based on the content area they are pursuing for licensure. This seminar is focused on the clinical hours, but students will complete asynchronous modules to gain knowledge about topics that will support their work in the clinical experience. The seminar will also hold several synchronous meetings during the semester in order to check in with students, reflect on the experience, and provide additional support where necessary.

Spring One

  • 4 credits
  • This advanced health education course prepares health educators to teach using a skills-based approach that prepares students for a health literacy. More specifically this course will study teaching methods applicable to 21st century health education with emphasis placed on the preparation and presentation of researchbased unit and lesson plans for health-related skills and developmentally appropriate and relevant content (5-12). The course provides advanced exposure to curricula, materials and resources, and an opportunity to apply engaging teaching strategies, instruction and student evaluation. Prerequisite: EDUC 541
  • 4 credits
  • This course examines social, environmental and ecological justice in educational settings. Power inequalities in society shape these injustices in ways that are systemic and structural but also personal. The study of social, environmental and ecological justice and then planning curriculum and teaching accordingly is a core feature of the curriculum. (Students seeking licensure may take the EDUC 6800 transcripted credit course. Coming soon.)
  • 1 credit
  • This one credit course can be added on to the spring semester. During this seminar, students will complete 50 hours of clinical experience in a K-12 classroom specific to their content area. Students will be placed in the clinical based on the content area they are pursuing for licensure. This seminar is intended to build on Clinical Experience Seminar II, and students will be assessed on knowledge and skills that they began to work on in Clinical Experience Seminar I. Asynchronous modules will be completed throughout the clinical experience. The seminar will also hold several synchronous meetings during the semester in order to check in with students, reflect on the experience, and provide additional support where necessary.

Summer Two

  • 4 credits
  • This course offers an in-depth exploration of the principles of assessment and the challenges of evaluation. Students will discuss the theoretical and practical foundations in learner-centered and performance-based assessments. The role of national and state standards in assessing language learning will be presented. Students will examine a variety of assessment tools and their use in providing meaningful feedback to both teachers and students.
  • 4 credits
  • In this course, students will investigate and evaluate a variety of approaches for supporting English learners such as trans-languaging, assessment in both the L1 and L2, phonemic awareness and decoding, acquisition of vocabulary, and explicit versus interactive teaching.
  • 4 credits
  • Students will be introduced to the vocabulary, theory, primary principles, methods and techniques of qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry. Students will read and review a variety of research articles related to second language methodologies.

Fall Two

  • 2 credits
  • Students will participate in an online seminar to work on their thesis with their faculty adviser and to share progress with others who are working on their thesis. Instruction will be provided in online units that will vary according to the students' needs and the topics of the thesis.
  • 4 credits
  • The thesis will be a written work of publishable quality. Students may choose from one of three options for their thesis: Curriculum project, research thesis, or literature review. All options are intended to be meaningful and rigorous. Finished work should be approximately 50 pages with additional pages containing references and appendices.
  • 4 credits
  • This course is a comprehensive student teaching experience and prepares students to be able to successfully complete and submit the edTPA, required for Minnesota licensure. Student teaching will take place over the course of 12 weeks, during which time students will develop a unit of study and engage in a case study in one of the classes in which they are teaching. Both of these activities prepare students to plan their instruction, carry out a learning segment, and assess students effectively. Students will be supported in this course as they write and submit their edTPA.

Optional

  • 1 credit
  • This credit is used for registration after all course requirements are completed or when a student is not otherwise actively enrolled. Students must register for at least one semester credit in the term in which the oral examination is scheduled.

Thesis | Professional Project

The research thesis or professional project will be a written work of publishable quality. The options below are intended to be meaningful and rigorous. All projects should be approximately 50 pages with additional pages containing references and appendices.

The curriculum project is designed to allow teachers to apply knowledge from the program and evidence from research and literature from the field to their own curriculum and context. In order to do this, they will build the curriculum project around content they are teaching in one of their classes. The ultimate purpose of this project is to demonstrate your ability to, a.) plan instruction that is congruent with current literature on best practices; b.) implement evidence‐based instructional practices (in other words, be able to justify your instructional decisions); c.) Reflect upon key learnings from creating the curriculum for this project.

*This option is recommended for anyone who is considering continuing their graduate studies and earning a terminal degree.

This is a carefully written scholarly paper of approximately 50 pages that contains documentation from primary and/or secondary sources and involves data collection. The thesis must demonstrate a sound research design of a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods nature. The focus should fall within the field of education and is often specific to the content area you teach.

In this project option, students will write a 50-page (approximately) literature review. This is an appropriate project for a student who enjoys reading and synthesizing research and literature and has a desire to dig more deeply into a particular topic. Concordia College faculty from a wide range of disciplines serve as advisors throughout the thesis process. The expertise and special interests of the faculty are matched to the topics in pairing cohort members with an advisor.

A final, edited copy (PDF) of your capstone project must be submitted to the program director in order to gather signatures and to receive a final check from the program.When all signatures have been gathered, a final signed version of your capstone will be sent to you. You may choose to order hard copies of your project through HF Group (formerly Houchen Bindery), a company Concordia has worked with for years to produce hard copies of capstone projects. Visit the HF Group website to begin the order process. You will send them the signed PDF version of your capstone.