‘Where do I go from here?’: learning to become activist teachers through a community of practice

Background: Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum (SCIC) is an activist approach [Oliver, K. L., and H. A. Oesterreich. 2013. Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum as a Model for Field-Based Teacher Education. Journal of Curriculum Studies 45 (3): 394–417. doi:10.1080/00220272.2012.719550] inspired by years of research with youth. It was designed as a means of listening and responding to youth in order to better facilitate students’ interest, motivation, and learning in physical education settings. While we have a strong and growing body of activist research with youth in physical education, SCIC as a specific approach to working with youth is in its infancy; thus, there is a need to further explore the challenges teachers/researchers face learning to use this approach to teaching.

Purpose: This study explores how educators, in different contexts, learn to use an activist approach called SCIC, in order to better facilitate students’ interest, motivation, and learning in physical education and physical activity settings.

Research setting and participants: Participants included a university professor, a college instructor, a postdoctoral student, a doctoral student, and a pre-service teacher. Data were collected between January and May 2016.

Data collection and analysis: Data collection included weekly field notes and debriefings following observations, teacher artifacts, weekly collaborative group meetings, and two individual interviews per teaching participant.

Discussion and conclusions: The main challenge that emerged was learning how to move from a theoretical understanding of student-centered pedagogy to the practice of student-centered pedagogy. Specifically, the amount of time that was necessary to build a foundation that allowed for student and teacher understanding, respect, and comfort, negotiating teacher and student assumptions that were embedded in the status quo of physical education (PE), and the struggle to gather and use meaningful data to guide pedagogical decisions. We negotiated these challenges through our professional learning community whereby we worked to all be able to see and name what was happening in our individual classes and collectively planned what was needed to move forward through these challenges.     

Meaningful experiences in PE for all students: an activist research approach

Background and purpose: The research literature in physical education (PE) is placing a growing focus on the need for research that can illuminate not only the challenges PE faces but also how we can develop PE to meet the needs of all students. The activist approach aims to study future possibilities in PE, and the goal is for all young people to learn to value a physically active life. The purpose of this article is to study how the activist research approach to PE can influence students’ meaningful PE experiences.

The study: The project was conducted in co-ed PE among 15-year-old students (10th graders) in Norway in collaboration with teachers and students at their high school. The research group followed one class of 27 students during one semester of PE. The researchers planned, taught and evaluated the process according to the critical elements of activist research in PE. Data from diverse sources (observations, interviews, student logs, reports, etc.) were collected before, during and after the project.

Findings: The study demonstrates that students’ sense of meaningfulness can be developed by the activist approach. Female students in all groups found PE to be more meaningful during the project than previously. The students who disliked PE prior to the teaching period displayed the greatest improvement in terms of meaningfulness. The study shows how different aspects of the activist approach influence students’ sense of meaningfulness in PE. Creating a safer class environment had an impact on students’ feelings of social inclusion in PE. Broadening students’ perspectives about what is possible for them by introducing new activities had a great impact on students’ mastery, and co-creating the curriculum was important for their feelings of personal relevant learning.

Conclusions: It is our conclusion that involving students in the curriculum-making process is of great importance to their experiences of meaningfulness in PE. Our study shows that to listen to students and broaden students’ understanding of what PE can be has the potential to empower students, and to contribute to meaningful experiences in PE. In contrast to the majority of activist research, our study was conducted in co-ed PE. The need to co-construct the learning environment and question male dominance in PE is urgent in co-ed settings. We believe that co-ed PE can be an important arena for working with gender equality in schools. However, it should not be underestimated how important PE teachers’ roles are. If the teachers are passive, co-ed PE can seriously undermine girls’ experiences of meaningfulness in PE.     

‘Racialised’ pedagogic practices influencing young Muslims' physical culture

Background: There is growing concern surrounding the ‘racialised’ body and the way young people develop dispositions towards physical activity (PA) and sports, and more broadly to physical culture. This paper draws on Bourdieu's social theory in an effort to explore the ways in which the intersectionality of various fields (family, religion and school) and their dimensions (culture and social class) influence young Muslims' physical culture.

Purpose: More specifically the paper examines the ‘racialised’ pedagogic practices in various fields that influence young Muslims' dispositions to physical culture.

Method: The study reports on the voices of 40 participants identifying as young Muslims (12–15 years old; 20 girls and 20 boys) from one secondary school in the South of England, UK. A case study approach was used to explore participants’ understanding, meaning, structural conditions and personal agency with regard to physical culture and ‘racialised’ body pedagogies. Data include semi-structured paired interviews with participants. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. More specifically, thematic analysis based on the notion of ‘fields' informed deductive and inductive procedures.

Findings: Results suggested that religion had limited influence on the participants' agency when intersecting with schooling and social class with regard to embodiment of active physical culture. Economic capital, on the other hand, had a considerable influence on participants’ physical culture as it contributed to young people's access to PA opportunities, agency and body pedagogies. In addition, the study concludes that fields outside the school play a significant role in influencing and enabling young Muslims’ physical culture.

Conclusions: One of the most significant implications of this study is emphasising that young Muslims should not be viewed as a homogenous group as various fields intersect to influence their participation in physical education and their embodiment of physical culture. Identified fields and their markers make dispositions unique, dependent upon characteristics and their relative influence.     

Working through whiteness,race and (anti) racism in physical education teacher education

Background: The persistent gaps between a largely white profession and ethnically diverse school populations have brought renewed calls to support teachers' critical engagement with race. Programmes examining the effects of racism have had limited impact on practice, with student teachers responding with either denial, guilt or fear; they also contribute to a deficit view of racialised students in relation to an accepted white ‘norm’, and position white teachers ‘outside’ of race. Recent calls argue for a shift in focus towards an examination of the workings of the dominant culture through a critical engagement with whiteness, positioning white teachers within the processes of racialisation. Teacher educators' roles are central, and yet, while we routinely expect student teachers to reflect critically on issues of social justice, we have been less willing to engage in such work ourselves. This is particularly the case within physical education teacher education (PETE), an overwhelmingly white, embodied space, and where race and racism as professional issues are largely invisible.

Purpose: This paper examines the operation of whiteness within PETE through a critical reflection on the three co-authors' careers and experiences working for social justice. The research questions were twofold: How are race, (anti) racism and whiteness constructed through everyday experiences of families, schooling and teacher education? How can collective biography be used to excavate discourses of race, racism and whiteness as the first step towards challenging them? In beginning the process of reflecting on what it means for us ‘to do own work’ in relation to (anti) racism, we examine some of the tensions and challenges for teacher educators in PE attempting to work to dismantle whiteness.

Methodology: As co-authors, we engaged in collective biography work – a process in which we reflected upon, wrote about and shared our embodied experiences and memories about race, racism and whiteness as educators working for social justice. Using a critical whiteness lens, these narratives were examined for what they reveal about the collective practices and discourses about whiteness and (anti)racism within PETE.

Results: The narratives reveal the ways in which whiteness operates within PETE through processes of naturalisation, ex-denomination and universalisation. We have been educated, and now work within, teacher education contexts where professional discourse about race at best focuses on understanding the racialised ‘other’, and at worse is invisible. By drawing on a ‘racialised other’, deficit discourse in our pedagogy, and by ignoring race in own research on inequalities in PETE, we have failed to disrupt universalised discourses of ‘white-as-norm’, or addressed our own privileged racialised positioning. Reflecting critically on our biographies and careers has been the first step in recognising how whiteness works in order that we can begin to work to disrupt it.

Conclusion: The study highlights some of the challenges of addressing (anti)racism within PETE and argues that a focus on whiteness might offer a productive starting point. White teacher educators must critically examine their own role within these processes if they are to expect student teachers to engage seriously in doing the same.     

Disrupting racialization: considering critical leadership in the field of physical education

Background: The field of physical education (PE), overlapping as it does with the field of sport, has been critiqued for marginalizing those positioned as ‘different’. This difference is typically conceptualized in regard to a white, masculine, heterosexual, and able-bodied norm. Students who do not identify as white are not represented in any significant way in physical education discourses, culture, or the demographics of PE teachers in many international contexts.

Purpose: This article explores links between the literature in critical leadership and physical education. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of transformational leadership, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory, we draw links between the field of PE and applied critical leadership.

Design and analyses: Drawing on the theoretical tools of Bourdieu, we argue that physical education can be conceptualized as a field of practice. As such, the field values contain certain practices and norms. We argue that disrupting these norms relies on leadership in the field and may require insights from other fields, in this case applied critical leadership.

Conclusion: We conclude that leaders (both teachers and teacher educators) in the field of PE have a responsibility to take up practices which work against racialization and challenge current norms. This is both a theoretical and pedagogical challenge but can begin in classrooms.     

Transformation of complex movements from policy to practice – a discourse analysis of Swedish physical education teachers’ concepts of moving

ABSTRACT

Background: How teachers enact policy has been of significant interest to educational scholars. In physical education research, scholars have identified several factors affecting the enactment of policy. These factors include but are not limited to: structural support available for teachers, provision of professional development opportunities, the nature of the policy, and the educational philosophies of the teachers. A recurring conclusion drawn in this scholarship is that official documentation and teachers’ work often diverge, sometimes in profound ways.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how physical education teachers in Sweden describe their enactment of policy regarding the concept complex movement, which features in the latest Swedish curriculum.

Methods: Interview data were generated with six specialist physical education teachers. Three questions guided the interviews: What is complex movement? What is not complex movement? And, can you give examples from your teaching of complex movement? Data were analyzed using a discourse analytic framework. Meaning was understood as a production of dialectical relationships between individuals and social practices. Two key concepts were utilized: intertextuality, which refers to the condition whereby all communicative events, not merely utterances, draw on earlier communication events, and interdiscursivity, which refers to discursive practices in which discourse types are combined in new and complex ways.

Results: We identified three discourses regarding the teachers’ enactment of policy: (1) Complex movement as individual difficulty, (2) Complex movement as composite movements, and (3) Complex movement as situational adaptation. Several features were common to all three discourses: they were all related to issues of assessment; they suggested that complex movement is something students should be able to show or perform, and; they left open room for practically any activity done in physical education to be considered complex.

Discussion: Three issues are addressed in the Discussion. The first concerns the intertextual nature of the teachers’ statements and how the statements relate to policy and research. The second concerns the way that knowledge, and specifically movement knowledge, becomes problematic in the teachers’ statements about complex movement. The third concerns more broadly the language used to describe the relationship between policy and practice.

Conclusions: We propose that modest levels of overlap between teachers’ discursive resources, policy, and research is unsurprising. In line with earlier research, we suggest that the notion of ‘enactment’ is a more productive way to describe policy-oriented practice than notions such as ‘implementation’ or ‘translation’, which imply a uni-directional, linear execution of policy.     

Understanding young Chinese Australian's (dis)engagement in Health and Physical Education and school sport

Background: School Health and Physical Education (HPE) and sport has increasingly become a complex cultural contact zone. With global population shifts, schools need policies and strategies to attend to the interests and needs of diverse student populations. School HPE and sport is a particularly significant site as it is a touchpoint for a range of cultural values and practices related to physical activity, the body, health and lifestyle proprieties.

Purpose: While there is a high Chinese student population in Australian schools, little research has been undertaken to understand their needs, experiences and perceptions in schools HPE and sport. In addition, research in the physical activity field is accentuated by paradigms that assume and perpetuate the binary notion of cultural beliefs and practices such as ‘West’ versus ‘East’ and in association with ‘Normal’ versus ‘Problematic’ lifestyles in relation to physical activity. We argue that, without conceding the epistemological understanding of ‘difference’, policies and practices that promote diversity can remain socially unjust and superficial.

Research design: This paper focuses on two schools in Queensland. The data collection process was underpinned by critical and interpretive ethnographic methods. The participants in Sage College consisted of seven girls of whom three were in Year 8, three in Year 9 and one in Year 10. At Routledge State High, a state-owned, secular and coeducational secondary school, the cohort consisted of two girls in Year 8, one girl and two boys from Year 9.

Results: This paper draws on Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital, field and doxa and the Chinese Confucianism philosophy of ‘Complementary difference’ to understand the various perceptions and experiences of young Chinese Australians in schools HPE and sport. Results invite us to seek an understanding of students’ subjectivities and disrupt the binary differences in cultural values and attributes to promote multicultural education.

Conclusion and recommendation: Moving beyond the Australia's Anglo-Celtic centred HPE and the limitations of a Western view of exclusive opposites, this paper makes an original contribution to knowledge by presenting a ‘heuristic of difference’ model that accommodates Western and Chinese perspectives in Australian HPE research.     

Working towards inclusive physical education in a primary school: ‘some days I just don’t get it right’

Background: In Aotearoa New Zealand, as it is internationally, there is a desire to ensure physical education is inclusive of all students regardless of their abilities. Yet, medical discourses associated with disability continue to position students who are perceived as not having the capacity to participate fully in traditional physical education programmes as the teacher’s ‘helper’, ‘helped’, or ‘helpless’. As a result, these students may have negative experiences of physical education and this can impact on future involvement in movement-related activities within school and community settings.

Methodology: Drawing on the data from a larger critical participatory action research project, we explore how one primary school teacher, Joel, attempted to work more inclusively within physical education. Specifically, we draw from personal journaling, student work and records of dialogical conversations to shed light on Joel’s experiences.

Conclusion: Joel’s experience demonstrates that there is not one singular solution to inclusion within physical education and it is a combination of actions that support this process. In Joel’s case, this included becoming a reflexive practitioner, getting to know his students, being receptive as opposed to respective to difference in positive ways rather than seeing this as limiting, working imaginatively to reconsider what constitutes learning in physical education, and sharing ownership for curriculum design and learning with his students. Working in this way illustrates how a multi-layered approach can make a difference to how all the students in a class experience inclusion, including students positioned as disabled.     

‘It doesn't matter how they move really,as long as they move.’ Physical education teachers on developing their students’ movement capabilities

Background: Movement is key in physical education, but the educational value of moving is sometimes obscure. In Sweden, recent school reforms have endeavoured to introduce social constructionist concepts of knowledge and learning into physical education, where the movement capabilities of students are in focus. However, this means introducing a host of new and untested concepts to the physical education teacher community.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to explore how Swedish physical education teachers reason about helping their students develop movement capability.

Participants, setting and research design. The data are taken from a research project conducted in eight Swedish secondary schools called ‘Physical education and health – a subject for learning?’ in which students and teachers were interviewed and physical education lessons were video-recorded. This article draws on data from interviews with the eight participating teachers, five men and three women. The teachers were interviewed partly using a stimulated recall technique where the teachers were asked to comment on video clips from physical education lessons where they themselves act as teachers.

Data analysis. A discourse analysis was conducted with a particular focus on the ensemble of more or less regulated, deliberate and finalised ways of doing things that characterise the eight teachers’ approach to helping the students develop their movement capabilities.

Findings. The interviews indicate that an activation discourse (‘trying out’ and ‘being active’) dominates the teachers’ ways of reasoning about their task (a focal discourse). When the teachers were specifically asked about how they can help the students improve their movement capacities, a sport discourse (a referential discourse) was expressed. This discourse, which is based on the standards of excellence of different sports, conditions what the teachers see as (im)possible to do due to time limitations and a wish not to criticise the students publicly. The mandated holistic social constructionist discourse about knowledge and learning becomes obscure (an intruder discourse) in the sense that the teachers interpret it from the point of view of a dualist discourse, where ‘knowledge’ (theory) and ‘skill’ (practice) are divided.

Conclusions. Physical education teachers recoil from the task of developing the students’ movement capabilities due to certain conditions of impossibility related to the discursive terrain they are moving in. The teachers see as their primary objective the promotion of physical activity – now and in the future; they conceptualise movement capability in such a way that emphasising the latter would jeopardise their possibilities of realising the primary objective. Should the aim be to reinforce the social constructionist national curriculum, where capability to move is suggested to be an attempt at formulating a concept of knowledge that includes both propositional and procedural aspects and which is not based on the standards of excellence of either sport techniques or motor ability, then teachers will need support to interpret the national curriculum from a social constructionist perspective. Further, alternative standards of excellence as well as a vocabulary for articulating these will have to be developed.     

Reflecting on the moral bases of critical pedagogy in PETE: toward a Foucaultian perspective on ethics and the care of the self

In teacher education and in physical education teacher education (PETE), the possibilities and pitfalls of critical pedagogy (CP) for transforming society have been frequently debated. From these debates, it has become quite clear that the lines separating ‘technocrats’ from ‘radicals’ are so strongly drawn that limit the advance of PETE. In the spirit of collegiality, we offer an alternative approach to CP based on Foucault's genealogical work on the History of Sexuality. It promotes a pedagogical perspective toward the development of ethics and the care of the self. We argue that this approach, far from discrediting what non-critical pedagogues do, can not only advance the practice of CP, but also open up new ways of conceptualizing PETE that are worth considering both by critical pedagogues and by the members of other pedagogical camps. We discuss the implications of this approach in the personal, social–professional and political spheres.     

Impact of a sustained Cooperative Learning intervention on student motivation

Background: Cooperative Learning has been recently defined as a true pedagogical model. Moreover, in a recent review Casey and Goodyear reported that it can help physical education promote the four basic learning outcomes: physical, cognitive, social and affective.

Purpose: The main goal was to investigate the impact of a sustained Cooperative Learning intervention on student motivation. The second goal was to assess students’ perceptions of the Cooperative Learning class climate. Finally, the third goal was to explore students’ feelings and thoughts after experiencing Cooperative Learning in physical education for an extended period of time.

Participants and settings: 249 students (grades 8–11) and 4 teachers enrolled in 4 different high schools agreed to participate. Each school administration allocated several class groups to each teacher based on its necessities. Therefore, intact physical education classes played a part in this research project. They were randomly distributed into an experimental group with 137 students (mean age 13.91?±?1.76 years), which experienced 3 consecutive cooperative learning units, and a comparison group with 112 students (mean age 13.41?±?1.25 years), which experienced a traditional teaching approach during the same length of time.

Research design: A pre-test, post-test, quasi-experimental, comparison group design was followed.

Data collection: Prior to and at the end of the intervention programme, all participating students were asked to complete a questionnaire, which included the Perceived Locus of Causality Scale and the subscale ‘Cooperative Learning’ of the Perceived Motivational Climate Questionnaire. At post-test, participants in the experimental group were also asked to: ‘Describe your feelings, your thoughts and your ideas on the three Cooperative Learning units that you just experienced in physical education’.

Data analysis: Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS 22.0, while MAXQDA 11 was used to assist with qualitative data management.

Findings: Quantitative data showed an increase in intrinsic motivation and identified regulation only in the experimental group. This group also increased its perceptions of a Cooperative Learning class climate. Qualitative data analysis of the students’ responses after experiencing Cooperative Learning on a sustained basis produced five major themes: cooperation, relatedness, enjoyment, novelty and disappointment. All these findings are in line with Vallerand's hierarchical model of motivation, where social factors (i.e. Cooperative Learning) influence psychological mediators (i.e. relatedness), which mediate over the different types of motivation (i.e. intrinsic motivation) and finally lead to different outcomes (i.e. enjoyment).

Conclusion: Cooperative Learning applied on a sustained basis can increase the most self-determined types of motivation, intrinsic motivation and identified regulation, in secondary education students. Students’ perceptions after experiencing Cooperative Learning for a long period of time reflected four positive ideas: cooperation, relatedness, enjoyment and novelty and a negative one: disappointment. Both the positive and the negative ideas should be considered when implementing Cooperative Learning in physical education, because students experience them.     

Physical activity levels during Dutch primary and secondary school physical education

Abstract

Objective: Physical education (PE) has been attributed an important role in providing young people with physical activity. If sufficiently active, PE lessons could contribute to physical activity levels in youth. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the overall intensity of Dutch primary and secondary school physical education (PE) lessons and the influence of various lesson characteristics on these intensity levels. Methods: Between September 2008 and June 2009 heart rates were measured using the Polar Team System in a nationally distributed sample of 913 students in 40 schools in the Netherlands. Results: Overall percentages lesson time in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were 46.7% and 40.1% during primary school and secondary school PE respectively. Results indicated a sharp decline in girls’ PE intensity levels at the beginning of secondary school. Furthermore, secondary school boys were more active than girls. The high prevalence of teamgames in the Dutch PE curricula might prevent secondary school girls from attaining similar physical activity levels during PE.     

Creating a Culturally Relevant Curriculum for Disengaged Girls

ABSTRACT

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 traditional multi‐activity format often permit dominant aggressive male players to control the game, marginalizing and alienating low‐skilled girls and boys. This paper critiques the circumstances often found in sport based physical education and reports the use of an innovative approach to team‐sport curriculum entitled, ‘Sport for Peace’, to enhance girls' levels of engagement and satisfaction in urban high school physical education. In this research, seven teachers and 15 girls were involved in the curriculum innovation in three urban high schools. Teachers trained and mentored using the curriculum implemented the program in two classes in each school. The implementation process was described using observation protocols and the teachers and girls were interviewed formally at the conclusion of the observation period. Data were analysed using constant comparison. Findings suggested that the Sport for Peace curriculum improved the sport environment for girls by enhancing their perceptions of success, promoting ownership of the sport content and the class processes, creating authentic cooperative environments for boys and girls, and encouraging the use of second chances to promote understanding and learning. Boys' altitudes towards girls' ability and motivation became more positive and girls indicated that they enjoyed participating with boys in these sport programs. The findings were analysed within Ladson‐Billings' conceptualization of culturally responsive

     

Interpretation and enactment of Senior Secondary Physical Education: pedagogic realities and the expression of Arnoldian dimensions of movement

Background: New curriculum developments present opportunities for established thinking and practice in physical education to be reaffirmed or challenged in government, professional and institutional arenas. The introduction of a new official text for the Victorian Certificate of Education Physical Education [VCEPE] in 2011 provided a prompt for renewed debate about the ways in which ‘multiple ways of knowing' could prospectively find expression in senior secondary physical education. Previous analysis of the new VCEPE official text and associated assessment requirements led to a prediction that a theoretical–practical binary may well be reaffirmed amidst implementation of the new course in schools, such that senior secondary physical education (SSPE) in Victorian schools may remain an essentially propositional/theoretical subject.

Purpose: This paper reports on research that has pursued this prediction and specifically explored the expression of Arnold's three dimensions of education in, through and about movement, in teachers’ interpretation and enactment of the new VCEPE Study Design. The research sought to pursue the potential for originality and creativity in SSPE amidst the introduction of a new official curriculum text, examine factors facilitating or limiting this and document the ‘pedagogic realities’ of SSPE in Victorian schools.

Methodology: The study used a case study approach, involving two government and two independent secondary schools in Victoria, Australia. Data gathered from teacher interviews, classroom observations and documentary sources in 2012–2013 are reported. Analysis pursued internal and external factors framing the curriculum and pedagogical practices prominent in enactment of the new course in the case study schools, and the individual and collective representation of Arnold's three dimensions of movement in the schools’ curriculum and teachers’ pedagogical practices.

Findings: The findings reveal complexities and tensions associated with the representation of new curriculum policy in school curriculum and teachers’ pedagogic practices. Attention is drawn to ways in which the interplay between official texts, accompanying assessment requirements, other professional texts and the wider educational context variously shape the ‘pedagogic realities’ of the VCEPE in practice. The discussion explains how this interplay influences (and limits) the expression of Arnold's dimensions in VCEPE.

Implications: This paper reaffirms previous work in SSPE that has highlighted the need for conceptual coherence between curriculum texts and assessment frameworks. This research directs attention to opportunities for development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, through both official and professional channels, in ways that facilitate teachers’ professional learning about the potential expression of Arnold's dimensions in VCEPE. It also calls for curriculum authorities, professional learning associations and teacher education institutions to work more coherently to be at the fore of thinking about pedagogic possibilities in senior secondary physical education.     

Hiding behind the camera: social learning within the Cooperative Learning Model to engage girls in physical education

Research suggests that girls are disengaged in physical education due to the ‘traditional’ way that it is taught, i.e. teacher-centred approaches with a primary focus on motor performance. In contrast, Cooperative Learning, a student-centred pedagogy focusing on learning in multiple domains, has had success in engaging girls in physical education. Furthermore, when cooperative group work has been combined with technology, student engagement with learning is heightened. This article discusses the use of Cooperative Learning and video cameras to bring about a positive change to the learning environment for girls who were identified as being disengaged in physical education. Two classes of adolescent girls were taught an eight-lesson unit of Basketball using Cooperative Learning. Students worked in learning teams, participating in different roles, such as a coach or a camerawoman, to help each other learn and to film video clips of their learning. Data collection included a teacher's reflective journal, post-lesson teacher analysis tool, student interviews and the analysis of learning teams' movies. Inductive analysis and constant comparison was used for data analyses. Findings suggest that the role of the coach and the camerawoman was pivotal to girls' engagement. Some girls only ‘fully’ participated in lessons when learning was within the social and cognitive domains, since they could ‘hide behind the camera’ and were not required to participate physically. We controversially suggest that, in order to engage girls in physical education, we may have to temporarily remove the physical domain of learning (at least for some girls) in order to positively affect their longer term engagement in the subject.     

Adopting a models-based approach to teaching physical education

Background: The popularised notion of models-based practice (MBP) is one that focuses on the delivery of a model, e.g. Cooperative Learning, Sport Education, Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility, Teaching Games for Understanding. Indeed, while an abundance of research studies have examined the delivery of a single model and some have explored hybrid models, few have sought to meaningfully and purposefully connect different models in a school's curriculum (see Kirk, D. 2013. ‘Educational Value and Models-based Practice in Physical Education.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory 45 (9): 973–986.; Lund, J., and D. Tannehill. 2015. Standards-based Physical Education Curriculum Development. 3rd ed. Burlington, MA: Jones &; Bartlett.; Quay, J., and J. Peters. 2008. ‘Skills, Strategies, Sport, and Social Responsibility: Reconnecting Physical Education.’ Journal of Curriculum Studies 40 (5): 601–626.). Significantly none, to date, have empirically investigated broader notions of MBP that make use of a range of different pedagogical models in/through the PE curriculum (Kirk, D. 2013. ‘Educational Value and Models-based Practice in Physical Education.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory 45 (9): 973–986.).

Aim: To provide a first empirical insight into using a MBP approach involving several models to teach physical education. At its heart, this paper presents the reader with the realistic and nuanced challenges that arise in striving towards, engaging with, planning for, and enacting a broader, multimodel notion of MBP.

Method: While the study itself was broader, we focus primarily on three units (one using Cooperative Learning, one using a Tactical Games/Cooperative Learning hybrid and a third using Sport Education) taught to boys in two different age groups (i.e. 11–12 and 14–15). Two analytical questions inform and guide our enquiry: (1) What do we learn about MBP implementation through this project that would help other physical education practitioners implement a multimodel MBP approach? and (2) What are the key enablers and constraints of early MBP implementation? Data sources included (a) 21 semi-structured interviews with student groups, (b) teacher post-lesson and post-unit reflective analyses, (c) daily teacher reflective diaries, and (d) teacher unit diaries. Data were analysed comparatively considering the two analytical questions.

Results: The data analysis conveys strong themes around the areas of teacher and student prior learning, working toward facilitating a change in practice, sufficient time to consider changes in practice, and changing philosophies and practices. The results suggest that the consistent challenge that arose for the teacher towards the goal of adopting a MBP approach was the reduction of his overt involvement as a teacher. While the teacher bought into the philosophy of multimodel MBP he was continually frustrated at not progressing as quickly as he would like in changing his practice to match his philosophy.

Conclusions: Despite his best intentions, early attempts to use a multimodel MBP approach were limited by the teacher’s ability to re-conceptualise teaching. The teacher made ‘rookie mistakes’ and tried to transfer his normal classroom practice onto paper handouts while simultaneously inviting students to play a more central role in the classroom. In considering this journey, we can see an indication of the investment needed to implement a MBP approach. Pedagogical change in the form of MBP is a process that needs to be supported by a community of practice intent on improving learning across multiple domains in physical education.