Professor Jeanne Keay

At a time when the role of a physical education teacher in schools is being called into question, this article considers the relationship between learning opportunities and role definition. Previous research suggests that teachers define their roles through prior experience; through interaction with colleagues, friends, family and media; and in relation to the context in which they teach. This article reports on results from a longitudinal research project, which examined professional development opportunities during induction. It takes previous analysis further by asking how role definition can be influenced by learning opportunities. On entering induction, the new teachers had similar and very clear perceptions of what their roles should be and as the year progressed, their experiences appeared to reinforce rather than challenge their definitions. During the year, it was possible to identify learning opportunities that could be termed sequential, experiential and context-driven, none of which presented a challenge to the way they had originally defined their roles. External courses were limited in scope and often merely ensured survival; learning through experience allowed for experimentation but was not always undertaken within a critically reflective process; and the contexts in which they found themselves seemed to reinforce a traditional role in which competitive extra-curricular activity was valued highly. It is clear that school managers, department heads, physical education teachers and external providers have a role to play in ensuring that learning opportunities challenge practice.

Primary physical education (PPE) is increasingly being recognised for the role it can potentially play in setting a foundation for lifelong engagement in physical activity. However, the majority of the literature continues to focus on the negative features of the subject within the primary context. Whilst acknowledging the existence of these barriers, this paper sets out to take a proactive approach by presenting a conceptual framework for PPE that seeks to support a renewed and positive vision for the future. Based on ideas from complexity thinking, the framework represents a move beyond the more positivist and linear approaches that have long been reported to dominate practices in PPE and recognises learners as active agents engaged in a learning process that is collaborative, non-linear and uncertain. While acknowledging the contested nature of the complexity field, the paper explores how key principles, including self-organisation, emergence, similarity, diversity, connectedness, nestedness, ambiguous bounding, recursive elaboration and edge of chaos, offer a lens that views PPE as a complex system. With the children's learning positioned as the focus of PPE in the educational setting, the paper discusses how complexity principles interweave with the ecological components to help us better understand and more creatively engage with the complex nature of PPE developments. Specifically, these components are identified as PPE learning experiences and their associated pedagogy, teachers and their PPE professional learning and key environmental factors that include the physical environment and key stakeholders who influence developments across the different levels of the education system. The paper concludes by suggesting that this complexity-informed PPE framework represents an open invitation for the all those involved in PPE to engage in a collective process of exploration and negotiation to positively influence developments in PPE.

In this article, we report on a longitudinal action research project undertaken to explore the role that a subject association in the United Kingdom has chosen to play in ensuring that continuing professional development (CPD) provided for its members is of high quality. The Professional Development Board for Physical Education, which functions within the Association for Physical Education (UK), has introduced a proactive, self‐initiated and self‐regulated model of quality assurance. The providers involved are a range of individuals, organisations and bodies that provide CPD for physical education and school sport professionals. The article proposes that, for a self‐initiated and self‐regulated model of quality assurance to be successful, a democratic model of professionalism needs to be adopted by CPD providers. It goes on to suggest that the outcomes of such a model will lead to the development of a learning community for providers, which will, in turn, lead to improvement of their practice resulting in better professional development opportunities for participants and impacting positively on the end users of the CPD provision.

In this paper, we present the curriculum development process as a complex, iterative and integrated phenomenon. Building on the early work of Stenhouse [1975, An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development. London: Heinemann Educational], we position the teacher at the heart of this process and extend his ideas by exploring how complexity thinking and ecological perspectives have helped us frame the curriculum process as self-organising, emergent, recursive and interactive. As such, we present a curriculum approach that recognises the need for teachers to concurrently develop appropriate knowledge and understanding of the learners they work with, the environment in which they work and the capacity to design learning tasks appropriate for this context. We discuss how the complexity principles of similarity and diversity offer a frame of reference to design learning tasks that bring connectedness and coherence to the primary physical education experiences of children and teachers. However, in line with Stenhouse, our ideas are not presented as a ‘package of materials or a syllabus of ground to be covered’ but as a complex and ecological learning process that is more ‘a hypothesis testable in practice’ and an invitation for critical evaluation ‘rather than acceptance’.

Most Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) include a commitment to internationalisation within their corporate strategies covering a range of activities focusing on students, staff, finance and culture, which inevitably has led to questions about how HEIs can meet these varied and sometimes competing demands. This chapter asks questions about the usefulness of the concept of a community of practice in helping HEIs to meet their internationalisation aspirations. We acknowledge different purposes, functions, structures and participants in communities of practice and provide a critical analysis of the concept and its usefulness in promoting collegiality and collaboration to achieve an HEI’s internationalisation aims. We draw on particular UK examples to illustrate this point. We address practical and strategic considerations and conclude by highlighting issues, proposing opportunities and identifying key messages for institutions seeking to use communities of practice to internationalise higher education.

Considerations and evaluations of impact are central to high-quality professional learning and development for teachers. Darling-Hammond, Chung Wei, Andree, Richardson and Orphanos (2009), in a study of practice in the United States, identified the following characteristics of high-quality professional learning: it should be ongoing and connected to practice, it should focus on pupil learning and it should contribute to school improvement and build strong relationships among teachers. Ingvarson, Meiers and Beavis (2005), drawing on studies for the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme and looking at issues related to the quality and impact of professional development, asserted that teachers should reflect actively on their practice in order to identify their learning needs, have the time to test and evaluate new learning with support and coaching and follow up and gather feedback from their colleagues about the effectiveness of their practice. All these characteristics are reflected in the approach to learning and teaching promoted in this chapter and contribute to the sort of critical pedagogy that we believe is supported by and also developed through the use of our model.

This article builds on the key findings of the UK Higher Education Academy study Transnational Education Learning and Teaching to explore the way in which Wenger’s characteristics of communities of practice could help provide a theoretical framework for improving communication and creating more effective transnational education (TNE) partnerships. It argues that working towards the development of communities of practice, promoting a focus on the quality of the relationship between partners for the enhancement of practice, could be used to raise the quality of learning experiences for students. A focus on the process of developing collaborative partnerships rather than concentrating merely on the TNE product is promoted through this discussion. It thus argues that TNE processes could be improved through joint enterprise in order to develop the TNE product together; mutual engagement to promote shared responsibility for developing the community; and shared repertoire, which highlights the importance of working collaboratively to seek contextually appropriate solutions

Background/context: professional development is an important element of professional practice and teachers are expected to engage in activities that not only improve practice but also have a positive impact on pupil learning. Physical educators worldwide have acknowledged the need to improve the continuing education of teachers and have called upon policy-makers to promote urgent action. However, the opportunities to improve professional practice go beyond policy and while many physical education teachers only recognise professional development offered through structured courses, there is a growing recognition that collaborative learning is an effective form of professional development. It is possible to identify common features within the literature through which to explore collaborative learning experiences: they relate to participants' relationships, commitment to learning, culture and reflective practice.Focus of study: to consider collaborative learning in the professional development of early-career physical education teachers.Participants and setting: four cohorts of newly qualified teachers of physical education undertaking induction in secondary schools in England.Research design: the research was undertaken in three stages, each of which drew on data from the previous stage to explore and develop emerging theories. A grounded theory approach, which evolved as an interplay of induction and deduction, was used throughout the process, to explore aspects of induction as experienced by newly qualified teachers.Data collection: data collection combined quantitative and qualitative methods and was undertaken in three stages. In Stage 1, questionnaires were administered to three successive cohorts of newly qualified physical education teachers and ‘professional life histories’ constructed for each participant. Stage 2 adopted case-study methodology using semi-structured interviews and ‘professional life histories’ as the main methods of data collection to explore their professional development throughout the induction year. Stage 3 was undertaken in the teachers' second year of teaching and a card check system was used to confirm or reject researcher interpretation of their experiences, with discussion about four issues selected by the teachers.Analysis: in Stage 1, information was imported into Excel tables, which allowed comparison of data through a range of determinants (e.g. issues relating to specific cohorts, gender, age, prior experience). This method of comparative analysis generated emerging themes, which were examined in subsequent phases. In Stages 2 and 3 a qualitative data analysis package was used to code data, identify themes and develop theory.Findings: the notion that physical education provides the setting for influential professional development for its teachers was a strong theme emerging from the data. The key components of the resulting theory were ‘working together’, ‘teacher influences’, ‘developmental groups’ and ‘community acceptance’. However, analysing the data against the four common criteria for collaborative learning identified in literature, it is argued that collaborative learning was not necessarily the outcome experienced by the new teachers.Conclusions: collaborative learning is an important element of professional development but, if early career teachers are to benefit from such opportunities, changes to induction practice need to be made. These relate particularly to the culture in which learning takes place to ensure that professional dialogue is possible. All development opportunities should be considered as opportunities for collaborative learning and the contribution of all members of the department to the process of collaborative learning should be valued.

School-based professional development has been promoted by the government in England through its Continuing Professional Development Strategy (DfEE, 2001), however, the context and culture of the school in which the learning takes place is highly influential. Particularly important in teachers' professional development within secondary education is the subject department. This paper considers continuing professional development (CPD) that is school-based and occurs within the subject-based community, the Physical Education (PE) department. The discussion is informed by research undertaken with newly qualified teachers (NQTs) of PE.The research was conducted in two stages. Stage 1 investigated the experiences of three successive cohorts of NQTs through questionnaires and Stage 2 used an ethnographic approach to case study methodology to investigate the individual experiences of eight NQTs. Case logs and semi-structured interviews were the vehicles for data collection. A grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was used to analyse data at each successive stage of the process.The discussion highlights the influences of PE departments and individuals within those subject communities. PE departments appear to welcome NQTs into the subject community, to support their integration and to encourage them to adopt the norms of the department. The individuals in PE departments play a role in the development of new teachers both in the induction process and also less formally as ‘standard setters’. An examination of the interaction between NQTs and their more experienced colleagues suggests that teachers should not only be more aware of their potential as role models but also of their obligation to provide developmental feedback and help NQTs to set progressive targets.The paper concludes that there are opportunities for school-based CPD to be innovative and influential and to take place within the PE department but that the activity must be intentional and based on critically reflective practice. If the PE profession is to be developed and not merely maintained, PE teachers must play an active role in this process and particularly in the induction of new teachers of PE into the profession

This article draws on and develops the outcomes of previous research which concluded that school subject departments provide the setting for influential professional development and that experienced teachers strongly influence their newly qualified colleagues. The findings of two subsequent research projects, which used this as a starting point, are examined through a figurational sociological perspective. The first project examines influences on professional development over five years with two participants and the second project, conducted with new teachers, takes the analysis a stage further to explore power relationships within new teachers’ ‘figurations’. The article asks whether it is inevitable that new recruits to the teaching profession are the victims of an unequal balance of power or whether they are able to exert professional influence over their colleagues. The research findings suggest that physical education (PE) subject communities in schools are strong and provide a context in which new teachers must often find ways to be accepted before they can influence practice. One of the outcomes of such a process is that new teachers perpetuate rather than challenge and improve current practice. If PE is to be progressive, experienced teachers must be aware of the strong influence they exert over new teachers, particularly during training and induction.

This paper represents our initial attempt to explore the possibilities of creating a conceptual framework that connects primary physical education with contemporary and future educational agendas and, consequently, help shape future developments in this important aspect of the primary school curriculum. Within the paper, we firstly discuss three key underpinning issues influencing the nature of primary physical education and, in an attempt to address these issues, we then present an overview of a primary physical education framework we believe can positively impact on future developments

In recent years, primary physical education has received increased attention across a range of political, professional and academic contexts. Much of this attention has largely been due to a growing perception that formative physical education experiences have the potential to address many of the concerns regularly raised about children’s health and wellbeing, physical activity levels and sport participation. Consequently, there are now a number of stakeholders from a range of political, sporting, health, commercial and community groups with a vested interest in primary physical education, all with differing and sometimes contradictory views about its purpose. This paper suggests that the diverse interests of these stakeholders has led to a disconnect within primary physical education. Therefore, we propose that a shifting perspectives agenda is required. Accordingly, we highlight the need for key stakeholders within primary physical education to collectively work together and take a lead role in advocating a shared educational vision. To inform this shifting perspectives agenda we employ complexity thinking and draw on professional capital. We begin by offering a historical retrospective of the evolution of primary physical education. From this background, we use complexity principles to reflect on the current state of primary physical education before exploring how complexity thinking, and ideas from professional capital, can help frame the enactment of this shifting perspectives agenda. Finally, we suggest three key drivers to move the shifting perspectives agenda forwards: positive connections; the balance between key similarities and diversities; and self-organisation and recursive elaboration.

The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a pilot intervention using a game-centered approach for improvement of physical activity (PA) and physical education (PE) outcomes simultaneously, and if this had an impact on enjoyment of PE. A group-randomized controlled trial with a 7-week wait-list control group was conducted in one primary school in the Hunter Region, NSW, Australia. Participants (n ¼ 107 students; mean age ¼ 10.7 years, SD 0.87) were randomized by class group into the Professional Learning for Understanding Games Education (PLUNGE) pilot

This paper draws on data from a longitudinal research proJect, under taken with newly qualified teachers of physical education (PE), to consider ways in which experienced teachers influence the professional development of their less experienced colleagues. It examines claims that the subJect has been `masculinized' and considers the outcomes of such a process on the development of its teachers. The research explored the experiences of teachers during their induction year, using questionnaires,'professional life histories' and semi-structured inter views as the main data collection methods in a process that spanned five years. The actions of the new teachers suppor t claims that PE has developed in `explicitly gendered ways'. They looked to experienced teachers to develop their professional practice and specifically adopted the approaches of male teachers. Explanations for such actions include the perceived success of behaviour management strategies, the allocation of management roles within the subJect, the need to survive and the notion that girls are a'problem' in PE.