Purpose
PhysEd-Academy will, therefore, directly address current challenges in the field of PE by improving four imperative quality factors: the purposes and content; school teaching; teacher education; and continuous professional development.
PhysEd-Academy involves seven European nations (Norway, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Luxembourg, Turkey and Slovenia) and was initiated with the vision of establishing a sustainable Physical Education (PE) academy. The main objective is to facilitate radical change in PE and teacher education by developing sustainable and international collaboration between school PE and teacher education that results in improved outcomes for students, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and teacher educators.
The PhysEd-Academy will develop the pedagogy of PE teacher education by identifying, developing, and testing a set of signature pedagogies that can be used across PE initial teacher education and continuous professional development programs across Europe and the rest of the world.
Project Description
Background
The PhysEd-Academy was designed using a combined approach of practitioner inquiry1 and communeties of practices (CoPs)2. Practitioner inquiry include practitioner as researcher; assumptions of links between knowledge, knowers, and knowing; professional contexts as the site for study; community and collaboration; blurred boundaries between inquiry and practice; and systematicity in data collection and analysis3. Moreover, Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner’s (2015) conceptualization of CoPs was integrated into the project design. They emphasize that CoPs come in a variety of forms, ranging from small(er) to large(r), local to global, and online to in-person. In response to this, we established three different layers of CoPs, incorporating both public and private community spaces, and inviting varying levels of participation.
See references
1 Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2009
2 Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger- Trayner and Wenger- Trayner, 2015
3 Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2009
The main objective will be achieved through mobility initiatives between PE teacher educators and teachers, involving the following main activities:
- Developing a network of teacher educators and school teachers
- Identifying and articulating a set of signature pedagogies for learning across teacher education programs
- Testing the set of signature pedagogies in initial teacher education and continuous professional development
- Identifying connections between teacher education and school student outcomes
The PhysEd-Acadmey involve three collective actions. The methodological steps of the three collective actions are detailed in the following sections.
Collective action one: Exploring signature pedagogies in an international collaboration between school PE and teacher education
Purpose, research question(s) and practitioners: The purpose of this collective action (see figure 1) was to explore signature pedagogies across various forms and contexts. This exploration was designed to foster sustainable international collaboration between school PE and teacher education and facilitate cross-border knowledge generation and professional learning and development for in-service teachers, teacher educators, and PSTs. The specific research question was: how do signature pedagogies function to facilitate collective action and support teacher educators’ and in-service teachers’ professional learning? This action involved a total of 43 in-service teachers, 35 teacher educators and 17 PSTs from the seven project countries contributing to the project at some level and point in time during the project duration. Some participants were involved on a regular basis (e.g., partner in-service teachers and teacher educators) and also actively involved in the two actions described below. In contrast, others had a more peripheral role and were only occasionally involved.
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Inquiry, professional practice and collaboration: Teachers engaged in both online and in-person activities throughout the project’s timeframe. The primary activities included five transnational physical meetings in different partner countries (Norway, Luxembourg, Turkey, Slovenia and Ireland) as well as online meetings, both of which involved discussing and sharing insights on signature pedagogies, as well as workshops (practical, theoretical, and hybrid) where teachers learned about and experienced the pedagogies as both teachers and learners. The meetings in Turkey and Slovenia served dual purposes, as they respectively involved a combination of project meetings and PST mobility and summer school for in-service teachers, PSTs and teacher educators. In the meetings, we shared insights from actions two and three and discussed the development and use of signature pedagogies across international initial teacher education programs.
We generated data from these processes by collecting artefacts, audio recording online and in-person meetings, non-participant observation of workshops and carrying out focus groups. For example, during the initial in-person project meeting in Norway, we gathered artifacts such as partner PowerPoint presentations of their localized signature pedagogies. For example, we audio-recorded the online workshops on the three identified signature pedagogies. Non-participant observations were carried out during the project meetings and PST mobility in Turkey. For example, we observed how one teacher educator used experiential pedagogies (i.e., living the curriculum and peer teaching) to teach the teacher educators, in-service teachers and PSTs how to teach an innovative PE content. The observation protocol of this workshop highlighted the ways it fostered shared bodily experiences of both the signature pedagogies and the innovative PE content. It also facilitated discussions and reflections on the teachers’ (bodily) experiences with the pedagogies and the innovative PE content. Furthermore, we carried out focus group interviews in Turkey that focused on the experiences of the teacher educators, in-service teachers and PSTs from the combined project meeting and pre-service teacher mobility, and their experiences of the entire project.
Collective action two: Exploring signature pedagogies across international initial teacher education programs
Purpose, research question(s) and participants: The purpose of this action was to explore signature pedagogies across international initial teacher education programs in order to better understand the development and use of signature pedagogies for the learning of PSTs and the CPD of teacher educators. Specific research questions posed were: how do signature pedagogies function within different international initial teacher education programs, and what learning do they support for PSTs? This involved 14 teacher educators, their local critical friend(s) and the PSTs they taught.
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Inquiry, professional practice and collaboration: Two teacher educators from each of the seven partner nations explored one or more signature pedagogies in their practice in at least one module/course. Signature pedagogies were used to support the teaching of the regular module content (i.e. it was not necessary for teacher educators to adjust the content of the module, but rather their pedagogical approach). Data for this action was gathered from multiple sources including individual teacher educator reflective diaries, non-participant observations of teacher educators’ practice, and focus group interviews with PSTs. This involved teacher educators using shared reflective prompts to reflect upon their experience throughout the course duration and during meetings with their local critical friend(s). The local group also conducted non-participant observations during the course (see Appendix A). Upon course completion, a focus group interview with PSTs was carried out about their experiences of the specific course and teacher educators’ pedagogy and use of signature pedagogies.
In addition to their local exploration, teacher educators met regularly in small, online, international CoPs to discuss their experiences of exploring signature pedagogies in their practice and receive support from other teacher educators in the group. Group formulation was based on university affiliation and the corresponding teaching schedules of the members. Each group was encouraged to convene at least three times while exploring signature pedagogies. They were assigned a facilitator and were provided with a structured plan for meetings, encompassing a pre-teaching meeting, a minimum of one meeting during teaching, and a post-teaching meeting. Discussion prompts, such as “In what ways (if any) is your intentional use of signature pedagogies changing your teaching practice?”, were provided for each meeting. All meetings were audio-recorded.
Collective action three: Exploring signature pedagogies across international continuous professional development for in-service teachers
Purpose, research question(s) and participants: The purpose of this collective action was to understand the development and use of signature pedagogies across international CPD programs, including both in-person and online formats. Specific research questions were: How do signature pedagogies function within both in-person and online CPD programs, and what learning do they support for in-service teachers? How does CPD guided by signature pedagogies influence students’ experiences in PE? This involved a total of approximately 40 in-service teachers, 10 teacher educators, and the school students the in-service teachers taught.
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Purpose, research question(s) and participants: The purpose of this collective action was to understand the development and use of signature pedagogies across international CPD programs, including both in-person and online formats. Specific research questions were: How do signature pedagogies function within both in-person and online CPD programs, and what learning do they support for in-service teachers? How does CPD guided by signature pedagogies influence students’ experiences in PE? This involved a total of approximately x in-service teachers, x teacher educators, and the school students the in-service teachers taught.
Inquiry, professional practice and collaboration: This action involved the establishment of six local CoPs, each consisting of in-service teachers and teacher educators in each country (4-6 members). The local CoPs were allocated two main tasks: (i) develop innovative PE content/pedagogy that in-service teachers can use to guide their PE teaching and (ii) explore how in-service teachers use signature pedagogies to familiarize themselves with and teach based on the innovative content. Following this local development, the final task revolved around the creation of an online CPD program that includes both innovative PE content and signature pedagogies to learn how the innovative content can guide teaching practices. These tasks unfolded in three main stages, which we detail below. While all partner countries were involved in all three main stages, the nature of each country’s context influenced the inquiries and practices, leading to some variations from country to country. Here, we use the Norwegian study of signature pedagogies as an example.
First, local CoPs of in-service teachers and teacher educators used signature pedagogies to facilitate the creation and piloting of innovative PE content. In Norway, a team of two teacher educators and two in-service teachers engaged in a form of practitioner inquiry to pilot a pedagogical approach named “Slow Friluftsliv” (Abelsen and Leirhaug, 2024). This process involved the creation of a teaching resource that outlined the pedagogical approach. The two in-service teachers wrote reflective diaries during the piloting process (see Appendix C), and artefacts such as lesson plans were collected. The two teacher educators functioned as critical friends, carrying out non-participant observations (see Appendix A) and holding several meetings, which were audio recorded, to discuss the pedagogical approach. In addition, upon completion of the unit, focus group interviews with students were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of how the pedagogical approach influences the students’ PE learning experiences (see Appendix B).
Second, following the first phase, the two local teacher educators used signature pedagogies with a new group of local in-service teachers to facilitate their learning of the “Slow Friluftsliv” approach. This involved a physical workshop using experiential pedagogies, such as living the curriculum, and (auto)biographical pedagogies such as vision and pedagogies of professional learning, including action research. Artifacts such as visions and lesson plans were gathered while workshops and online meetings were audio recorded. In addition, focus group interviews with school students were carried out on completion of the unit in order to learn more about how the pedagogical approach influenced the students’ PE learning experiences (see Appendix B).
Third, each country collated the learning from stages one and two into an open-access online resource. This resulted in an online CPD program consisting of suggestions for signature pedagogies to use to engage with and learn how to teach different innovative pedagogies in PE. In addition to the local development, the insights gathered from the development process were shared with the project team during a transnational meeting and used to refine each innovative pedagogical approach.
Funding
The project is supported by the Erasmus+ Teaching Academy programme of the European Union.
Results
The PhysEd-Acadmey will produce both research and education results, which will be published on the project website. The research results will be disseminated in high ranked national and international physical education journals, and shared at both national and international conferences throughout the project duration. The educational results will include a set of signature pedagogies for teacher education in PE and related examples, and an online continuous professional development program.
List of publications:
- Signature pedagogies of teacher education in physical education: a scoping review, 2024
Results will be disseminated in our social media plattforms:
- X (@PhysedA)
- Youtube - PhysEd-Academy
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Visit Physical Education Teacher Academy website for upcoming research results and teacher resources.
