Mapping the landscape of physical education external provision in Irish primary schools

Abstract

In Ireland, primary physical education (PE) is delivered by non-specialist classroom teachers. A growing number of primary schools are committing resources to external providers for partial delivery of the PE curriculum. Some researchers (Evans and Davies [2014; 2015]. “Neoliberal Freedoms, Privatisation and the Future of Physical Education.” Sport, Education and Society 20 (1): 10–26. doi:10.1080/13573322.2014.918878; Powell [2015]. “Assembling the Privatisation of Physical Education and the ‘Inexpert’ Teacher.” Sport, Education and Society 20 (1): 73–88. doi:10.1080/13573322.2014.941796) suggest the use of external providers in primary PE represents an increasing privatisation of the public education system. Thus, privatisation of PE raises questions about the future purpose, quality, and content of the subject. The goal of this paper is to identify the most common forms of external provision in support of PE in a small cohort primary schools. Network analysis was used to achieve a graphical representation of primary schools/external provision. Web pages of primary schools yielded data that allowed the creation of a social network analysis of external provision for 67 primary schools selected from the 2015/2016 list of Delivery of Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) programme. Results highlight that the most common forms of PE external provision in Irish primary schools are Gaelic Games (GAA), swimming, and dance and describe the network relationships between external provision types. Discussion provides possible reasons to justify the external provision trend for primary PE in Ireland.

Keywords:

• primary physical education
• outsourcing
• network representation
• physical education providers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Jessica Mangione is a PhD student with the Physical Education and Sport Sciences (PESS) Department at University of Limerick. From 2013, for two years, she worked as a Physical Education external provider in an Italian primary school. In 2015 she moved to Ireland for her PhD studies on Physical Education external provision in Irish primary schools.

Melissa Parker is a Senior Lecturer Emerita in Physical Education and Sport Sciences at the University of Limerick, Ireland and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Northern Colorado (USA). Her research interests are professional development for teachers and teacher educators, primary Physical Education, and teacher education.

Mary O’Sullivan is Professor Emerita of Physical Education and Youth Sport at the University of Limerick. Her research interests are physical education curriculum and curricular reform, teacher education, and teachers/teacher educators’ professional development.

Mike Quayle is a Lecturer at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and an honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Drawing on a wide range of methods, his research explores identity, and how the local and immediate concerns of identity enactment can impact on broader socio-political processes.

Notes

1 For replicability we note that the following parameters were used in the Leiden clustering algorithm: Constant-Potts Model; resolution = .4; use edge weights = false; resolution = .4; number of iterations = 10; Number of restarts = 1000; random seed = 0. The ‘restart’ parameter runs the algorithm that number of times and selects the most reliable solution from the distribution of results, providing some confidence in the solution.