Busy doing nothing? Physical education teachers' perceptions of young people's participation in leisure-sport

Abstract

Within the substantial body of research examining the professional knowledge of physical education (PE) teachers one particular area remains relatively under-explored: namely, their understandings of young people's participation in leisure-sport and the implications of this, if any, for the practice of PE. There are grounds for thinking, however, that in this aspect of their professional knowledge PE teachers might not be as conversant with patterns of participation—among young people, generally, and their own pupils, in particular—as one might expect. In order to examine this tentative hypothesis, the present study involved focus groups with a total of 29 PE teachers at six secondary schools in England. A central finding of the study was that PE teachers' perceptions of their youngsters' leisure-sport lives tended to be characterized by a blend of myth and reality. Many teachers, for example, underestimated the levels of participation in leisure-sport both of their own pupils and the 15–16 years age group, generally. Nevertheless, the teachers' observations regarding what amounted to growing and diversifying sporting repertoires among their pupils were, to a greater or lesser degree, commensurate with the profiles reported by the pupils, and with wider trends associated with the changing lifestyles and preferences of young people. The paper concludes by briefly locating this study of professional knowledge within the sociology of knowledge, while observing that the content and form of PE for Year 11 pupils at the six schools in this study appeared to be informed by the common-sense, everyday knowledge of PE teachers rather than by evidence from national or local surveys of young people or studies of their own pupils.

Keywords:

• Leisure-sport
• Participation
• Physical education
• Professional knowledge

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the original version of this paper.

Notes

1. The term leisure-sport is taken to include non or, at least, less competitive physical activities, of the kind associated with the term ‘lifestyle sports’ (Coalter, 2004), as well as conventional sports.

2. For readers not conversant with the National Curriculum for Physical Education in England and Wales, it is worth pointing out that by the ‘confines’ of NCPE we are referring to the requirements for PE teachers to ensure that their pupils experience a prescribed content—including a selection of ‘activity areas’ (Programmes of Study)—and, ostensibly at least, achieve a range of prescribed outcomes in the form of learning objectives ‘Attainment Targets’.

3. The data on the 15–16-year-olds' leisure-sport participation will be reported elsewhere.

4. The present study involved only the English schools from the main study.

5. Free school meals are offered to children of families who are in receipt of Income Support or Income-based Job Seekers Allowance, and to those of families who are in receipt of Child Tax Credit only, but who are not entitled to Working Tax Credit, and whose annual income does not exceed £13,910. The IMD 2004 score is a SOA level measure of multiple deprivation that relates to income deprivation, employment deprivation, health deprivation and disability, education, skills and training deprivation, barriers to housing and services, living environment deprivation, and crime.