Health and body tensions and expectations for pre-service physical education teachers in Spain

ABSTRACT

The importance of the Physical Education (PE) teacher’s body, particularly for teaching PE, has been highlighted in literature. PE teachers are expected to be clear role models to students through their acts, behaviours and bodies. However, their strong embodied subjectivities, particularly those related to their teaching practices, may be problematised. This paper explores the ways in which a group of 15 pre-service PE teachers from a Spanish university constructed perspectives about the body and health in relation to their professional practices. Body journals were used to collect data, which were analysed using a Deleuze-Guattarian approach. The findings reveal the significant emphasis participants placed on their own bodies while teaching PE and the pressure they felt to conform to certain expectations of their professional roles. In response, we propose critical reflection on the content of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programmes and incorporation of alternative pedagogical approaches to alleviate the heavy reliance on pre-service teachers’ bodies.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• pre-service teachers
• body
• health
• body journals
• deleuze-guattari

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In Spain, as in the rest of Europe, universities use the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). ECTS is the most widely used credit system in Europe, based on the student workload (Wagenaar, 2006). ECTS makes degree programmes easier to read and to compare across universities. Therefore, it also facilitates student exchange programmes and academic recognition across Europe.

2 These undergraduate students were required to teach PE and other subjects in schools in order to complete their degree programme. This professional practice period is commonly known as ‘practicum’.