Recent Influences on the Training of Physical Education Teachers in England and Wales

abstract

There are many factors which impinge on the training of physical education teachers. These include factors in the internal environment, such as changes of philosophy impacting on the curriculum, and factors in the external environment most notably those relating to the political, social and economic context. Recent changes in the political environment in England and Wales have had an obvious and major impact on physical education. This paper considers the effects of some of these changes on physical education teacher training, for example, the increase in the amount of time students must spend in schools as part of initial teacher training, the introduction of the National Curriculum and the introduction of the Teacher Training Agency. The paper examines some of the implications of these changes, particularly with regard to the extent to which the political environment may be limiting the effectiveness of initial teacher training programmes to adequately prepare teachers to achieve the aim of developing a physically educated population.