Preparing physical and health education pre-service teachers to support students’ physical activity and wellbeing during the school day

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, physical education teachers are expected to become the cog in an ever-expanding physical activity (PA) promotion wheel. This requires such teachers to be equipped with new knowledge and skills, with attendant consequences for how physical education teacher education is approached. In this paper, a new teacher education module in Finland aimed at encouraging pre-service teachers (PSTs) to adopt flexible and creative approaches to the promotion of adolescent PA and wellbeing within the school day is presented. The context within which the module was developed is detailed along with findings of a research study which investigated the experiences of 16 physical and health education (PHE) PSTs who participated in the module. In particular, this study focused on participants’ experiences of planning and implementing PA projects in high school settings and how this affected their perspectives on their future professional roles. The module, which was rooted in tenets of phenomenon-based learning, was shown to be effective in giving students a better understanding of the role PHE teachers can realistically play in promoting PA. The opportunity the module provided for students to reflect upon their role was seen to be particularly beneficial.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical and health education teacher education
• curriculum innovation
• pedagogical approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Pilvikki Heikinaro-Johansson is Professor of Sport Pedagogy and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests centre on school physical education, improving students’ participation in PA and healthy lifestyles and examining the effectiveness of physical education teacher education programs.

Elina Hasanen is concluding her PhD in sport sociology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her qualitative research focuses on young people’s self-organised PA and its environments as social spaces. She had worked on municipal projects aimed at promoting PA and as a PHE teacher in high school.

Eileen McEvoy is concluding her PhD at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research focuses on the professional pathways and research lives of physical education teacher educators. She has also spent several years co-ordinating research projects across the Irish education sector, spanning the areas of teaching and learning, literacy, sport pedagogy, sociology of education, teacher education and community wellness.

Nelli Lyyra is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her teaching and research interests include physical education teacher education, PSTs’ reflective thinking, digital learning, and PA and wellbeing of school-aged children.

ORCID

Eileen McEvoy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0916-7651

Additional information

Funding

This work was made possible through funding received from the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland.