Productive pedagogies and teachers’ professional learning in physical education

Abstract

This paper examines a professional development and learning intervention that sought to improve teachers’ understandings of, and capacities to teach, critical evaluation in senior school physical education (SSPE). Physical education (PE) teachers and researchers formed a professional learning community (PLC) to deliver critical evaluation workshops for students and teachers of SSPE over the course of a year. The PLC used action research and engagement with the Productive Pedagogies framework as a pedagogical language with which to plan, develop and reflect on their own understandings of critical evaluation. Data were collected by interview, observation and written reflections. Inductive analysis and the constant comparison method were used to analyse the data. The results of the teacher's efforts to enhance their understanding of critical evaluation as teacher professional learning in PE are discussed in this paper.

Keywords:

• critical evaluation
• action research
• productive pedagogies
• teachers’ learning

Notes on contributors

Richard Tinning, Ph.D., is a professor of pedagogy and physical education in the School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. Richard was an early advocate of critical pedagogy and has published extensively on school physical education, teacher education and on issues of knowledge and the body in human movement studies. In 2010, he was co-winner of the AIESEP/IOC President's prize for his significant scholarly contribution to physical education and sport research.

Margot Bowes, MPhil is a lecturer of physical education in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her teaching and research interests include critical pedagogy, digital technologies in education, teacher professional learning and senior school physical education and assessment. Margot is a Fellow of Physical Education New Zealand and in 2014 was awarded the inaugural CLeaR Fellowship for the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland to research ‘Re-Thinking the Classroom: Interactive teaching and learning’.

Notes

1. When direct quotations have been used for the teacher's name and its source are indicated by parenthesis. Names have been altered to ensure privacy. Some minor grammatical changes have been made where necessary for clarity in reading transcripts from interviews.