Professional lives of Irish physical education teachers: stories of resilience, respect and resignation

Abstract

Background: The provision of professional development (PD) for teachers in schools is now a major concern of most national government and teaching organisations. To provide quality PD for teachers, we must understand the aspirations, needs and interests of teachers, as they are key factors in the complex world of teaching and learning. Therefore we need to know a great deal more about teachers' priorities.

Purpose: To examine how veteran physical education teachers have negotiated their lives as teachers within the cultural norms and expectations of the Irish educational system and to critique the role of professional development experiences over the course of their teaching lives.

Participants and setting: The population for this study was a cohort of 66 graduates from a physical education teacher education programme who began teaching in secondary schools across Ireland in the mid-1970s.

Data collection: The teachers completed a 26-item questionnaire addressing six aspects of their teaching careers (33 of the 42 still teaching responded, giving a 76% response rate). Individual interviews with 34 of the graduates (24 still teaching and 10 who had left teaching) were completed to find out about their needs and interests, how they negotiated their teaching careers and why they had left teaching, if they had.

Data analysis: The questionnaire data were coded and input into an Excel program. Basic descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were calculated. The interviews were audiotaped and later transcribed. The transcripts were read and reread and a process of analytic induction used to extract findings from the frequent, dominant or significant themes inherent in the raw data.

Findings: Most of the graduates were still teaching, and most were still teaching physical education for more than 50% of their workload. The themes of resiliency, respect and resignation, from the interview data, describe how the teachers negotiated schools and their teaching careers and the non-existent PD directed at teaching and learning in physical education.

Conclusions: The challenges for PD providers is to avoid making simplistic assumptions about teachers' needs and desire to learn, especially veteran teachers, given their resilience and strategic compliance honed over the years.

Notes

1. The government department responsible for education is now called the Department of Education and Science (DES).

2. The term ‘in-service training’ is used in the Irish system. Distinctions between in-service training and professional development are made in contemporary writings. The former refers to workshops in which government support teams share content and/or instructional methodologies with teachers. The latter refers to a broader set of experiences, where teachers engage in discussions and inquiry about schooling and the teaching and learning process. Professional development is the term used in this article to refer to both activities. Currently physical education teachers receive three days of in-service training in all seven content areas of the junior cycle physical education syllabus. The senior cycle physical education programme has been revised but not yet approved.

3. Students complete a national examination across a selection of required and elective subjects at the end of junior and senior cycles. The points obtained in the examination determine which programmes students can pursue. A decision on a Leaving Certificate PE syllabus has been anticipated for two years but at the time of writing no decision has been made. Some educators are concerned that the proposed syllabus may be already out of date.

4. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is the national body that designs curriculum for all subject areas. The Department of Education and Science approves and oversees implementation.

5. It should be noted that the data for this project were gathered before the junior cycle (JC) post-primary support team was established by the Irish Department of Education and Science. The JC support team, which has operated since 2003, is currently providing three days of professional development to all qualified post-primary teachers and addressing the ‘new’ junior cycle (for 12–16-year-olds) physical education syllabus.

6. Prior to 1972, women who wished to be physical education teachers completed a diploma from Sion Hill College or Ling College, while men had to go abroad for training, mostly to the UK. A dozen male students each year received government support toward their education.

7. I will refer to these interviewees as teachers. For the purposes of this article, I draw on the 24 interviews with those working in schools and data from 33 of the 34 teachers who completed the questionnaire. I indicate, where necessary, if the teacher interviewed was doing something other than teaching (working as a principal).

8. The third-level education system represents educational pathways for students aged 18 and older, such as colleges, universities and institutes of technology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary O'sullivan

Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland. Email: [email protected]