Professional learning as a physical education teacher educator

Abstract

Background: Teacher education is expected to support pre-service teachers (PSTs) as they respond to the challenges of becoming self-reliant learners, and position them within the context of a professional learning approach. In doing so, teacher educators need to exemplify lifelong characteristics of learning in our practice and attitudes, utilizing professional self-understanding and critical recollections. This in turn, one hopes, would inform the development of a more effective physical education teacher education (PETE) programme that nurtures and reinforces specific professional behaviours that facilitate PSTs', and in turn student, learning.

Purpose: To consider how, as a teacher educator, I potentially portray my continuing professional learning to PSTs, hoping to support PSTs in their endeavours to identify and sustain their own professional learning requirements and contribute to developing a pedagogy of teacher education .

Research design: Utilising Brookfield's four lenses through which to view practice, recollections of instances of my own professional learning experiences and practices gleaned from involvement as a physical education teacher educator in a PETE programme are shared.

Findings: My professional learning is guided by (1) evidence-based teaching that is informed by what I have researched and experienced about the realities of teaching in schools, with a willingness to devote time to making that knowledge available and interesting to PSTs, (2) a commitment to developing PSTs as lifelong learners, and (3) modelling lifelong learning practice in PETE.

Conclusions: Recollections of instances of one's own professional learning experiences and practices gleaned from involvement as a physical education teacher educator in a PETE programme is the beginning of a continuum. Providing evidence of the extent to which a physical education teacher educator's professional learning rhetoric translates into changes in the practice of PSTs, affects their experience as a qualified physical education teacher and, by association, impacts on school physical education lessons and the associated (effective) teaching and learning of physical education are essential steps in identifying features of programme effectiveness and not merely the presence of practices. The development of a more effective PETE programme is the ultimate target.

Keywords:

• professional learning
• physical education teacher educators
• professional development
• teacher as researcher