Research lives of physical education teacher educators

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to provide insights into the research worlds of an international group of mid- and late-career physical education teacher educators. Specifically, it explores participants’ motives for research engagement and choices, and investigates what challenges and facilitates their research efforts. Two rounds of individual in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 physical education teacher educators across 7 countries. Findings point to a distinction between research motives. Embarking on formal theses or specific funded projects was often motivated by practical and contextual drivers, such as job requirements or a wish for promotion, and was associated with feelings of frustration and stress. Motives for engaging in research in general, on the other hand, tended to be more personal or altruistic and elicited feelings such as enjoyment and passion. Time constraints, skill gaps and language barriers were all seen as challenges to research endeavours, while learning through doing, seeing and reading, and collaboration with others were seen as the main facilitators.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• teacher educator
• researcher

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

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.

Ann MacPhail is Associate Professor at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Her main teaching and research interests revolve around physical education teacher education, young people in sport, curriculum development in physical education, teaching, learning and assessment issues within school physical education, methodological issues in working with young people and ethnography.

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 physical activity and healthy lifestyles and examining the effectiveness of physical education teacher education programs.

ORCID

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

Notes

1. This literature review was limited to peer-reviewed research published in English.

2. While acknowledging the value of a broad view of scholarship, the form of research which is referred to in this paper constitutes that which Boyer (1990, p. 16) refers to as the ‘scholarship of discovery’ and the ‘scholarship of integration’, i.e. that which adds to and interprets new knowledge.

3. One participant is semi-retired. The hours included in this calculation for him were the average hours he worked in his last position prior to retirement. Also, where participants gave a range of hours, the average was taken and included in this calculation, e.g. 40–50 hours per week was included as 45 hours.

Additional information

Funding

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