Is meaningful physical education and social justice a complimentary combination? A physical education teacher educator collaborative self-study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programmes are expected to support future teacher learning about contemporary innovations and big ideas for teaching physical education. Teacher educators are challenged to learn about and incorporate contemporary innovations while maintaining programme cohesion. Exploring how teacher educators make sense of and teach about innovations, such as ideas related to meaningfulness, alongside foundational ideas, such as social justice, can provide insight on teacher educator pedagogies and their professional development journeys. Purpose This study explored the concepts of and relationship between Meaningful PE and social justice in our teacher education pedagogies when implemented in combination. We pay particular attention to when ideas of Meaningful PE and social justice were complementary, overlapping and when they were distinctive. Method A self-study of teacher education practices methodology supported four teacher educators to collectively and individually interrogate our evolving understanding, decisions and practices across a 13-month period. [Loughran, J. 2014. “Professionally Developing as a Teacher Educator.” Journal of Teacher Education 65 (4): 271–283] signposts for teacher educator professional development provided theoretical guidance to make sense of our experiences combining the two pedagogies. This paper focuses on the recordings of collective meetings (n = 9, over 12 h) where we shared and analysed experiences, raised questions and formulated developing understandings of the relationship between teaching for meaningfulness and social justice approaches. Data analysis involved thematic analysis methods to review all data and collective identification and refinement of themes through back-and-forth discussion. Findings From the thematic analysis, the following themes were co-created: (a) Meaningful PE can act as social justice but is not social justice per se; and (b) the combination of Meaningful PE and social justice facilitates a dance between ‘the individual’ and ‘the social’ with democratic and reflective practices as the choreography. These features of the relationship provide direction and encouragement to combining Meaningful PE and social justice ideas in teacher education pedagogies. Conclusions Through cycles of experiencing and articulating, we made sense of the relationship between Meaningful PE and social justice. Our story highlights the value of teacher educators engaging with knowledge and practice of teaching about teaching and learning about teaching in the context of innovation.