Secondary school teachers' experiences with classroom-based physically active learning: “I'm excited, but it's really hard”

Abstract

Classroom-based physical activity represents a paradigm shift in education and has been understudied in secondary school. The purpose of this study was to explore secondary school teachers' experiences of classroom-based physical activity with an emphasis on physically active learning. Six 9th grade teachers were interviewed. Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological method was used to analyze the interviews and structure the findings. The findings show a general meaning structure and three interrelated themes: Motivated by relevance, A more complex reality than expected and Resigning to simpler solutions. These insights will impact the development of current and future school-based physical activity programs.