The Promoting Active Lifestyles (PAL) Project

Abstract

This chapter focusses on the Promoting Active Lifestyles (PAL) Project, a key aim of which was to help Physical Education (PE) trainees and teachers align their aspirations for young people to lead physically active lives with their practices in PE, within the broader context of a whole-school approach to health promotion. The Project involved the co-construction and implementation of PAL principles and paradoxes, considered to be associated with the promotion of active lifestyles among young people. All the PE trainees and teachers involved in the Project viewed the PAL principles positively and were able to implement some of them. They also found the PAL paradoxes interesting and perplexing and expressed a keen desire to address them. Many of the PE trainees and teachers described how their involvement in the Project led to transformative and enduring changes to their health-related philosophies and pedagogies and some reported being able to influence colleagues/peers’ health-related philosophies and pedagogies. The PAL Project resulted in closer alignment between PE teachers’ health-related philosophies and pedagogies which they believe led to them becoming more effective promoters of physical activity.