Erin Christensen

The PLUNGE randomized controlled trial: evaluation of a games-based physical activity professional learning program in primary school physical education

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy of the Professional Learning for Understanding Games Education (PLUNGE) program on fundamental movement skills (FMS), in-class physical activity and perceived sporting competence. METHODS A cluster-randomized controlled trial involving one year six class each from seven primary schools (n=168; mean age=11.2 years, SD=1.0) in the Hunter Region, NSW, Australia. In September (2013) participants were randomized by school into the PLUNGE intervention (n=97 students) or the 7-week wait-list control (n=71) condition. PLUNGE involved the use of Game Centered curriculum delivered via an in-class teacher mentoring program. Students were assessed at baseline and 8-week follow-up for three object control FMS (Test of Gross Motor Development 2), in-class physical activity (pedometer steps/min) and perceived sporting competence (Self-perception Profile for Children). RESULTS Linear mixed models revealed significant group-by-time intervention effects (all p<0.05) for object control competency (effect size: d=0.9), and in-class pedometer steps/min (d=1.0). No significant intervention effects (p>0.05) were observed for perceived sporting competence. CONCLUSIONS The PLUNGE intervention simultaneously improved object control FMS proficiency and in-class PA in stage three students.

Entering the field: beginning teachers’ positioning experiences of the staffroom

ABSTRACT Little is known about beginning teachers’ political positioning experiences of the staffroom. This paper employs Bourdieus conceptual tools of field, habitus and capital to explore beginning health and physical education teachers’ positioning experiences and learning in staffrooms, the place in which teachers spend the majority of their non-teaching school time. From an Australian context, we present beginning (or emerging) teachers’ stories from one rural general staffroom and one urban departmental staffroom. Using the narratives we reflect upon how their positioning in the politics of the staffroom as beginning teachers presented significant challenges including negotiating the professional micropolitics, negotiating capital and negotiating opportunities and risks for reflection and change in contrasting social spaces.

Tinkering through transition: on ‘doctoring’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy

This article addresses the notion of ‘making it’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy. In it, we draw on the tradition of material semiotics to reflect on our shared journeys from doctoral student to beginning scholar and beyond. By attuning ourselves to the relationality, materiality and precariousness of our experiences, we offer an answer to the question of what it takes to ‘make it’ as an early-career academic by advocating the practice of ‘making do’ or ‘doctoring.’ We develop this argument, first, by describing the narrative methods we used to conduct our inquiry and by explaining the material-semiotic ideas we used to explore the stories it generated. Then, we tell tales of our transitions from higher degree research student to early-career academic, focusing specifically on our ongoing, collective efforts to make do. In our discussion, we explore these narratives and attend to three features of our actions and activities as early-career academics; namely semiotic relationality, material heterogeneity and the precarious processes of heterogeneous engineering through which we sought to make a career in our field. We conclude by encouraging beginning scholars in physical education and sport pedagogy to become sensitive to these aspects of their own agency, and to experiment, experience and tinker together in ways that are attentive, inventive, caring and persistent.

Peering into the physical education office in Australian schools: The departmental office as a socialization space

The work of Hal Lawson in the early 1980s (1983a, 1983b) gave some of the early direction to socialization research in physical education. This work was guided by Lortie’s (1975) ideas around a person’s subjective warrant. This referred to a subjective understanding of what it means to teach, and a personal appraisal of one’s ability to meet those challenges. Whilst physical education teacher education (PETE) has been considered to be a low impact enterprise with little scope for addressing predisposed views of teaching (Lawson, 1983b) much less is known the nature of the learning experiences gained within, what are often, the tight confines of the PE departmental staffroom or office within a school. These were our primary concerns both within the context of first, the field-based experiences during a PETE program and second, in the beginning year of teaching. What follows then is a discussion about a project that was primarily focused on the idea of the workplace as a context for professional learning. We soon realized that this was inextricably linked to how preservice PE teachers are (or are not) socialized into the profession

Workplace Learning in Physical Education : Emerging Teachers’ Stories from the Staffroom and Beyond

Pre-service and beginning teachers have to negotiate an unfamiliar and often challenging working environment, in both teaching spaces and staff spaces. Workplace Learning in Physical Education explores the workplace of teaching as a site of professional learning. Using stories and narratives from the experiences of pre-service and beginning teachers, the book takes a closer look at how professional knowledge is developed by investigating the notions of professional and workplace learning by drawing on data from a five year project. The book also critically examines the literature associated with, and the rhetoric that surrounds the practicum, fieldwork school experience and the induction year. The book is structured around five significant dimensions of workplace learning: • Social tasks of teaching and learning to teach. • Performance, practice and praxis. • Identity, subjectivities and the profession/al. • Space and place for, and of, learning. • Micropolitics. As well as identifying important implications for policy, practice and research methodology in physical education and teacher education, the book also shows how research can be a powerful medium for the communication of good practice. This is an important book for all students, pre-service and beginning teachers working in physical education, for academics researching teacher workspaces, and for anybody with an interest in the wider themes of teacher education, professional practice and professional learning in the workplace.