James O'Meara

Power, prestige and pedagogic identity: A tale of two programs recontextualizing teacher standards

Worldwide there has been a range of initiatives in the area of standards for teachers as part of a discourse of professionalism. In Australia there are a plethora of standards: state and territory frameworks, generic and subject‐specific, systemic and cross‐systemic, for pre‐service, beginning and experienced teachers. Little has been written as to how teacher education programs are responding to the standards agenda. This paper positions standards as integral to the recontextualizing field (Bernstein, 2000) for teacher educators and their programs. Using Bernsteinian concepts of fields, identities and framing, we compare the responses of two physical education teacher education programs to their states standards imperatives. The authors conclude that the academic orientation of the university, together with the framing of the standards, affect the degree of programmatic change it will undertake in response to the changes in teacher certification standards.

Primary School Teacher Perceived Self-Efficacy to Teach Fundamental Motor Skills.

Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) are a part of the school curricula, yet many Australian primary-age children are not mastering FMS. One reason may be a lack of perceived self-efficacy of primary teachers to teach FMS. This study investigated the level of perceived self-efficacy of primary school teachers to teach FMS in Victoria, Australia. A cross-sectional survey, based on the Victorian Institute of Teaching Standards of Professional Practice, was used to sample sixty-five pre-service and forty-six in-service teachers. Most primary school teachers were self-efficacious in teaching FMS (67.59 per cent); almost one-third (32.41 per cent) were not. Male teachers had higher perceived self-efficacy than female teachers, and a positive relationship was found between perceived self-efficacy to teach FMS and interest in, and participation in, physical activity (r = 0.52 and r = 0.31 respectively). Implications for practice include providing FMS teaching resources and professional training. Further research should explore the effect of perceived self-efficacy on teaching performance.

Policies, Practices and Professional Development: A Study of Curriculum Implementation in an Australian High School

During the period from 1989 to 2004 the school-based Health and Physical Education curriculum in Victoria (Australia) underwent three major reforms. A review of the literature revealed that there was a gap in our understanding of the impact of these reforms on the behaviours of physical educators in Victorian secondary schools. The research documented in this doctoral thesis investigates curriculum processes surrounding the last of the reforms for this period, i.e. the development of the Health and Physical Education Curriculum and Standards Framework II (HPE CSF II) and its implementation in a Victorian secondary school. The unit of analysis was a group of physical educators from ‘Newviews’ Secondary College, a large metropolitan secondary school. Throughout 2002 interviews, surveys and document analysis were used to see how ‘how’ and ‘if’ the HPE CSF II was being adopted and ‘implemented’ by the group. During the second half of the year the group took part in a series of professional development activities that aimed to increase their use of the HPE CSF II as a curriculum planning tool. The data obtained from the Concerns-based Adoption Model tools (Hall et al., 1998) indicated that although there was some increase in use of the HPE CSF II among the group, they were still demonstrating the behaviours of non-users of this latest curriculum document three years after its adoption at Newviews. In addition to these findings, it is expected that the research will provide some understanding of possible influences of power and control throughout the various stages of the curriculum implementation process. Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device framework (2000) of production, reproduction and realisation provided a useful structure for discussing the ‘contests’ that occurred on these ‘fields’. The distributive, recontextualising and evaluation rules that are embedded within the Pedagogic Device framework helped to identify a purpose for each of these contests. The concepts of restricted and elaborated codes served as useful concepts to interpret the outcomes of contests occurring on the Recontextualisation and Reproduction Fields. This aspect of Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device, in particular, contributed to an explanation of why the regulative aspects of the HPE CSF II curriculum were not reproduced at Newviews. It is anticipated that the policy and practical implications of this research may help shape future research on the Victorian Essential Learning 2005 Framework, the latest health and physical education curriculum reform, being introduced in schools across the state. A key message of the research findings is that although the state may be in a position to require schools to adopt a particular curriculum that position does not ensure that practitioners in the school will implement the curriculum in line with the intentions of its authors. Sort ntices