Tim Fletcher

Doing Self-Study: The Art of Turning Inquiry on Yourself

This chapter introduces and outlines self-study as a way of doing research into teaching and teacher education practices in physical education. We begin by exploring the nature of self-study by framing it simultaneously as a network of practitioners, an inquiry-oriented stance towards researching one’s own practice, and the enactment of a particular disposition of desire. We then move to exploring the methodological issues involved in examining the self-in-practice, particularly as those issues relate to the concepts of practice and self. This discussion then enables consideration of the key features of how to undertake self-study. We conclude with a suggestion that the highly reflexive nature of self-study indicates that it should be considered as a provisionally rational form of inquiry.

Meaningful Experiences in Physical Education and Youth Sport: A Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to review the literature about young people’s meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport. We reviewed 50 empirical peer-reviewed articles published in English since 1987. Five themes were identified as central influences to young people’s meaningful experiences in physical education and sport: social interaction, fun, challenge, motor competence, and personally relevant learning. These themes provide future direction for the design and implementation of meaningful physical education and youth sport experiences. We also highlight the need for the development of pedagogies that facilitate and promote meaningful engagement in physical education and youth sport settings.

Prioritising Classroom Community and Organisation in Physical Education Teacher Education.

This research investigates how teacher candidates in a primary physical education curriculum and methods course learned about and were influenced by efforts to emphasise classroom community and organisation. Qualitative data in the form of interviews, focus groups, and course artefacts were gathered from nine participants throughout one academic term. Analysis of data suggested that most teacher candidates came to recognise pedagogies that fostered a sense of community; however, only a few were able to connect this to their developing visions for teaching. Despite this, all participants came to view the development of a sense of community as one of the most important aspects of their evolving teaching practice.

Reframing pedagogy while teaching about teaching online: a collaborative self-study

The purpose of this paper is to use collaborative self-study to analyze and describe our experiences of teaching about teaching in a digital, online environment. Data were gathered from reflective journal entries, emails and monthly Skype calls. Our findings indicate that the perceived disembodiment of teaching and learning online affected how we fostered relationships with students and responded to problems of practice. Further, we felt that a particular approach to teaching online risked teaching becoming reduced to providing feedback to students in the form of assessment, which had implications for our identities as teacher educators. By discussing our experiences of teaching online we began to develop a critical understanding of the challenges of teaching online, and questioned how our online practices shaped our developing pedagogies of teacher education.

A Layered Approach to Critical Friendship as a Means to Support Pedagogical Innovation in Pre-service Teacher Education

Abstract In this article we describe and interpret how two distinct layers of critical friendship were used to support a pedagogical innovation in pre-service teacher education. The innovation, Learning about Meaningful Physical Education (LAMPE), focuses on ways to teach future teachers to foster meaningful experiences for learners in physical education. Critical friendship was applied in two ways: (1) the first two authors served as critical friends to each other as they taught their respective teacher education courses using LAMPE, and (2) the third author acted as a meta-critical friend, providing support for and critique of the first two authors’ development and enactment of the innovation. Over two years, data were gathered from reflective journal entries, emails, recorded Skype calls, and teaching observations. The two layers of critical friendship held significant benefits in advancing and supporting the development of the innovation while also contributing to the professional learning of all participants. Analysis of the first year’s data showed that we entered the critical friendship without thoroughly considering what we each hoped to give and take from the relationship or acknowledging the potential problems that might unfold. In the second year, guided by suggestions from our meta-critical friend, we took a more rigorous inquiry stance as critical friends, contributing contentious feedback and pushing each other beyond our personal and pedagogical comfort zones. This led to a noticeable improvement in our professional learning about teacher education practices and advanced the development of the LAMPE innovation.

Teaching About Teaching Using Technology: Using Embodiment to Interpret Online Pedagogies of Teacher Education

In this chapter, our aim is to consider the ways in which collaborative self-study helped us to disrupt our assumptions and deepen our understandings of the challenges of teaching about teaching online. We take up Zeichner’s (J Teach Educ 58:36–46, 2007) challenge to make connections across self-studies that we have conducted both individually and collaboratively. Specifically, we use theories of embodiment to highlight how teaching using digital technologies poses significant challenges to the ways in which our pedagogies of teacher education are enacted. In particular we focus upon our experiences of the ways that relationships are formed and emotions communicated when digital technologies provide the main context for teaching and learning. Data were gathered using reflective journal entries, emails to one another, and recorded video conversations (e.g., Skype). Bullock and Ritter’s (Stud Teach Educ 7:171–181, 2011) notion of turning points was employed as an analytic guide, where we identified instances when collaborative self-study allowed us to come to new understandings of teacher education practice. The first finding is that asynchronous teaching-learning platforms create salient challenges for both teacher educators and teacher candidates/teacher education students in terms of developing and maintaining agentic relationships. The absence of “real-time” communications in asynchronous online courses often means that participants cannot convey or react to pedagogical situations in ways that include emotions as integral parts of the teaching-learning process. For instance, Tim felt that he had limited control and agency over how his tone (both verbally and non-verbally) was communicated to students, which he felt positioned him as a more authoritarian teacher educator. This led to our second main finding, which is that embodiment (and the ways that technologies influence or shape embodied interactions) has strong implications for the ways in which identities are formed in teacher education. As teacher education programs are increasingly required to offer more flexible and accessible platforms, our self-study suggests that this comes along with problematic and challenging situations for both teacher educators and their students.

Using self-study to explore the processes of pedagogical innovation in physical education teacher education

This collaborative self-study examined the experiences of two teacher educators who developed and implemented a pedagogical approach that prioritised learning how to facilitate meaningful physical education (PE) experiences in their physical education teacher education programs. Data sources included 33 individual planning and reflection documents, 33 critical friend responses and transcriptions of over 7 hours of skype conversations, which were gathered across two academic years (2013–2015). Collaborative self-study provided a scaffold to explore our pedagogies in terms of learning about teaching and teaching about teaching [Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding teaching & learning about teaching. New York, NY: Routledge]. Through development and implementation of an innovation, we enhanced our understanding of pedagogies that support pre-service teachers learning how to foster meaningful PE experiences, a process that resulted in better alignment of our beliefs and pedagogical practices. This study illustrates the merits of collaborative self-study to build teacher educators’ capacity for innovation and shape their pedagogical practices through reflection and peer support. The potential of self-study to contribute to the knowledge base of pedagogies of teacher education as part of a larger program of research is highlighted.

Reflecting on the Possibilities for Self-Study in Physical Education

In this conclusion to the book, we want to reflect upon and critique the potential of self-study in the field of physical education. While Tinning and O’Sullivan have commented on the value of self-study in addressing the emerging conflicts, dilemmas, and incongruities arising within the pedagogies for contemporary physical education practice, in this chapter we want to consider how self-studies of physical education make contributions to the broader field of teaching and teacher education practices. In doing so, we suggest that the implications of self-study research extend well beyond the individual people who carry out the research, and the programs and contexts in which they work. In other words, we argue that self-study research offers valuable contributions to expanding conversations, knowledge, and understanding of teaching and teacher education practices (Clift 2004).

Pedagogical Principles of Learning to Teach Meaningful Physical Education.

ABSTRACT Background: Concerns that current forms of physical education teacher education (PETE) are not adequately providing teachers with the tools necessary for working with the realities and challenges of teaching physical education in contemporary schools has led some scholars to advocate for an approach that prioritises meaningfulness in physical education. There is, however, little empirical evidence of how future teachers might be taught to facilitate meaningful physical education experiences. Purpose: This paper describes a pedagogical approach to PETE to support pre-service teachers (PSTs) in learning how to facilitate meaningful experiences in physical education. We aim to contribute new understanding through sharing pedagogical principles that support PSTs’ ‘Learning About Meaningful Physical Education’ (LAMPE). Participants and setting: The research team consisted of three physical education teacher educators: Tim and Déirdre who implemented LAMPE pedagogies and Mary who acted as meta-critical friend (pseudonyms used for the review process). Results from the LAMPE innovation reported here are taken from implementation across four semesters of two academic years 2013–2015. Déirdre implemented LAMPE in an introduction to teaching physical education course for pre-service generalist elementary teachers. Tim implemented the approach in an undergraduate developmental games course for future physical education teachers. A total of 106 PSTs participated in the research. Data collection and analysis: Data included teacher educator reflections and non-participant observer data from 33 individual lessons, over 7 hours of transcribed teacher educator Skype conversations, 8 ‘turning point’ documents, 15 sets of PST work samples, and transcripts of individual (n = 10) and 9 focus group interviews (n = 18 participants) with PSTs. Data were analysed inductively. Triangulation of multiple data sources and an expert member check supported trustworthiness of the LAMPE approach and data analysis. Findings: We share five pedagogical principles that reflect how PSTs were supported to learn how to facilitate meaningful physical education experiences. Pedagogies included planning for, experiencing, teaching, analysing, and reflecting on meaningful participation. Implementing pedagogies aligned with these five pedagogical principles helped participants learn why meaningful participation should be prioritised as well as how to facilitate meaningful physical education experiences. Conclusions: Pedagogical principles of LAMPE have been constructed from empirical evidence of both teacher educator and PST experiences that supported learning how to promote meaningful physical education. This research contributes new understanding of how to support PSTs in learning to teach with an emphasis on facilitating meaningful physical education experiences.

Paying the Piper: The Costs and Consequences of Academic Advancement.

In many professions there are qualifications to gain and professional standards to achieve. Lawyers pass the bar and doctors pass their boards. In academic life the equivalent is a doctorate, closely followed by a profile of peer-reviewed publication. To hold a doctoral degree is the common requirement to become ‘academic’ but does it prepare individuals to advance in an academic career? In choosing the idiom ‘paying the piper’ (i.e. where one must pay the costs and accept the consequences of ones actions) we recognise that in seeking to develop our scholarly profiles we had to choose to adapt successfully to global workplace expectations, modify our professional aspirations or refuse to participate. In this paper we examine the challenges we faced as academics in physical education as we progressed from beginning to mid-career stages. We focus particularly on challenges related to seeking external research funding, exploring our assumptions about academic life and the perceived expectations that lie under the surface around research funding, teaching and service. Through the use of self-study we demonstrate how our perceptions of academic career progress meant paying personal and professional costs that we were largely (and perhaps naively) unaware of when we entered the academic workforce. Data consisted of Ashley’s reflective diaries generated over the past six years, which were analysed deductively based on an understanding of salient experiences of academic life, most notably, those related to the pursuit of funding and its relationship to academic advancement. Tim played the role of critical friend by asking probing questions, relating personal experiences to instances in Ashleys data, and offering alternative interpretations of Ashleys insights. By sharing our experiences we hope early career academics (ECAs) may relate to and learn from our naivety. In this way, there may be implications for the induction and mentoring of future ECAs.