A rhizomatic exploration of a professional development non-linear approach to learning and teaching: Two teachers’ learning journeys in 'becoming different'

Drawing on rhizomatics and figurational sociology, the concept of ‘assemblage’, ‘becoming’, and a ‘figuration’ were used to explore learning and teaching, and specifically, how teachers negotiate their learning and teaching in becoming teachers of a new school subject. We argue a ‘teacher assemblage’ is an assemblage which takes place across multiple spaces and the elements within this assemblage change depending on the space that the teacher occupies. These collaborative negotiations within an assemblage highlight the complexity in the learning and teaching process and the ongoing process of ‘becoming different’ throughout the professional development and learning journey (and beyond)

Original intentions and unintended consequences: the ‘contentious’ role of assessment in the development of Leaving Certificate Physical Education in Ireland

Ireland is set to introduce an examinable physical education curriculum (Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE)) in the final two years of post-primary school. A Physical Education Development Group (PEDG) were tasked with the responsibility of constructing the LCPE specification. This paper explores the LCPE curriculum development process by drawing on Elias’s [(1978). What is sociology? New York: Columbia University Press] ‘game models’ framework to provide a theoretically informed analysis of the operations of the PEDG. Interviews were conducted with 10 PEDG members. The results revolved around curriculum content knowledge, assessment weightings, and debating the responsibility for assessing students’ work. The game models framework allowed us to understand the power-struggles in the PEDG and how they worked to arrive at a consensus about curriculum content and assessment. The outcome was one that no ‘player’ could have anticipated, and Elias’s game models framework shed light on how a curriculum with original intentions became a curriculum made up of unintended consequences

Conceptualising examinable physical education in the Irish context: Leaving Certificate Physical Education

A Physical Education Development Group (PEDG) was responsible for constructing a new school subject curriculum, Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE), in Ireland. This paper provides an insight into this development group and explores the process of curriculum development, and the influence of roles and power-ratios within the group, in the construction of the LCPE curriculum. Figurational sociology concepts (Elias, 1978) were drawn on to make sense of the curriculum makers’ experiences. Interviews were conducted with 10 PEDG members. The findings suggest that the members’ roles had very little, if any, influence on the curriculum development process. Findings also revolved around the unbalanced power-ratios which existed in the PEDG and highlighted the socially powerful position of ‘strong, well-established’ (in the academic field of curriculum development–participant's words) members and the other members (predominantly representing practicing teachers). We express concern for the role of teachers in the curriculum process and argue that they play a crucial and significant role in the school subject curriculum development process. This paper supports Goodson’s (1983) and Penney’s (2006) conceptualisation of the contested and socially constructed nature of the curriculum development process

Embedding assessment in learning experiences: enacting the principles of instructional alignment in physical education teacher education

Appreciating that a significant amount of assessment-related literature has focused on the ‘what’ of assessment (i.e. what to assess), ‘the systematic use of assessment to improve learning remains the exception rather than the rule’ [Wiliam, D. (2018). Assessment for learning: Meeting the challenge of implementation. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 25(6), 682–685]. This paper focuses on interrogating ‘why’ and ‘how’ assessment can be effectively embedded in the delivery of learning experiences. That is, assessment as a means to engage students in the learning process rather than as an add-on to the learning experience. Instructional (and constructivist) alignment provides a context to embedding assessment before introducing specific developments in physical education teacher education (PETE) that allow us to share implementation of assessment considerations, planning for embedded assessment and embedding assessment as a component of a PETE programme. Worked examples of embedding assessment are provided to convey what embedded assessment involves and looks like. Lessons learned from advocating for the practice of embedding assessment are shared

An integrated blended learning approach for physical education teacher education programmes: teacher educators' and pre-service teachers' experiences

An integrated blended learning approach for physical education teacher education programmes: teacher educators' and pre-service teachers' experience