Practice architectures and sustainable curriculum renewal

While there are numerous pedagogical innovations and varying forms of professional learning to support change, teachers rarely move beyond the initial implementation of new ideas and policies and few innovations reach the institutionalised stage. Building on both site ontologies and situated learning in communities of practice perspectives, this paper explores the theory of practice architectures to offer a different and legitimate perspective on sustainable curriculum renewal. Specifically, a practice architecture either enables or constrains particular practice and constitutes the construction of practice from semantic (e.g. language), social (e.g. power relations), and physical (e.g. materials) spaces. Through the juxtaposition of practice architectures with an empirical illustration of longer-term pedagogical change, the paper argues that for pedagogical change to be sustained a practice architecture that relates to an innovation’s intended learning outcomes and the contexts in which an innovation can be used needs to be created. Consequently, the theory of practice architectures can guide reform programmes. Curricularists can begin programmes with a pre-planned approach to assist, a) teachers’ understanding of how to use an innovation, and b) the deconstruction and reconstruction of practice architectures to support an innovation’s survival

Domestic Widgets: Leveraging Household Creativity in Co-Creating Data Physicalisations

The home environment is a complex design space, especially when it has multiple inhabitants. As such, the home presents challenges for the design of smart products. Householders may be different ages and have differing interests, needs, and attitudes towards technology. We pursued a research-through-design study with family households to envision and ‘co-create’ the future of data-enabled artifacts for their homes. We have iteratively developed domestic research artefacts for these households that are open, data-enabled, physical visualizations. These artefacts - called Domestic Widgets - are customisable in their design and functionality throughout their lifespan. The development process highlights design challenges for sustained co-creation and the leveraging of household creativity in (co-creation) research toolkits. These include the need to allow and inspire iterative customization, the need to accommodate changing roles within the home ecology, and the aim that such design should be inclusive for all family members (irrespective of age and technical proficiency), whilst maintaining a role and purpose in the home. We invite the RTD community to critically discuss our, and other, open and iterative end-user designs for sustained co-creation. By presenting unbuilt and interactive pre-built Domestic Widgets, we interactively foster engagement with practises of sustained co-creation

People, personal data and the built environment

Personal data is increasingly important in our lives. We use personal data to quantify our behaviour, through health apps or for 'personal branding' and we are also increasingly forced to part with our data to access services. With a proliferation of embedded sensors, the built environment is playing a key role in this developing use of data, even though this remains relatively hidden. Buildings are sites for the capture of personal data, such as ID card gateways or wifi hotspots. This data is used to adapt buildings to people's behaviour, and increasingly, organisations use this data to understand how buildings are occupied and how communities develop. This workshop will bring together a community of researchers and practitioners interested in personal informatics and the design of interactive buildings and environments to foster critical discussion on the future role of personal data in interactions with the built environment

Researching the teacher's world: a case study of teacher-initiated innovation

The study is an investigation of unplanned change initiated by teachers in the physical education department of Forest School, an Upper School and Community College in England. The events at Forest are conceptualised as a case of teacher-initiated innovation. The study draws on interviews with teachers, observations of lessons and analysis of curriculum documents in the collection of data. Three issuesýprovide foci for the study. First, the study investigates the temporal dimensions of innovating, and reveals that the innovative idea of health related fitness based physical education became formalised and objectified over time. This process of formalisation had important implications for the second area of focus, the teachers' involvements in the innovative process. While each of the physical education teachers played important roles in the implementation of the innovative idea, each participated in the innovation with varying degrees of involvement, and held disparate conceptions of the innovative idea and of its implication for practice. Third, the study locates and attempts to understand the process of innovating in the work context of teaching. The teachers at Forest saw innovating and teaching as synonymous activities, and the study documents the extent to which the innovative situation exacerbated teachers' everyday preoccupations with success, reward and students. The study provides information on the dynamics of unplanned educational change and the findings lend qualified support to the trend towards school-centred innovation

Coaching for teachers an evaluation of the programme in Leicestershire

Towards the end of 1999, the Institute of Youth Sport was invited by Leicestershire County Council/Leicestershire Education Authority (LCC/LEA) to evaluate the effects of the Coaching for Teachers programme on teaching and learning in school physical education and sport. This article focuses on teachers' perceptions of how the Coaching for Teachers programme has promoted their own professional development and the effectiveness of the programme resources in the school context. Suggestions are made for the future of the Coaching for Teachers courses

Teaching games for understanding and situated learning: rethinking the Bunker-Thorpe model

Bunker and Thorpe first proposed Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) in 1982 as an alternative to traditional, technique-led approaches to games teaching and learning. Despite interest from teachers and researchers, there has been no attempt to review the TGfU model. This is an oversight, given the important advances in educational learning theory and ecological approaches to motor control since the early 1980s. The purpose of this paper is to present a new version of the TGfU model that draws on a situated learning perspective. The paper describes the TGfU approach, overviews recent research on TGfU, and outlines a situated learning perspective. This perspective is then applied to rethinking the TGfU model. The intended outcome of the paper is the provision a more robust and sophisticated version of the TGfU model that can inform future directions in the practice of and research on TGfU

Young people's socialisation into sport: experiencing the specialising phase

It can be argued that young people’s socialisation into sport follows a general pattern of sampling, specialising and investing (Côté and Hay, 2002a). This paper develops research where we previously examined the key features of the sampling phase in the junior section of Forest Athletic Club (FAC) (Author 1 et al., 2003). Continuing our involvement in an ethnography of FAC in England we are now able to report and discuss key characteristics of the specialising phase that were evident through young people’s involvement at the club. These include a reduction in the number of sporting activities being pursued, enjoyment and success, the notion of deliberate practice and the influence of family, school and club support on those moving into the specialising phase. We note that while some of the key features of the sampling phase carried over to the specialising phase there were subtle differences in how they were practised. We report characteristics of the specialising phase that were not evident when observing and interviewing the same athletes when they were experiencing the sampling phase. In concluding we suggest how the quality of the sporting experience in the specialising years can increase the likelihood that young people will remain involved in sport

Sustainable sport education in primary education: an English case study

Research has shown that many primary teachers lack confidence in physical education, perceive that they do not have the skills to teach physical education well and that often physical education lessons are cancelled prioritising other curriculum areas (Hardman and Marshall, 2000; Caldecott, Warburton and Waring, 2006). Yet in Forest Gate Primary the school has succeeded in establishing a new curriculum which is being embraced by generalist teachers and physical education specialists alike, those with plenty of confidence in their ability and those who describe themselves as definitely not sporty. The community of teachers is increasing in size as the programme continues to spread across the school with years 4, 5 and 6 embracing the approach. What factors have influenced the sustainability of the programme? Why have teachers across the spectrum of age, experience, confidence and seniority bought into this particular curriculum innovation? This chapter presents the story of how a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) formed to introduce Sport Education to year 5 in an English Midlands primary school in 2000 and became an ingrained and integrated part of the upper school experience for pupils and teachers alike.  The story outlines the fluid nature of a teaching community in a busy primary school with staff leaving and joining the Sport Education teacher group and the growth of the community as the initiative expanded to other year groups. The analysis considers what features particular to Sport Education have been influential in the sustainability of this curricular initiative where others may flounder and lose momentum. In particular we consider the impact of Sport Education on the professional lives of the teachers involved; the extent to which the teachers bought into Sport Education and what impact they thought it had on their pupils lives; and the extent to which these teachers took ownership of the programme, adapted it to the needs of their own pupils and integrated it with the ethos of the school

RTD2015 17 Experiential Manufacturing: The Earthquake Shelf

<p>Experiential Manufacturing describes a design led investigation into uncovering the latent values that might exist in data that describes our experiences. By learning from the ways we engage with meaning and memory through material encounters, it aims to create more intrinsic, and aesthetic experiences of biographical data, and to provide meaning beyond the recall of information.</p> <p>The Earthquake Shelf is a designed provocation that implements this approach. It monitors live data feeds for earthquakes at a specified location, and whenever one strikes, the shelf will shake. Depending on the earthquake’s magnitude, the objects placed upon the shelf may fall, being damaged to leave behind material evidence of a remote event. This tangible rendition does not describe a person’s previous earthquake experience, but by evoking it, seeks to allow for the reconstruction of memories, and for their association with ‘new’ objects through the action of the device.</p> <p>This paper describes the design process behind the Earthquake shelf, and reflects upon the experiences of the research participant. From strong visceral connection to the past, to empathetic connections to remote locations, and eventually frustration, the Earthquake Shelf revealed the ways that design might engender a variety of emotions and responses.</p

deportigualízate: enacting critical intersectional feminist pedagogy in Spanish PESTE

Background: Physical education is seen as a subject that can both entrench but also challenge inequities. Within Spain, there is legislation requiring educators to teach about gender equity in schools across all subjects. Given this, topics around gender (and equity more broadly) are being taught in some Spanish Physical Education-Sport Tertiary Education (PESTE) programmes.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore university students’ experiences of engaging with a critical intersectional feminist pedagogy unit in a Spanish PESTE programme.Methods: This paper represents one participatory action research study that is part of a larger research project exploring equity in physical education. The authors use qualitative data generation methods (including interviews, evaluations, field notes, and others) as well as data analysis (narrative analysis, descriptive coding, concept coding) to develop the findings.Findings: The findings examine two teaching moments from the unit that students resonated with the most. In so doing, the authors examine the specific factors that the students discussed the most as affecting the way they think about equity in health, physical activity, and education.Conclusions: The authors conclude by arguing that critical approaches to physical education that draw on embodied pedagogies and emplaced criticality have the ability to make ripples of change that can help raise issues of equity amongst future physical education professionals.</p