Trainee PE Teachers engage in post-16 PE conference

PGCE and School Direct PE students attended a one day conference on 5 February that addressed the teaching of post-16 accredited PE courses.

Attempts to establish the academic credentials of physical education have existed in debates amongst professionals for well over 20 years but it has now become standard practice for teachers to teach theoretical principals through physical activities as part of accredited programmes of physical education in schools.

In 1994, 34 pupils took an A Level PE qualification – in 2011, 21,000 took an A level in PE. It is now the fourteenth most popular A Level subject out of a choice of 35 and with the school leaving age now at 18 many PE teachers will be required to teach A Level PE to 16 – 19 year old pupils.

During the conference students presented a 20 minute session to their peers with respect to an identified topic from the A Level syllabus. Topics included The Olympic Games – blessing or curse?; Bandura’s model of observational learning theory (observational learning); violence and deviance in sport; sport, sponsorship and the media; discrimination in sport; sportsmanship, gamesmanship, performance enhancing products – reasons for, consequences of and solutions to, the problem of drugs in sport.

PGCE and School Direct PE course leader Dr Gary Stidder said: “One of the hallmarks of the intellectual development of physical education has been the growth of accredited courses which has been rapid, dramatic and unprecedented. It is safe to say that a proportion of the work that physical education teachers carry out will be with pupils aged 14-19 in the classroom as well as the gymnasium.

“The contemporary physical education teacher now has a very different repertoire of skills which require them to teach more and more in a classroom-based setting as the numbers of pupils aged between 14-18 taking public examinations in physical education continues to rise. As teacher educator we therefore have a professional responsibility to prepare new recruits to the profession with all the necessary pedagogical skills required for teaching theoretical PE in the classroom.”