Professional development for physical education teachers: A participatory approach to identifying learning needs

Predetermined professional development (PD) programmes delivered by external experts are the usual approach to enhancing the teaching of physical education (PE) in disadvantaged school contexts. This generally does not result in sustained learning and development once the PE professionals withdraw. Addressing the lack of teacher- and context-driven PD, we propose an evidence-based, collaborative, and transformative PD approach that involves teachers themselves in designing, implementing, and evaluating ongoing learning opportunities suited to their context. To enable teachers to improve their practice in a sustainable manner, we adopted a participatory action learning and action research design, using qualitative data generation tools. With this article we report on the first cycle, namely that of action and reflection, where teachers generated and analysed qualitative data to identify their learning needs. Four themes emerged, namely (1) the need to interpret and adapt the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) (2); ability to teach PE in their specific low-resource context while; (3) generating support from colleagues and management, and (4) coping with systemic issues impacting on their teaching. We discuss the implications of these needs for the continuing PD of teachers.