Pre-service and beginning teachers have to negotiate an unfamiliar and often challenging working environment, in both teaching spaces and staff spaces. Workplace Learning in Physical Education explores the workplace of teaching as a site of professional learning. Using stories and narratives from the experiences of pre-service and beginning teachers, the book takes a closer look at how professional knowledge is developed by investigating the notions of ‘professional’ and ‘workplace learning’ by drawing on data from a five year project. The book also critically examines the literature associated with, and the rhetoric that surrounds ‘the practicum’, ‘fieldwork’ ‘school experience’ and the ‘induction year’. The book is structured around five significant dimensions of workplace learning: Social tasks of teaching and learning to teach Performance, practice and praxis Identity, subjectivities and the profession/al Space and place for, and of, learning Micropolitics As well as identifying important implications for policy, practice and research methodology in physical education and teacher education, the book also shows how research can be a powerful medium for the communication of good practice. This is an important book for all students, pre-service and beginning teachers working in physical education, for academics researching teacher workspaces, and for anybody with an interest in the wider themes of teacher education, professional practice and professional learning in the workplace.

There is evidence of considerable growth in the availability and use of digital technologies in physical education. Yet, we have scant knowledge about how technologies are being used by teachers, and whether or how these technologies are optimising student learning. This book makes a novel contribution by focusing on the ways in which teachers and teacher educators are attempting to use digital technologies in PE. The book has been created using the innovative ‘pedagogical cases’ framework. Each case centres on a narrative, written by a PE practitioner, explaining how and why technology is used in their practice to advance and accelerate learning. Each practitioner narrative is then analysed by a team of experts from different disciplines. The aim is to offer a multi-dimensional understanding of the possibilities and challenges of supporting young people’s learning with digital technologies. Each case concludes with a practitioner reflection to illustrate the links between theory, research and practice. Digital Technologies and Learning in Physical Education encourages critical reflection on the use of technologies in PE. It is an essential resource for students on physical education, kinesiology or sport science courses, practitioners working in PE or youth sport, and researchers interested in digital technologies and education.

In the past two decades, complexity thinking has emerged as an important theoretical response to the limitations of orthodox ways of understanding educational phenomena. Complexity provides ways of understanding that embrace uncertainty, non-linearity and the inevitable ‘messiness’ that is inherent in educational settings, paying attention to the ways in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the first book to focus on complexity thinking in the context of physical education, enabling fresh ways of thinking about research, teaching, curriculum and learning. Written by a team of leading international physical education scholars, the book highlights how the considerable theoretical promise of complexity can be reflected in the actual policies, pedagogies and practices of physical education (PE). It encourages teachers, educators and researchers to embrace notions of learning that are more organic and emergent, to allow the inherent complexity of pedagogical work in PE to be examined more broadly and inclusively. In doing so, Complexity Thinking in Physical Education makes a major contribution to our understanding of pedagogy, curriculum design and development, human movement and educational practice.

Socialization is a complex process which has a profound effect on how we experience teaching and learning. The study of teachers’ lives and careers through the lens of occupational socialization theory has a rich history in physical education. However, as the social and political climates surrounding education have changed, so have the experiences of teachers. This book pushes beyond traditional perspectives to explore alternative and innovative approaches to socialization. Written by a team of leading international physical education scholars, this is the first edited collection of scholarship on teacher socialization to be published in more than two decades. Divided into five parts, the book provides a review of current knowledge on teacher socialization in school settings, as well as suggestions for different approaches to understanding teacher socialization and recommendations for future directions for studying teachers’ lives and careers. A testament to what is known and what still needs to be learned about the lived experiences of physical educators, Teacher Socialization in Physical Education: New Perspectives provides valuable insights for all physical education students, teachers, and instructors.

By drawing on observation and detailed discourse analysis from interviews with teachers in Lithuanian and North American schools, this text identifies individual, school-specific, and national factors which impact teachers’ informal professional learning. Addressing multiple layers of teacher learning, this text illustrates how factors including socio-economic status, individual learning style, cultural attitudes to education, and political histories support or impede workplace learning. Drawing on three fields of research—teacher education, cultural anthropology, and comparative international—the book posits teacher learning as a multidimensional socio-cultural process. Finally combining a typology of informal learners with other policy-driven factors, the text indicates how practices at school, district, and national levels might stimulate workplace learning. Offering methodological innovations including unique research design and creative ways of using discourse analysis, this book will be of particular use to researchers and doctoral students in education, organizational and educational psychology, cultural anthropology, management, and beyond.

This book explores teacher workplace learning from four different perspectives: social policy, international comparators, multi-professional stances/perspectives and socio-cultural theory. First, it considers the policy and practice context of professional learning in teacher education in England, and the rest of the UK, with particular reference to professional masters level provision. The importance of teachers’ and schools’ perceptions of improvement, development and learning, and the inherent tensions between individual, school and government priorities is explored. Second, the book considers models of teacher workplace learning to be found in international research and practice to explore what perspective they can bring to understanding policy and practice relating to workplace learning in the UK. Third, it draws on cross-professional analysis to get an intellectual and theoretical purchase on workplace learning by examining how insights from across the professions can provide us with useful perspectives on policy and practice. The analysis draws particularly on insights from medicine and educational psychology. Fourth, the book cross-fertilises research and practice across the field of education by drawing on insights from perspectives such as socio-cultural and activity theory and situated learning/cognition to discover what they can offer in analysing the theoretical and pedagogic underpinnings of teacher workplace learning. In short, the book offers a number of contexts for exploring how best to conceptualise and theorise learning in the workplace in order to generate evidence to inform policy and practice and facilitates the development of a more theoretically informed and robust model of workplace learning and teaching.

At the heart of this book is the rapid pace of change, the need to invest in and create good jobs and support the learning that this entails. It brings together a range of socio-cultural perspectives to examine the hard issues in relation to digitalisation, identity, work design and affordances for learning, mediated by the ecosystems within which work, and the workplace is positioned. The contributors take a strong social justice perspective that seeks to uncover commonly held assumptions about where the responsibility for workplace learning lies, how to understand workplace learning from a range of different perspectives and what it all means for practitioners and researchers in the field. The first section sets the scene in its theorisation of the role and place of workplace learning in the context of changing circumstances. The second section brings together a rich collection of investigations into workplace learning that address the challenges of rapidly changing circumstances. In the final section, the authors consider what workplace learning in changing circumstances means for change practitioners, the changing roles of human resource practitioners, and for workers and quality work. This volume will appeal to graduate and post-graduate students, and academics as well as practitioners such as adult educators, and human resource personnel.

This topical book provides practical, tried and tested strategies and resources that will support teachers in making PE lessons accessible, rewarding and exciting for all pupils, including those with special needs. The author draws on a wealth of experience to share his understanding of special educational needs and disabilities and show how the PE teacher can reduce or remove any barriers to learning participation. Offering strategies that are specific to the context of PE and sports teaching, this book will enable teachers to: ensure all pupils are able to enjoy and appreciate the value of exercise and sport; create an inclusive environment; tailor activities to fit the needs of mixed ability groups; help pupils to develop the skills and confidence to enjoy different kinds of sport; encourage young people to think about what they are doing and make appropriate decisions for themselves. An invaluable tool for continuing professional development, this text will be essential for teachers, coaches and teaching assistants seeking guidance specific to teaching PE and sport to all pupils, regardless of their individual needs. This book will also be of interest to SENCOs, senior management teams and ITT providers. With free online material and practical resources in the appendices, this is an essential tool for everyone striving to engage all pupils in PE and sport.

The volume comprises a variety of research approaches that seek to explore and understand employees’ learning and development through and for work. Working life reveals challenges through technological, economic and societal development that can only rudimentarily be addressed by formal education and training. Workplace learning becomes more and more important for employees and enterprises to successfully cope with these challenges. Workplace learning is a steadily growing field of educational research but it lacks so far a scholastic canon – there is rather a diversity of research approaches. This volume reflects this diversity by bringing together researchers from different countries and different theoretical backgrounds, presenting their current research on topics that all are relevant for understanding presages, processes and outcomes of workplace learning. Hence, this volume is of relevance for researchers as well as practitioners in the field and policy makers.

Success in high performance sport is highly valued in today’s world, with lucrative contracts, sponsorship deals, and opportunities for celebrity status balanced against substantial investments of time and energy, and high chances of failure. With pressure mounting on athletes and coaches to make the most of athletic investments, the temptation to make health-related or ethical compromises is growing. Sustainability in High Performance Sport examines the pressures faced by coaches and athletes, and considers how sustainable science can offer alternative pathways to sporting excellence. By applying principles relating to carrying capacities, complexity and uncertainty, production and consumption, and ethics, this unique book provides new ways of thinking about both enduring and emerging challenges. With a scope that includes themes such as coaching practices, coach-athlete relationships, over-training and injuries, the development of sporting expertise, and doping, Sustainability in High Performance Sport is the most comprehensive exploration of sustainability in elite sport available. It is an invaluable resource for anybody with an interest in achieving long-term success in high performance sport. This book was originally published as a special issue of Reflective Practice.