Investigating PE teacher use of models based practice in Australian secondary PE

This paper reports research undertaken with seven secondary (Year 7-12) physical education (PE) teachers from different metropolitan schools to investigate the use of models based practice (MBP). A qualitative and interpretivist stance was taken to the interview data to examine the teachers’ familiarity with, and implementation of, MBP. Following individual analysis of each data set, the shaping of meaning occurred by comparative analysis across interviews and identification of common themes representative of the total data set. Analysis revealed that the teachers were aware of the Game Sense and Sport Education models; however, in only one school were the models featured in the planned and enacted curriculum. The historically familiar directive model based on multi-activity curriculum design and teacher directed demonstrate-explain-practice pedagogy remained the common and dominant MBP. The study found that MBP had seemingly not displaced the dominance of the multi-activity model of curriculum for the teachers and the schools in which they work