Learning to Teach Health and Physical Education: The Experiences of Elementary Student Teachers

This research investigates elementary student teachers’ experiences of learning to teach health and physical education (HPE) in a one-year pre-service teacher education program at Windermere University in Canada. The participants in the research are preparing to become elementary classroom teachers; a group who often recall negative prior experiences of HPE from their time as school pupils and report an overwhelming lack of preparation and confidence to teach HPE. Mixed-methods of data gathering were employed in the form of pre- and post-test surveys of 308 student teachers, and three interviews conducted with a purposive sample of ten student teachers. Four main findings emerged from the research. First, elementary student teachers’ embodied identity as healthy and physically active individuals profoundly shaped their prior experiences of HPE. Second, the 12-hour HPE course offered in Windermere’s pre-service program broadened student teachers’ views of HPE and provided them with some basic strategies for teaching elementary HPE. Third, the practice teaching experience provided some student teachers with opportunities to either observe or to try teaching HPE; few had opportunities to do both. Fourth, there was a positive and statistically significant change in student teachers’ identities as teachers of HPE from the beginning to the end of the pre-service teacher education program. Implications for school HPE, pre-service teacher education programs, policy regarding teachers of HPE, and future avenues for research are discussed in light of the findings.Ph