‘We should assess the students in more authentic situations’

Abstract

The question of what knowledge a student of Physical Education (PE) needs to develop during PE teacher education (PETE) was recently discussed. One form of knowledge is the movement practices that students must meet during their education. Given the limited time, a delicate matter is whether to prioritize movement knowledge and consider it as subject matter knowledge (e.g. performance of the freestyle stroke) or as pedagogical content knowledge (e.g. teaching how to perform the freestyle stroke). The aim is to investigate Swedish PE teacher educators’ views on the meaning of movement skills for future PE teachers and to analyse the learning cultures made visible in the ways the meaning of movement is expressed. We conducted interviews with 12 teacher-educators and collected documents with tasks for assessment from five PETE universities in Sweden. Inspired by Bourdieu’s field metaphor, and particularly its use by Hodkinson et al. on learning cultures, we then analysed the collected material. In the results, different views on the meaning of movement skills are made visible. The PE teacher can be seen as an instructor, as well as a facilitator of movements. Movement skills can be seen as essential for a teacher in PE, as well as valuable but not essential. Movement quality can also be viewed as universal, as well as contextual. Swedish teacher educators in PE appear to ascribe value to all the positions made visible in this study. These results are discussed from the perspectives of epistemology, assessment and learning cultures.