Teaching about planning in pre-service physical education teacher education: A collaborative self-study

Abstract

Learning how to develop lesson and unit plans is recognised as a priority for teacher education programmes; however, recent empirical research on planning is scarce, particularly in physical education. The purpose of this research was to analyse how and why we teach physical education pre-service teachers (PSTs) to plan in the ways we do. A secondary purpose was to consider alternative approaches to teaching about planning based on this analysis. Over one academic term, we used collaborative self-study of teacher education practice methodology and gathered several forms of qualitative data, including reflective journal entries, recorded video conversations, and teaching artefacts. Through sharing and interrogating our assumptions about the nature of planning and how to teach PSTs about planning, we came to see several flaws in the approaches we had typically used, particularly in terms of the emphasis given to the products (i.e. developing and submitting complete lesson plans) over the processes of planning, and how this emphasis did not necessarily support PSTs’ learning. This was partially because we found it challenging to model our processes of planning for PSTs in authentic ways. We agree that planning is and should be a central part of learning to teach; however, this research suggests that the ‘typical’ actions in how we teach PSTs about planning may be ripe for disruption and redesign. This research provides a rationale for a better balance to be struck between teaching about planning-as-process and teaching about planning-as-product.

Introduction

Having pre-service teachers (PSTs) learn to plan lessons and units of work is a fundamental feature of all PST education programmes, including those in physical education teacher education (PETE). Kosnik and Beck's (2009) longitudinal research on teacher education graduates led them to identify planning as the top priority for teacher education programmes. This was partly because many beginning teachers were not fully aware of the heavy workload and disruptions that are part of school life; these were issues not overtly addressed in pre-service programmes. Graduates thus came to see the crucial role both short-term and long-term planning plays in ‘deciding which topics to emphasize and how to fit them together to maximize learning in the time available’ (Kosnik and Beck, 2009: 13).

Amongst several models for planning, the linear, ‘classical’ approach developed by Tyler (1949) is still widely used. In this approach, teachers follow a series of steps involving identification of learning objectives, designing tasks and experiences to achieve those objectives, organising the students and environment, and reflecting on the lesson to inform future planning (Capel et al., 2019). While this might be the dominant approach, there are also several contemporary and alternative models. Arguably the best known is backward design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005), which involves teachers identifying how learning will be assessed and then planning experiences to support how students will demonstrate their learning at the end of a lesson or unit. Other approaches reflect a more organic or naturalistic method, involving the development of overarching objectives or problems that teachers plan for in a reflexive rather than formulaic way (Egan, 1992; John, 2006; Stenhouse, 1975). A novel approach to planning-as-critical curation (Sawyer et al., 2020) involves curating lessons by selectively drawing on appropriate resources to facilitate learning (e.g. from the internet, from colleagues, and from textbooks). In physical education, a three-axes model of planning (Viciana and Mayorga-Vega, 2018) recommends that teachers reflect upon and plan along three axes of (a) simplicity–complexity in terms of the maturity of students and sophistication of content, (b) alignment of instruction to curriculum standards/objectives, and (c) the autonomy of students.

Despite the central role of learning to plan and the development of novel planning models, König et al. (2020) suggest that research on planning in PST education is scarce. In mathematics, Bieda et al. (2020: 771) observed that few empirical studies on lesson planning existed ‘and those that [do] exist are decades old’. Moreover, some claim that how novice teachers learn to plan is one of the least understood aspects of teacher education (González et al., 2020; Mutton et al., 2011; Windschitl et al., 2021). In turn, descriptions of how teacher educators teach PSTs about planning remain untouched in the literature. The relative lack of attention to planning in teacher education generally applies just as much to PETE (Capel et al., 2019). Although many textbooks used in PETE programmes (e.g. Capel et al., 2020; Randall and Robinson, 2014; Rink, 2020) contain guidelines to support PSTs in learning how to plan, there are few examples that critique these guidelines or offer new approaches.

The little research that has been done on planning recognises several concerns. For instance, Kosnik et al. (2009) demonstrated that while most PSTs could construct reasonable lesson plans, few could explain how lessons link together or how individual lessons reflected a teacher's overall vision. Many graduates dismissed lesson and unit plans they prepared during coursework because they were too idealistic or unrealistic in their scope, level of detail, and the time spent on their development. This raises many questions about the taken-for-granted role and nature of planning in teacher education.

We are physical education teacher educators and in some of our courses we teach teachers how to plan lessons and units of work. Recently, Tim began teaching a PETE course that had planning as a major focus. In previous versions of this course, PSTs were introduced to a linear approach to planning from a widely used textbook (Rink, 2020). PSTs used planning templates to practice planning and received feedback on those efforts. At the end of the course, they entered a brief teaching placement, where they planned and co-taught three lessons with a peer. Informal feedback from PSTs and supervising teachers mirrored comments from Kosnik et al. (2009), suggesting that the way planning was taught in the PETE programme was too detailed and unrealistic, and far removed from how teachers planned on a daily basis in schools. When there is incongruence between what PSTs learn in coursework and what they experience in teaching placements, it can limit their sense-making and affect how they plan for the needs of their students (Windschitl et al., 2021).

To this end, we engaged in a collaborative self-study of teacher education practice (S-STEP) inquiry focused on interrogating how we teach teachers to plan. Tim's practice was under the spotlight for the inquiry, while Alex took on the role of critical friend to offer insight, critique, and suggest alternative perspectives. Alex also brought extensive and recent experience teaching physical education in schools, including supervision of PSTs. This rich experience offered an important perspective grounded in the realities of teaching physical education in contemporary schools and in PETE programmes. The purpose of this collaborative S-STEP research was to analyse how and why we teach physical education PSTs to plan in the ways that we do. A secondary purpose was to consider alternative approaches to teaching about planning based on this analysis.

Research on planning in physical education and PETE

Planning is a key feature of many PETE textbooks. For instance, Rink (2020: 214) dedicates two chapters to planning, describing it as a ‘critical part of the teaching process’, informing how teachers make decisions to support student learning. Considerations for planning follow Tyler's (1949) classical, linear planning approach (Rink, 2020). Moreover, the order of chapters suggests that learning how to plan lessons precedes learning how to plan units, which, in turn, precedes learning how to assess and evaluate student learning (Rink, 2020). Capel et al. (2019: 966) suggest that this model has ‘been promoted in many physical education texts over a considerable period of time’.

In Randall and Robinson's (2014) textbook, learning to plan is framed using backward design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). They suggest that PSTs begin looking at curricular outcomes, expectations, or objectives in policy documents; considering the needs of students and the communities in which they live; and thinking about yearly planning first, followed by unit planning and lesson planning. In the textbook by Capel et al. (2020), the two chapters on planning (Cliffe, 2020a, 2020b) do not draw explicitly from one model of planning but offer an eclectic perspective that draws from the linear model, backward design, and a naturalistic approach based on the immediate contexts of the school in which teaching is taking place.

In each of the textbooks cited, several examples and templates allow PSTs to see a completed lesson and unit plan. While many of the models of planning offer useful guides for beginning teachers, their presentation is quite different to how a teacher plans. That is, the descriptions and examples address the ‘whys’ and ‘whats’ of lesson planning, yet the ‘hows’ are less clear with the processes of planning given less attention. From our perspective, the ‘hows’ of planning are often reduced to filling in empty boxes in the lesson plan templates.

These texts help PSTs see blank and completed lesson plans but few draw on recent research on planning in PETE to support claims made for effectiveness or to consider alternative approaches. This may be because there is little research on planning in PETE that has been conducted since the 1980s. In an early example, Placek (1984) demonstrated that physical education teachers tended to plan for individual activities rather than lessons, with few following Tyler's (1949) model. Further, teachers did not often write detailed lesson plans but engaged in briefly written or mental plans. Although teachers taught organised lessons with various activities and few discipline problems, student learning received minimal emphasis in the lessons (Placek, 1984).

Despite not necessarily writing detailed lesson plans, Housner and Griffey (1985) showed that experienced teachers (5+ years of experience) made more than twice the amount of planning decisions than PSTs (e.g. instructional strategies, equipment, assessment, and demonstrations). Experienced teachers also drew on rich practical and contextual knowledge, whereas PSTs relied mostly (and understandably) on written resources.

PSTs studied by Capel et al. (2019) did not identify a specific preference of planning models, although a linear approach involving a ‘proforma’ lesson plan template tended to be most common. In contrast to Kosnik et al. (2009), Capel et al. (2019) suggested that PSTs understood the value in learning how to plan as part of their PST education experience. They also realised the necessity of being flexible when using plans, deviating from the script as needed. Capel et al. (2019) recommend the value of research that questions different planning approaches so that PSTs’ needs are better aligned with the realities of planning in contemporary schools.

These examples provide some insights into teachers’ preferences and habits in planning, and the value of learning to plan in PETE. However, we still know little about the processes by which PSTs learn to plan, including the approaches taken by teacher educators. We found no examples of how physical education teacher educators teach about planning.

Conceptual framework: Pedagogies of teacher education

Loughran (2006) offers useful conceptual tools to support the design and analysis of research on how PSTs might be taught how to plan in PETE. Loughran (2013) defines a pedagogy of teacher education as the theory and practice of teaching and learning about teaching. Thus, three integrated concepts frame the development of a pedagogy of teacher education: learning about learning, learning about teaching, and teaching about teaching (Loughran, 2006). This suggests that both teacher educators and PSTs share common teaching and learning experiences. That is, as teacher educators teach PSTs about teaching, PSTs offer responses to their experiences of learning about teaching from the teacher educator.

Although the literature is replete with examples of what PSTs learn about the content of teaching (subject matter and pedagogy), the turn to focus on the challenges faced by teacher educators in teaching about teaching is only fairly recent, with much of that attention coming since the 1990s. This focus exposed the difficulties of providing PSTs with access to ‘the thoughts and actions that shape [a teacher's] practice; they need to be able to see and hear the pedagogical reasoning that underpins the teaching they are experiencing’ (Loughran, 2006: 5). Herein lies one of the primary difficulties of teaching about teaching: while teaching practice is readily observable, much of that practice is tacit, elusive, and difficult to define (Loughran, 2006). Thus, articulation of the thinking and decision-making while teaching teachers is a crucial aspect of enacting a pedagogy of teacher education, as this enables PSTs to see inside teaching practice rather than simply what lies on the surface (Korthagen, 2016).

The advent of the S-STEP movement and its methodological principles coincided with the turn towards a better understanding of the challenges of teaching teachers and articulating personal pedagogies of teacher education (Vanassche and Kelchtermans, 2015). Many teacher educators who were interested in exploring the complexities of teacher education used S-STEP to study and share their insights with others in the teacher education community, and identify common understanding. S-STEP has been used by a number of teacher educators, with its principles and key features (such as critical friendship) facilitating how they understand and make changes to their teaching practice (e.g. Baker, 2021; Hordvik et al., 2017). Among several key developments, one that continues to be highlighted is that although the idea of articulating the thinking behind one's teaching practice sounds easy, it is especially difficult (Hordvik et al., 2017). For example, Berry (2007) used the notion of tensions to highlight some of the contradictory practices and principles that were at play in teaching teachers about teaching science. For Bullock (2009), these contradictions were exacerbated by lacking the ‘syntactic structures’ of teacher education practice; in other words, a language or vocabulary for teaching teachers. This is perhaps not surprising when many teacher educators are not provided with any training or induction into the role, with their experiences of teaching children often being a prerequisite for teaching teachers. However, teachers in schools are not required to describe or justify their decisions and actions to their students. When teacher educators try to transfer school teaching practices into university teacher education practices, they often struggle (Casey and Fletcher, 2012).

If powerful learning about teaching is to occur for PSTs, teaching practice and its complexities must be made problematic. The teacher educator is thus made vulnerable by acknowledging the likelihood of making mistakes or the difficulty in explaining their decisions (Fletcher, 2016). Yet, if both the teacher educator and PSTs can be made more aware of the complexity of teaching, both may develop a deeper, richer understanding of pedagogy (Baker, 2021).

In many examples of S-STEP, a focus is often given to the challenges teacher educators face in articulating their practice in terms of instruction (e.g. those moments where they might be modelling how a pedagogical model is used). However, there is a large gap that exists in terms of how teacher educators model other parts of their practice that tend to remain behind the scenes, such as planning or the selection of assessment tools. It was with this gap in mind that we set out to articulate how we taught about planning.

Methods

S-STEP is both a methodology and professional development tool to help promote inquiry into teacher education practices (Hordvik et al., 2021). We used a collaborative S-STEP design, meaning we relied on our interactions to develop deeper understandings of our respective selves-in-practice (Ovens and Fletcher, 2014). Some S-STEP inquiries are conducted by only one teacher educator, while collaborative S-STEP involves one or more teacher educators who use the inquiry to inform their respective teacher education practices, even though those practices may be enacted in different contexts and with different expectations, roles, and duties. That is, the teacher educators are both approaching the inquiry with an agenda to learn with and from each other.

Guidelines for quality in S-STEP framed the research design (LaBoskey, 2004; Vanassche and Kelchtermans, 2015). Specifically, the inquiry was self-initiated, improvement-aimed, interactive, used multiple qualitative data sources, and positioned validation as a process based on trustworthiness. To this end, we rely on readers to identify instances of resonance with their experiences of teaching teachers about planning in their specific contexts. Moreover, we are both committed to engaging in this type of scholarship to inform our own understanding of teacher education practice, to enhance the ways our PSTs (past and future) experience and understand teaching, and to contribute to the knowledge base in PETE by generating discussion and debate.

Setting and participants

Tim teaches in a programme where PSTs graduate with a qualification to become a physical education teacher in Canada. Alex teaches in a work-based programme that allows unqualified physical education teachers to obtain an undergraduate degree while working; the degree may lead to teaching certification in England. In both of our respective contexts, certification authorities require PSTs to demonstrate competencies in planning that are assessed through the production of lesson plans that meet certain criteria. For example, PSTs should be able to develop plans that are aligned with curriculum outcomes, show different parts of a lesson, that include structured and stimulating tasks and experiences relative to the content, that include suitable pedagogical approaches, that include considerations for adaptations, and so on (Department for Education, 2019).

In the course taught by Tim that provides the focus for this inquiry, there is a strong emphasis on developing PSTs’ skills, knowledge, understanding and experience in lesson and unit planning. As discussed previously, feedback from PSTs and supervising teachers about the unrealistic and inauthentic nature of the lesson planning tasks they had previously undertaken led Tim to recognise that alternative ways of learning to plan were needed in the course. Together, we also reflected on the ways we planned when we taught in schools and came to see that these approaches were often very different from how we taught PSTs to plan. Some questions we had about the role and nature of planning in PETE that guided the initial research design were: What are our assumptions about teaching about planning? How should PSTs be taught how to plan? What types of plans should PSTs be expected to develop and why those types of plans (compared to others)? What are alternatives to how we teach about planning?

Prior to the pandemic, the course was split in half in that PSTs were involved in on-campus experiences for the first six weeks of the course (e.g. lecture-style and practical classes in the gym/field), followed by several brief school placement experiences in the second half of the course. However, during the time this research was conducted (2021), the course was conducted exclusively online. This meant there were no school placements, resulting in 12 weeks of online lecture-style and practical classes. The practical classes were not gym-based but involved small-group interactive tasks to design/plan activities and lessons, engage with teaching resources and materials, and so on.

We have known and collaborated with each other in various capacities for approximately five years. Much of our initial interaction occurred through social media but as we found many common areas of interest and understanding in terms of physical education and its teaching, we have worked on several collaborative writing projects and others that deal more broadly with our own professional development as teachers/teacher educators. At the time of this inquiry, we had never met each other in person, relying on digital technologies to meet.

The research process was influenced by our positionalities. Together we identify as practitioners, acknowledging our positions as teachers and teacher educators, and view much of our research as being intertwined with our teacher education practices. Our interpretations of the results of this research are partial, provisional, situational, and grounded in our local contexts (Ovens and Fletcher, 2014). We share our interpretations with others so they may identify any resonance with their own experiences and contexts. We are both White, Male, English-speaking, and able-bodied, and recognise the privilege that comes with these characteristics and identities. They also shaped the research process, including our interpretation of the results and their implications.

Data collection and analysis

Ethical approval was granted by Brock University Research Ethics Board. We gathered several forms of qualitative data over one teaching term (January–April 2021), with several data sources being generated both immediately before classes began and after they had finished. The following data were generated: individual reflective journal entries (RJ) generated by Tim using an open-ended ‘free write’ approach to identify assumptions, critical incidents, problems faced, moments of uncertainty and vulnerability, and so on (8); Alex's written responses to the journal entries from Tim, which were expanded upon so they became Alex's own reflections (8); recorded video calls between us (using Teams) (3); and course artefacts (e.g. lesson plans, course materials, and recordings of online classes).

We were both involved in the analytic process, using Braun et al.'s (2014) six-step process for conducting a thematic analysis of qualitative data. We first familiarised ourselves with the data after it had been collected. We read journal entries and course artefacts, and watched/listened to our recorded video calls and recordings of online classes. The second step involved generating initial verbatim and descriptive codes, which we did independently. For example, the following RJ excerpt was initially coded by Tim as ‘assumptions about planning’: ‘When it comes to teaching teachers about planning, my initial thoughts are that this is one of several key capacities, experiences, skills that beginning teachers should know about and how to go about it in a general sense’ (Tim). Another example comes from one of Alex's responses, coded as ‘planning as process and product’: ‘… this then creates multiple tensions. The key one, for me, being planning as a product and planning as a process. This then influences the other tensions at play’.

The third and fourth steps involved independently identifying patterns across codes to generate themes and subsequently reviewing and naming those themes. Preliminary themes were generated iteratively, being in a regular state of revision and review. For example, Tim coded several data excerpts using ‘assumptions about planning’; however, when these were considered in the context of the data, some were allocated to a preliminary theme labelled ‘assumptions about planning’ while others with the same code were allocated to a different preliminary theme labelled ‘why do we teach about teaching the way we do?’. This meant that some data with the same codes had to be revisited to ensure best fit with a theme. The code (and subsequent theme) of ‘planning as process’ also led both of us to develop sub-themes around this idea, such as ‘tensions in planning as process’, ‘possibilities from planning as process’, or ‘uncertainty about planning as process’. The fifth step involved comparing our independently coded and thematised data to define and name themes based on common elements. When we compared our codes and themes, ‘assumptions about planning’ and ‘planning as process-product’ were common and dominant. We debated the common and discrepant elements within the codes and themes and with our shared understandings in mind, we felt that data under the themes of ‘Why do we teach about planning the way we do?’ and ‘Planning as process versus planning as product’ offered authentic representations of several key insights we made about teaching about planning in PETE, while also carrying the potential to provide new and significant contributions to the PETE research literature. The sixth step (reporting) is presented in the following sections. Steps to establish trustworthiness included gathering several data sources from a data set gathered over a full teaching semester, detailing our audit trail, and seeking negative or disconfirming cases in the data, or instances where we felt ambiguity or uncertainty in our assumptions or interpretations. We do not use this analysis as a justification for our practices or perspectives but rather as a source for ongoing critique and inquiry.

Results

We began our research without much of an idea of where to begin and why. One reason for this is that there was so little empirical research on how teacher educators teach about planning that we could build upon. With mainly our own experiences and descriptions of planning in textbooks to draw from, we decided to focus initially on trying to articulate our pedagogical assumptions about how we teach teachers about planning. This approach led to a rich line of inquiry. We focus on two themes: (a) articulating our assumptions about teaching PSTs about planning in terms of why we teach about planning the ways that we do and (b) disrupting the reliance on developing plans as products in order to focus on the processes of planning.

Why do we teach about planning the way we do?

Our critical friendship began with sharing information about the role of planning in our respective PETE programmes. We shared course syllabi, and lesson and unit plan templates that PSTs practised with and used. Although there were some small differences there were a lot of similarities, with our approaches to planning reflecting the linear or ‘dominant model’ (John, 2006). For instance, there were numerous ‘boxes to fill’ for curriculum and learning objectives, class size, equipment, pedagogical strategies, organisation of tasks and students, modifications, and space for a personal reflection. Alex shared:

The lesson plan at my university is well thought through and is evidence-informed. It has been specifically designed to help [PSTs] develop some key habits – that of responding to mistakes, ensuring the challenge is the right level and praising the children's progress. We provide exemplars, we spend time going into the theory, research and evidence behind each part of the lesson plan and we provide models of what ‘good’ looks like in each plan. (RJ)

In addition to sharing artefacts, we also shared our personal assumptions about planning. These were based on several factors, including our own experiences of learning to plan when we were PSTs, the ways we planned when we taught in schools, the ways we plan as teacher educators, the role of planning in PST education, and the importance of PSTs demonstrating abilities to plan to receive their teaching certification. In referring to his personal assumptions about the role of planning, Tim focused mostly on how and why he planned for his own teaching:

… I always have a lot of things written down that, if someone else were to read them, they would probably say that things have been planned quite thoroughly. I have not typically planned using a table format, which I have seen many other teachers use or teacher educators teach PSTs to use. Instead, my plans consist of a lot of bullet points listing tasks in chronological order with the odd diagram thrown in. I feel that the process of planning allows me to envision what a lesson might be like – to think about the physical and cognitive structures of the class and tasks (e.g. playing locations, [transitions, sequences], etc.). Going through this process and imagining scenarios allows for pre-emptive troubleshooting and, in that way, enables me to model some parts of good teaching practice and [give the appearance] that I know what I am doing and how I can teach a ‘good’ lesson. (RJ)

Tim also recognised that ‘there is also a lot involved in good teaching that can't be planned and requires reflexive and spontaneous decision-making’ (RJ).

While Alex responded to Tim's claims in this reflection and others with questions, probes, and identification of resonance, his assumptions focused mostly on the role of planning in terms of teaching PSTs how to teach (Loughran, 2006), rather than describing how he planned. For instance, Alex referred to ‘the anxiety that planning causes [PSTs]’ and the often decontextualised nature of learning to plan, particularly when PSTs are asked to plan for imagined (rather than real) students and contexts (RJ).

These excerpts capture what and how we planned (for ourselves) and taught about planning but there was also evidence of attempting to address why we planned and taught about planning the way that we do. Although the question was quite simple, we struggled to come up with answers that were clear and that we could articulate with conviction, thus reflecting the challenges of making our tacit knowledge of teaching explicit (Berry, 2007; Bullock, 2009). As Alex stated:

Part of my experience of teaching [PSTs] to plan is that it is something to get done, upload as evidence and then move on to the next one. There is very little reflection on the planning process, just on the teaching practice. The plan is only really interrogated if something is going wrong. (RJ)

In our early dialogue, we both attributed many of the problematic issues about planning to the requirements of teaching certification authorities rather than to our own practices. We both reflected that prior to engaging in this collaborative S-STEP, neither of us had thought too much about how we taught about planning, focusing instead on planning as a way of organising the content of physical education. Given the emphasis given to PSTs showing competency in lesson planning for teaching certification, we seemed to take an unquestioning attitude to its place in our respective programmes, as ‘something to get done’ (RJ).

The interactive process of our S-STEP soon led us to take a more critical stance. Through articulating our assumptions, we began to see and make explicit several flaws in how planning is often taught in PETE, at least from our own personal experiences. That is, the flaws were evident as much in our own practice as they might be across our field or in different contexts. For instance, Tim described a very linear process he had used that was based on guidelines in Rink (2020), where he usually prompted PSTs to think about and write down in the appropriate space on a lesson plan template what they were going to teach, why it was important to teach (and for students to learn), and how they were going to teach it. While this approach had been in use for several decades (John, 2006) and roughly reflected the way we both learned how to plan when we were PSTs more than 20 years ago, Tim also shared that this approach left him feeling unsatisfied and not representative of how he planned or thought about planning as a teacher or teacher educator, points Alex agreed with. For example, Alex critiqued the focus given to planning for a single lesson in PST education, stating: ‘A lesson is not a good unit of time to plan for learning. It causes us to see learning as something linear, in lesson objectives or standards to be met each and every lesson’ (RJ). In this way, Alex was tacitly calling for more naturalistic or narrative approaches to planning (Egan, 1992; Stenhouse, 1975). Thus, what we asked PSTs to do in their planning was not the same as we did in our own teaching practices. This double standard left us feeling exposed as living contradictions in our teacher education practices (Whitehead, 1989). As teacher educators who take pride in embracing innovative pedagogies, this realisation came as quite a shock. To compound the issue, Tim struggled to identify alternatives that might alleviate the sense of dissatisfaction, stating: ‘… if this does not capture what I do believe about learning to teach in relation to planning, then what does? And what do I believe […]?’ (RJ).

In thinking about how we might respond to these questions, we returned to our initial reflective data and the assumptions we had previously shared. Within Alex's first entry was a point that came to be, with the benefit of hindsight, a key insight into our interrogation of planning in PETE. Specifically, a reliance on the products of planning as evidence of PSTs’ abilities to plan. Alex wrote:

The key [tension], for me, [is] planning as a product and planning as a process […] Not only does the lesson plan as a product divorce itself from assessment and pedagogy (with these things becoming an afterthought) but it also reduces sharing. The lesson plan as a product becomes the individual's responsibility; something the [PST] does themselves, with teacher educator and [supervising teacher] both pointing at each other when the plan is produced poorly […] In reality, planning as a process should be a collaborative affair, drawing on the expertise of those with more experience. How often do [PSTs] get to plan with someone of experience? To see their thinking, mindsets and methods? To have this tacit knowledge explicitly modelled for them? (RJ)

The idea raised by Alex of a reliance on the products of planning – the completed, polished lesson plans in pre-designed templates – allowed us to articulate a problem of practice and its inherent tensions (Berry, 2007). This problem was grounded in our own experiences as teacher educators and offered us a path to examine how we might take action in order to address that problem.

Planning-as-product and planning-as-process

The problems underlying planning-as-product led us to focus on this for the remainder of our inquiry. Importantly, this framing provided us with a language of teacher education (Bullock, 2009) to help describe the issues we had previously struggled to articulate. For instance, Tim commented that this was ‘a helpful way of looking at [the problem] and thinking about it’ (RJ). While we could both see potential in exploring this idea, we were unsure of what an alternative approach might look like in practice. Alex proposed a way to model planning-as-process to PSTs where the teacher educator might think aloud about their planning process when given a lesson idea or focus (Loughran, 2006). This might be a type of ‘on the spot’ planning that many teachers might regularly engage in (Placek, 1984). While Tim agreed and liked the idea, we both admitted to some internal tensions, with Tim stating: ‘I’m now wondering if my anxiety from your proposal is mostly an insecurity or perhaps even embarrassment about how unclear I am about my own ideas about learning to plan’ (RJ). Tim admitted being uncertain and confused about how to proceed, emotions that were based on a lack of recent experience teaching in schools, while also admitting to his own personal, idiosyncratic approach to planning. On the one hand, sharing this out loud with PSTs might reveal authenticity in the messiness of planning, while on the other hand, it also exposed gaps in knowledge and weaknesses in practice. It took us both some time to generate a clearer idea of what modelling about planning-as-process might look like.

Because Tim's course was conducted online throughout the pandemic, guest speakers often contributed to the class, with Alex being one of those. Alex proposed to experiment with modelling the planning-as-process ideas we had discussed. Alex described feeling ‘self-conscious’ (RJ) and somewhat unsure of how to model this despite being quite confident that he could actually do the planning. That is, there remained a tension in how to make his tacit knowledge about physical education teaching practice explicit to PSTs – a point that underscores the difficulties for teacher educators in obtaining the ‘syntactic structures of teaching’ (Bullock, 2009). In the following section, we present how Alex enacted planning-as-process, with data derived from a video recording of the class (25 February 2021).

Alex began by providing introductory and general comments and ideas about planning, including descriptions of how planning was taught at his university. Alex then invited PSTs to provide him with a hypothetical class (focusing on who the planning was for), followed by a content area (what was being planned), and other necessary information (e.g. how many lessons?). PSTs suggested they would like to see planning modelled for a class of female Grade 9 students (14–15 years) in a suburban setting (similar to many of their placement schools), with dance as the content area.

Alex suggested he would plan for capoeira, a Brazilian movement form combining dance with martial arts. In line with his observation that single lessons of work were not good periods of time to plan for student learning, Alex suggested he would first plan the structure and sequence of a five-lesson unit in order to determine the substance of each lesson. This modelling of the processes of planning most closely resembled backward design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). This was reinforced in the next steps of his planning process, which involved identifying what students might realistically achieve at the end of five lessons of capoeira. Without having more detailed knowledge of the students and their interests, abilities, and backgrounds, Alex suggested that an appropriate goal might be to have students perform a paired capoeira phrase, lasting for 20 seconds and inside a roda (a circle participants dance within). The phrase would involve pairs in constant movement using action–reaction, swaying (the ginga), and kicking and dodging. Depending on students’ engagement, there would be appropriate simplifications and extensions. The overall goals for learning led Alex to emphasise: ‘I would begin [my planning process] with the end in mind’ (the end being the overall goal of the unit), which would provide students and the teacher with ‘a shared language; a model that [students] know that they are working towards’. Entwined throughout his thinking aloud about what students might be able to achieve, Alex regularly emphasised that the goals would be highly dependent on the students, prioritising decisions about who the lessons were being planned for.

Following the identification of the overall goal, Alex suggested he would consider the skills, knowledge, and attitudes students might develop during the unit (e.g. cultural history of capoeira, basic kicks and dodges that would be referred to using Portuguese, and levels of cooperation). These would be negotiated with students in the first lesson. The pedagogical strategies or approach would be mostly teacher- or video-led demonstrations (e.g. YouTube clips) of introductory skills, followed by guided discovery within and between pairs. This rough process would be repeated from lesson to lesson and would vary depending on students’ engagement and capabilities. Alex noted the importance of considering external and environmental constraints, such as the spaces that were available for use in the lesson and outside in the community should students wish to extend their learning. Alex concluded by saying:

It isn't the production of a lesson plan that is going to help develop your expertise. It is the planning process. For me, the planning process is a series of […] big picture questions followed by detailed questions. You need to come up with important questions for [yourself] when you are planning.

Alex shared the entire process outlined above in roughly 15 minutes. There were no detailed scripts developed, nor was there a strict process followed. His process was approximately as follows:

Develop some ‘big picture’ questions. Tim wrote of Alex's modelling: ‘The who is the point that keeps getting returned to time and again, with the why, what, how, and under what conditions being introduced and returned to’.

Develop as far as possible a deep understanding of who the planning is for, including characteristics, interests, abilities, and the environments within the school and community.

Begin the planning process with the end in mind. What is a reasonable and approximate expectation or goal for students to achieve at the end of a unit of work? How might this goal relate to a teacher's ideas about the overarching purposes of physical education?

Identify in both general and specific terms the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that students would learn and demonstrate in order to achieve the identified goal. These factors then contribute to key learning tasks and experiences that would make up the content of each lesson and inform the selection of appropriate pedagogical strategies.

Include time to negotiate the goals and expectations with students.

The structure and sequence of the lessons would depend on how the students engage with the content relative to the goals and expectations, and the selection of pedagogical strategies or models.

These processes might not necessarily come in this order; they would be returned to throughout the planning process, representing a nonlinear approach.

Following this modelling by Alex, in several classes that followed, PSTs worked in small groups to try mirroring this process with a variety of hypothetical student populations and content areas. During these classes, the process was emphasised. While PSTs did also produce artefacts that might resemble a more traditional product of lesson planning, these were sketched out, incomplete, and quite messy, standing in contrast to the development of time-consuming and highly detailed scripts, diagrams, and outlines that could be ‘plugged in’ to a template.

From our respective experiences as teachers, these more closely resembled the processes and products of planning. But while we had arrived at a satisfactory exemplar of modelling the planning process, we still remained uncertain about the value of the change we were both thinking about and enacting. As Tim reflected: ‘Is this the best way for them to demonstrate their learning? […] And of course: what will the quality of their plans be and how will that reflect how I have taught about planning?’ Alex also captured his position about this shift, stating: ‘As I am in a liminal space I have not yet begun to transition where I have good answers and that uncertainty and ambiguity is disorientating’. In this way, we do not present this analysis as a representation of how PSTs should learn to plan, but rather as an articulation of one way that teacher educators can model planning-as-process, one that arguably represents more authentically how teachers plan in schools under time constraints and, admittedly, with years of experience. Moreover, these thoughts highlighted a contradiction in our practice (Berry, 2007), in that while we were advocating for planning-as-process, we simultaneously acknowledged that there did need to be some products of planning that were developed.

As with many self-studies, we did not necessarily arrive at solid conclusions or generate perfect answers to our questions. While we recognised this as an imperfect process, we felt that Alex's enactment of modelling planning-as-process enabled us to make a shift in our pedagogies of teacher education and move towards a place that might improve how PSTs develop abilities and capacities to think like teachers. As Alex wrote: ‘There was a lot we got wrong, but I think there was something useful, potentially even powerful, having to explicitly share and model my planning process for [PSTs]’ (RJ).

Discussion

The purposes of this research were to analyse how and why we teach physical education PSTs to plan in the ways that we do and to consider alternative approaches to teaching about planning. Loughran's (2006) conceptual framework for developing a pedagogy of teacher education helped us show that prior to engaging in this collaborative S-STEP research, we had not engaged extensively with thinking through our assumptions about planning, and came to realise its taken-for-granted nature in our own personal teacher education practices. Alex's observation that there was a tendency to rely on the products of planning as evidence of PSTs’ learning about teaching (Loughran, 2006), offered a rich and valuable source for problematising how we taught about teaching in terms of planning and allowed us to see value in moving towards teaching about planning-as-process. This required a shift in our teacher education pedagogies so that our own processes of planning were modelled and made explicit by focusing on several ‘big picture questions’ (Who? Why? What? How? Under what conditions?) and thinking through planning sequences aloud in order to help PSTs see inside a teacher's decision-making (Loughran, 2006). Although engaging in this approach allowed us to model a more authentic representation of how we planned as experienced teachers and teacher educators, it revealed gaps in our own knowledge about planning, and by extension, required making ourselves vulnerable by sharing our uncertainties, doubts, and moments of confusion with each other and with PSTs (Berry, 2007). Importantly, we also came to see that relying solely on the processes of planning was not a viable solution to the problems we identified. We felt that a better balance needed to be struck whereby learning about planning-by-process was given far greater emphasis than we had given it in the past.

This conclusion might resemble what Dewey (1941) refers to as warranted assertability, where knowing is viewed as a process of inquiry into the problems faced by people in particular situations; it is therefore fallible and temporal but the people involved have some grounds for their claims (Boyles, 2006). Such a position aligns with many other S-STEP researchers who present their insights as provisional, highly contextual, and upheld only when others in the teacher education community find those insights to resonate with their own understandings of practice. Thus, we do not offer the results of this analysis as a discovery of truths about teaching about planning; rather, we present these findings in terms of developing new and partial insights about how teacher educators are faced with the challenges and complexities of articulating knowledge about teaching (Loughran, 2013). Teaching requires an understanding of the different options available and the ability to make sound professional choices. In this way, we share this work with the intention of generating discussion and debate about how and why teacher educators teach about planning in PETE the ways that they do.

This research makes several contributions to the literature. Specifically, it represents renewed attention to fundamental aspects of teaching and learning to teach. Apart from several isolated examples (Capel et al., 2019; Housner and Griffey, 1985; Placek, 1984), there is little attention given to planning as a focus of empirical research. In addition, we could find no examples written from the perspective of teacher educators where there is an articulation of how and why teacher educators teach PSTs about planning in the ways they do. When planning is such a central feature of PETE programmes and a requirement by teaching certification authorities, it is crucial that knowledge about how planning is taught continues to be generated and/or revisited and forms part of teacher educators’ personal pedagogies of teacher education (Loughran, 2006). As our research shows, teacher educators may take for granted how they teach about some fundamental aspects of teaching, such as planning. Thus, there is a need to problematise and critique how and why we do things to unearth flaws or problems in these approaches and to think about more appropriate and powerful ways forward. S-STEP provided a suitable means by which to engage in this type of inquiry, offering structures and guidelines by which to engage in deconstructing how we teach about teaching and how PSTs learn about teaching. Moreover, the collaborative S-STEP process helped both of us develop and experiment with a language to describe our teaching about planning (Bullock, 2009), which we had previously lacked. The articulation of our understanding of teaching about planning revealed several tensions and contradictions, exposing the complexities of teacher education practice. Although we were both aware of alternative approaches to planning, such as backward design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005), putting these approaches into action and demonstrating how we engage in their processes remain challenging for a variety of reasons. Sharing these taken-for-granted assumptions and their resultant actions – with all their flaws and weaknesses – can serve as a call to action for others in the PETE community. Thus, self-study research is not limited to understanding of the self-in-practice for the self: it is, by necessity, for self and others (Fletcher and Ovens, 2015).

In serving as a call for future research, we encourage others to share how they teach about teaching, particularly as it relates to planning and other fundamental aspects (and requirements) of learning to teach, such as assessment or classroom management. For example, Macken et al. (2020) described challenges that both a teacher educator and PSTs experienced when teaching about contemporary assessment practices in PETE; we believe that more inquiries of this nature are warranted. Particularly when there is so little research on how planning is taught, there is value in learning about how physical education teacher educators teach about contemporary approaches to planning, particularly in terms of how this is modelled for PSTs. In line with Loughran's (2006) conceptual framework, it is important not only to consider a pedagogy of teacher education from the perspective of teacher educators’ teaching about teaching, but also PSTs’ perspectives on learning to plan. To this end, another important line of inquiry would address PSTs’ perspectives and experiences of learning to plan, and the outcomes of learning to plan. This is particularly important when new approaches to planning, such as those outlined in our research, are employed as they can reveal contradictions and tensions inherent in teacher education practice (Berry, 2007). We conclude by encouraging other teacher educators to interrogate and share their PETE practices through S-STEP to enable a stronger and richer knowledge base for the field.