Teaching outdoor and adventure activities: an investigation of a primary school physical education professional development p

Explaining.
Teachers in the infant classes, third classes and fifth classes were 
eager to try and teach themselves, having seen a lesson or two modelled at stage 1.
Even at this early stage in the PDP some teachers required support of a less intense 
nature. These teachers asked for support in the form of briefings, where I spent a short 
time with them going through the lesson they were to teach the following day; 
Two third class teachers asked me to spend some time with them today on a 
lesson that they are going to teach tomorrow. It’s the first group of teachers I 
spent time with, actually spent time with and its only their second lesson… I 
spent a good half hour with them going through the lesson from start to finish 
and making sure they were happy with it.
(FN 26.02.07) 
The infant teachers appeared to become confident with the content very quickly 
and explanations were around the organisation of equipment and the management of an 
activity, in the context of having 30 children active within the lesson. With the third 
and fifth class teachers some explanation of content was needed alongside organisation 
and management of activities. 
Active learning.
As well as the support that was provided to teachers through 
modelling, team teaching and briefing, the teachers in the senior classes (fifth and sixth) 
got involved in the activities in order to learn the activities and experience the activities 
from a child’s perspective; 
The teacher [fifth class teacher] this time got quite involved with the activity … 
she took the map, she went finding points herself, tried to orientate the map, 
tried to look for controls so she knew what the children were doing and she 

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played a very active role and interested in what the class were doing.
(FN 
08.03.07)
 
This type of active learning was not explicit in the PDP design but became an 
important part of the teachers’ learning. This practice echoed the practice of traditional 
in-service in some ways whereby the teacher became the child, although in this case the 
teachers worked alongside children in their own context rather than working with peers 
out of context. The teachers were not sure themselves how to do the activities, 
therefore, in order to be able to teach the activities they needed to try them out for 
themselves and ensure their own understanding. Three of the teachers kept notes 
through all the lessons I modelled for them and when I asked about this, thinking that 
maybe the lessons weren’t detailed enough, two teachers said they re-wrote things in 
their own words to clarify lesson content further and another teacher pointed out that; 
‘There were little things you said … that weren’t in the lesson notes that you would 
have done…I got ideas like that extra things that you would have done that weren’t in 
the notes’
(1 FGT Wilma SI). Future PDP designs should include opportunities for 
teachers to engage in the activities/lesson content and opportunities should also be 
provided for teachers to make notes and record any aspect of the lesson, which they felt 
was important to enable their teaching.