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

Theme
 
Teacher
 
Children
 
Field Notes
 
O&AA is 
inclusive
‘They are always talking 
and encouraging and 
there was no arguing 
which I often find I have 
problems with in teams 
or maybe it was just the 
dynamic of it and they go 
off together.’ (FGT
3
)
‘It was inclusive, 
everyone was included, 
that was the whole thing 
about it.’ (FGT
6
)
‘I think maybe some 
people would like 
orienteering more and they 
get more involved because 
everyone can do it at the 
same time rather than in 
team games sometimes 
people say oh you are 
really bad and they think 
they are no good and when 
they get the ball they won’t 
pass it to you or anything 
and …you might just be 
standing there for ages.’ 
(FGC
3
)
‘During the intervention 
from start to finish no 
child sat out of any 
lesson. I didn’t notice 
this until the Principal 
made the comment that 
he hadn’t seen a child 
sitting out – a sight he 
was used to prior to 
O&AA programme.’ 
(FN)
 
Maintaining rigour.
A clear audit trail of the data collection and analysis 
procedures included keeping a full record of all activities while carrying out the 
research, through the systematic recording of field notes each day, the safe storage of all 
raw data (including questionnaires, digital recordings and transcriptions) and details of 
all coding were logged in a coding journal within NVivo. The systematic coding of 
qualitative data using NVivo provided a clear audit trail of the analysis highlighted in 
appendices Ki-Kiv. Following focus group interviews, three of teachers were given 
transcribed copies of the focus group interviews and asked to reflect if they were a true 
and accurate account of the proceedings and none suggested changes in the information 
provided. Checks were used with teachers regularly throughout the interview process 
and lesson observations to ensure that the researcher’s perceptions of the teachers’ 
responses or actions were as the teachers intended. Throughout the study the researcher 
also attempted to consider alternative explanations for some of the responses made 
during interviews, for example, when one group of children felt they had too many 
O&AA lessons, it was in fact due to the number of weeks they seemed to be having the 
lessons. Although the class only experienced 6 lessons of O&AA they did so over a 
nine week period which included their mid-term break and a day where the class went 

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on a school outing, making it seem like they had the lessons much longer than some of 
the other classes.