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

Field notes
. Throughout the study field notes were kept in the form of a 
digitally recorded journal. Each day observations, thoughts and reflections were 
recorded to provide a record of the process and allow the researcher time to reflect and 
return to these notes throughout the facilitation of the programme to inform subsequent 
facilitation. While many of these thoughts and opinions are of the researcher’s own 
interpretation they proved to be a useful secondary source of data and were invaluable 
in supporting and explaining the primary data collected. The data were analysed as 
outlined in chapter three and the findings reported here under the headings and themes 
identified. 
Participants
Twenty eight teachers (82% female) took part in the PDP at stage 1. The school 
staff had increased to 29 teachers at stage 2. Table 6.2 outlines the number of teachers 
who participated in both stages. Twenty teachers remained at the same class level
3
, 
thirteen teachers remained at the same class and three teachers moved to a new class 
level. There were 6 new teachers to the school. Five teachers were newly qualified 
teachers (NQTs) undertaking their Diploma and the sixth teacher was an experienced 
teacher who had never taught O&AA. Two of the NQTs had infant classes time-tabled 
for Gaelic Football during the PDP. Due to the time constraints imposed by the shorter 
teaching day for these children and the teachers completing their Diplomas these two 
teachers opted out of the study. The remaining three NQTs took part in the PDP. Two 
of the NQTs had been in the school on teaching practice during the initial PDP though 
they had not directly engaged in the research. The final NQT agreed to become a 
3
The Primary School Curriculum (Government of Ireland, 1999) divides the eight years of primary school into 4 
class levels as follows; junior and senior infants, first and second class, third and fourth class and fifth and sixth class. 

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participant in the study. Therefore 27 teachers (78% female) participated in the study at 
Stage 2. The teachers agreed at stage 2, to teach a programme of O&AA lessons 
(minimum of four lessons) during the month of October 2007, this would bring them to 
the mid-term break.
Table 6.2 Teachers participating at stage 1 and 2 of the study