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

Human and Physical Resource Provision Played a Strong Role in the Adoption of 
the Professional Development Programme by the Teachers
Following a needs assessment as described in chapter 4 ‘Understanding the 
Case’, teachers revealed a complete lack of content knowledge of the outdoor and 
adventure activities strand. This meant that the PDP had to begin by building content 
knowledge as teachers require appropriate content knowledge if they are to teach 
effectively (Borko, 2004; Romar, 1995; Werner & Rink, 1989). Without this basic 
content knowledge teachers would not be equipped to identify learning intentions, share 
success criteria, develop questions, provide feedback, differentiate or assess their pupils, 
all of which are vital in providing a quality physical education experience for the 
children (Graham, 2008; NCCA, 2010; Pickup & Price, 2007). It became clear that 
physical resources were necessary to provide concrete organisational steps. This gave 
teachers confidence and knowledge and slowly they began to adapt as their confidence 
grew, concurring with the findings of Maldonado (2002) and Garet and colleagues 
(2001). The resources also helped the teachers overcome the barriers of high workload 
and lack of knowledge as to what resources to design or produce. This is supported by 
the work of Duffy (1993) who found that although teachers initially asked for 
prescriptive lessons, over time they showed progress from modelling these prescribed 
practices to revising strategies and to inventing new strategies.
The Department of Education and Skills use a ‘resource model’ through the 
provision of the PSSI resource materials for physical education, to meet primary school 
teachers’ need for continuing professional development in physical education. This 
research has demonstrated that even though the teachers had access to the PSSI O&AA 
lesson plans prior to the PDP, they chose not to teach the strand. They could not 
interpret the lesson plans nor did they have the practical resources to support the 
lessons. The danger is that this approach – resource provision – may deskill teachers 
(Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992; Petrie, 2009) as they may use the resources provided as 
prescriptive lessons. Murphy (2007), studied teachers following national in-service, and 
found that while they had gained a basic understanding of the key elements of O&AA, 
the main obstacle was the creation of resources for implementation within their own 
school context rather than any difficulty with the implementation of the strand itself. In 
summary, prescribed practices may provide a starting point for the learning of new 
knowledge and the development of new ideas for many teachers trying to meet the 
needs of their pupils. However, lesson plans on their own, especially for O&AA may 

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not be contextually relevant and if teachers do not have the subject content knowledge, 
they are unable to understand, implement or adapt the content to their context. Without 
lesson plan interpretation ideally through modelling in their own schools, the likelihood 
of teachers changing practice and adopting a new physical education strand, like O&AA 
is diminished. 
The need for an electronic resource, such as web based video tutorials, which 
would provide a real life reminder of how each of the O&AA activities in their school 
was organised, was expressed. However, Bransford and colleagues (2005) found that 
when such resources were shown to teachers, ‘many features in the videos … obvious to 
experts … go unnoticed by novices unless the features are pointed out and discussed’ 
(p. 42). This may be addressed by using the video resources with some level of expert 
support in a sustained professional development situation, such as a competent teacher 
within the school leading a discussion on the content prior to the teachers embarking on 
the strand unit each year. Ensuring lessons, or even aspects of lessons were recorded 
would add to the expense and time required for the PDP. Provision of such a resource, 
may undermine teachers’ requirement to become self-sufficient and may even negate 
the need for collegiality and collaboration in the school. Therefore, caution in providing 
this type of support is warranted as this may not work with teachers who are not 
familiar with the content or who haven’t undertaken stage 1 or 2 of the PDP. Web-
based video tutorials also take the form of modelling, however it is assumed that the 
content is facilitated away from the school context and teachers have to be able to adapt 
the content to their own environment and so violates the active learning criteria which is 
a key feature of the PDP for this study. Further research would be required to explore 
the use and effect of such resources on teachers learning and changes on practice.