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

Support by an External Expert through Modelling, Explaining and Feedback 
Impacted on Teachers’ Teaching
A variety of learning experiences
(Bransford, Derry, Berliner, Hammerness and 
Beckett, 2005) were provided for the teachers in the school, according to their own 
needs and requests. Participants’ learning is not an all-or-none phenomenon, in that one 
size does not fit all (Hustler, McNamara, Jarvis, Londra & Campbell, 2003). Adhering 
to the social constructivist approach, the support provided in this study was given in 
meaningful contexts in a supportive environment and by taking a learner centred 
approach the facilitator was able to focus on the teachers’ knowledge through feedback 

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and discussion thus overcoming the notion that constructivism is purely learning 
through hand-on experiences only. This became obvious as the PDP progressed, with 
the teachers partaking in the PDP divided over time, by the researcher, into three 
groups: 
i)
those requiring maximum support in the form of modelling and 
continuing to require support in the form of modelling sections of 
lessons at stage 2 of the PDP 
ii)
those teachers who required decreasing support following the first 
modelled lesson and continued to teach at stage 2 with minimal 
support generally in the form of pre lesson explanations 
iii)
those teachers who required minimal support and once they had the 
resources and explanations at stage 1 proceeded to teach themselves at 
stage 1 and continued to do so through stage 2, with support in the 
form of affirmation and feedback on their teaching.
Professional development to date, in Ireland, had focussed on explanations and 
resources given to teachers at workshops (such as those provided through summer 
courses facilitated by Teacher Education Centres or the INTO), with little support once 
the workshop concluded. The majority of teachers in the school were in groups i) or ii) 
requiring much more than what was being provided. This mis-match between teacher 
need and resource provision by the Department of Education and Skills resulted in not 
one single teacher having taught a lesson with only the resources provided. All of the 
teachers required the support of the facilitator to some extent. This is akin to a stages of 
change model, whereby change for teachers is not ‘a one shot knowledge transfer 
model’ (Conway, 2009), but depends on teachers’ skills, abilities and interest at any one