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

Conclusions
This research highlighted how a professional development programme, through 
personalised, sustained, contextualised support, impacted on teachers learning, which 
helped them feel confident and motivated them to teach O&AA. The findings explored 
the impact of the PDP on teachers’ content and pedagogical content knowledge and on 
children’s learning. The complexity of designing a flexible and contextualised PDP of 
this nature was also discussed. Although there were many positive impacts, the PDP 
was not conclusive and future research needs were identified and discussed. Six 
conclusions were arrived at following this study. These are: i) understand the school 
context, ii) the importance of resource provision as a starting point for teachers learning, 
iii) the individualised nature of support required by teachers, iv) subject knowledge as a 
precursor to pedagogical content knowledge v) the teacher as collaborator and vi) the 
value of physical education in schools. 
Understanding the school context.
In Ireland, many current primary school 
teachers have experienced a lack of appropriate physical education exposure and 
professional development throughout the education learning continuum. This spans 
from when they were pupils themselves (learning by observation), though Initial 
Teacher Education and into career lifelong learning. In the context of the study school, 
this lack of exposure and professional development in physical education materialised 
as the pupils receiving an overexposure to the ‘games’ strand, rather than the full 
physical education curriculum. Hence, the PDP focussed its attention on one strand –
outdoor and adventure activities - rather than the whole physical education curriculum.
This focus on depth, rather than breath, gave teachers the time to cover content, 
pedagogical content and to understand and apply what the PDP was covering. It was 
different to their normal exposure to physical education professional development, but 
ultimately it led to a more successful outcome for these teachers, with the majority 

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actually changing their teaching practice. In future, PDPs must consider the school 
context, understand what teachers have been exposed to previously, know what their 
current practices are and from this knowledge develop a realistic programme.