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

Resource Provision.
The teachers felt the PDP was effective because resources 
were provided, supporting the work of Faucette and colleagues (2002) and Keay and 
Spence (2010). The teachers found the lessons, schemes, resources and materials 
invaluable in supporting them to teach O&AA and went so far as to say they would 
appreciate similar support in the other strand areas. The provision of resources allowed 
teachers to concentrate on teaching the strand and the challenge of preparing the 
resources themselves with lack of knowledge and the pressures of increasing workloads 
was removed. This was not surprising considering that the Irish generalist classroom 
teacher teaches physical education as one of eleven subjects. The findings showed that 
teachers were encouraged and more confident to teach when they had the resources.
Once teachers were shown and supported in using the resources they began to adapt and 
change the activities to suit their requirements and children’s learning. The resources 
provided here allowed for context and were mediated according to the teachers’ learning 
needs therefore deskilling was avoided. An additional resource in the form of a DVD 
was suggested to support teachers as a reminder of activities from year to year. The 
storage and use of shared resources by a school staff was also found to be important.
Future professional development programme design must consider resource provision 
as without resources the likelihood of teachers considering teaching specific physical 
education strands will be reduced, but also sharing and storage of these resources by the 
whole school is necessary. This will not only ensure that resources are used, but it will 
help foster collaboration in the teaching of these new areas. 
Support.
Teachers were able to observe lessons modelled with their class in 
their school, making the support relevant to them. Support was always available, 
lessons were inclusive and child learning was observed. The provision of the support 
by an external ‘expert’ was an important influence in the success of the programme.
Another conclusion is that the teachers required further opportunities to learn 
more about O&AA and especially content knowledge relating to the technical aspects of 
this strand. Teachers also need to be provided with opportunities to develop their 
content knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge in the remaining strands of the 
physical education curriculum. In other words, professional development must be 

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sustained even if support is of a much lesser intensity. As can be seen by the changes in 
the knowledge and teaching practices of the teachers in this study, a ten hour PDP is 
necessary but not sufficient to allow teachers to develop and use this knowledge in more 
flexible ways. PDPs need to be funded to provide teachers with ongoing learning 
opportunities in physical education.