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

How it impacted on my practice
This research necessitated spending a year overall in a primary school observing 
and developing an evidence base for future work with pre-service and in-service 
primary school teachers. It highlighted the complex world in which primary generalist 
teachers work and also the complexities of professional development provision for these 
teachers experienced beyond physical education. This experience and the many related 
experiences that this study exposed to me, has impacted on my professional 
development and provided examples and evidence which I can draw from with the 
students who I teach. This research has caused me to question how I design and deliver 
pre-service and in-service courses to ensure that the needs of students are met, 
contextualised in the demanding structures within which they will, and do, teach. It is 
important that pre-service teachers have an opportunity to gain content knowledge but 
how this content knowledge can be mediated in order for teachers to be able to adapt 
and utilise it, in the multiple school settings apparent in the Irish primary school system, 

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is challenging. I sometimes question how much of what is covered in courses at 
undergraduate level is absorbed by students as they too battle with increasing demands 
of coursework, exposure to many new subjects, methodologies and even the demands of 
living away from home. Due to this research and the many other pieces of research that 
informed this study my practice with pre-service students has and continues to change.
I ensure that instead of students playing the child role and me the teacher role in the 
practical elements of the course, that students have an opportunity to experience both 
roles and that each session ends with a reflection on the content or a discussion as to 
how the content covered may be utilised, adapted and assessed within a lesson, so that 
they aware of some of the complexities which may face them outside the ‘ideal world’ 
of the college gym. I try to encourage students to reflect on what they have experienced 
in the session and provide video clips of children and whole classes learning in physical 
education to re-enforce these messages and their learning. These video clips have been 
an invaluable addition to the programmes and give students a better insight into what it 
might be like to implement what they have just experienced in their class, in a school 
context.