Physical education initial teacher educators' expressions of critical pedagogy(ies): Coherency, complexity or confusion?

Abstract

While an emphasis on social justice has emerged as a theme in initial teacher education (ITE) over the past decade, there is much debate about how to engage ITE students in foregrounding issues of equity and social justice in their own teaching. One strategy, the introduction of critical pedagogy in ITE, has been promoted in teacher education literature since the early 1970s. In subsequent decades it has become apparent that there is a lack of consensus on what critical pedagogy is, and what it means to teach from a critical perspective. Drawing on the ‘big tent’ of critical pedagogies, the purpose of this paper is to focus attention on the evolution and/or devolution of critical pedagogy in physical education initial teacher education (PETE). This paper reports on findings from a research project that explored how six health and physical education teacher educators (PETEs), who teach in a single PETE programme that is underpinned by a critical orientation, understand and enact critical pedagogy. Data were collected through 60-minute semi-structured interviews. A six-step process of inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. This study suggests there is a commitment to social justice from all six of the PETEs. It is evident, however, that there are differences in their understanding of critical pedagogy. These differences reveal each teacher educator’s own valued theoretical perspectives, and manifest themselves in teaching practices in the PETE programme.