Flipping research: A model for future-focused research making learning visible in health and physical education

Abstract

This paper reports on a future-focused model for practitioner-led inquiry (PLI) in secondary Health and Physical Education (HPE). As a future-focused model this paper draws the notion of the Flipped Classroom (Tucker, 2012), where teacher’s front end the development of their inquiry questions with the support of tertiary academics who review the literature and suggest appropriate methodology to support the teachers’ research, while simultaneously addressing the tension for teacher educators to conduct research as a significant output of academic work. The purpose of the study is to make student learning more visible to students, their families (whānau) and to make this learning as explicit to both of these groups as it was to their teachers. The paper describes concerns raised by teachers that students found it difficult to identify their learning in Health and Physical Education (HPE) and consequently the students could not recognise next steps for future learning. This concern became the focus of the inquiry approach in two large metropolitan city schools; a traditional subject specific HPE delivery school and a school with a future-focused integrated subject curriculum. The study used a collaborative action model where both students and their whānau were asked what students actually learn in HPE, how they learn and how they know they are learning? As co-researchers with teachers, the authors believe that if students and their whānau are able to recognise what they are learning and how they are learning it becomes a more realistic goal for them to jointly consider, where are the next steps in their learning are. This puts students more on the path to being self-regulating and lifelong learners. As the co- researchers we argue that by making the metacognitive process of learning visible in HPE contexts, beyond teachers to students and their whānau, the Vision of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, (MOE), 2007) of Twenty First Century (21C) learners as highly confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners, may be better actualised.