Building the profession within Physical Education teacher education: processes, challenges, and dynamics between school and university ^{1 2 3}

Abstract

Teacher education, as an historical social practice, has undergone multiple transformations, namely the adaptation to the Bologna process. In Portugal, the most visible change in teacher education programs was the fragmentation of five-year integrated program into two disconnected cycles, with the compacting of pedagogical, didactic, and early field experiences. Looking to go beyond a critical reflection, we intended to present arguments about how teacher education programs can be drawn for the challenges that Physical Education will be called upon to answer. The arguments are based on the knowledge and experience from research projects in the scope of the school placement in Physical Education, which aimed to embed initial teacher education in a collaborative dynamic between the university and the school, and contribute to the construction of the professional identities of learners and mentors.

Keywords Initial Teacher Education; Professional Socialization; Physical Education; School Placement

Resumo

A formação de professores enquanto prática social histórica tem sido alvo de múltiplas transformações, nomeadamente a resultante da adaptação do quadro normativo ao processo de Bolonha. Em Portugal, a alteração mais visível nos currículos de formação de professores traduziu-se na fragmentação da formação integrada de cinco anos em dois ciclos desconexos, com a compressão das componentes pedagógicas, didáticas e de iniciação à prática de ensino. Procurando ir além de uma reflexão crítica, pretende-se apresentar argumentos acerca do modo como podem ser desenhados os programas de formação dos professores para os desafios que a educação física será chamada a responder. Os argumentos sustentam-se no conhecimento e experiência extraída dos projetos de investigação no âmbito do estágio profissional em Educação Física que visaram incrustar a formação dos estagiários numa dinâmica colaborativa entre a universidade e a escola e contribuir para a construção das identidades profissionais de formandos e formadores.

Palavras-chave Formação Inicial; Socialização Profissional; Educação Física; Estágio Profissional

Introduction

For the last decades, teacher education has been transforming from more coherent and integrated structures to more compressed and fragmented ones (Batista, 2014). Despite these transformations, in the curriculum context, school placement continues to be considered a preparation space per excellence (Chepaytor-Thomson & Liu, 2003), with permanent challenges (Kemmis, Heikkinen, Fransson, Aspfors, & Edwards-Groves, 2014). It is during the school placement that the students get in contact with the real teaching context, experiencing the multiple roles of the teacher, understanding, and assimilating the professional culture of the school. The conceptual change aiming to place learners as an active element of their learning, contrasting with processes centered in the teacher (Birkeland & Feiman-Nemser, 2012), demands to teacher education institutions to configure school placement experiences that allow pre-service teachers to acquire the requirements of professional competence and a sense of belonging to the profession, so that they can build a consistent and emancipatory professional identity (Batista, 2014; Graça, Batista & Queirós, 2016). That is, there is an idealization of the pre-service teacher as a questioning professional aiming self-awareness (Feiman-Nemser, 2012), a professional that is able to learn how to self-manage his/her learning. To develop this professional awareness, the organizational and analytical strategies of the initial teacher education programs focus on the reciprocal interconnection of three contexts: (i) the educational system (local and broader); (ii) the school and the classes; and (iii) the personal and professional involvement (Lange & Lange-Burroughs, 2018, p. 5).

Besides the concerns related to the professional socialization, teacher education institutions need to invest in the improvement of professional practices, which, in the area of Physical Education, have been marked by technological and academic orientations (Feiman-Nemser, 1990, 2001), that invariably neglect the development of autonomy and the critical sense of the future teacher.

On the other hand, schools Physical Education (PE) maintains practices under “pedagogistic” and “biologistic” perspectives (Crum, 1993) that reduce the class to a space of recreation or an inconsequential fitness training, neglecting the focus on learning (Batista & Pereira, 2014). The need to try new ways, able to attract and stimulate the will and the energy osdsf students and teachers, in an effort to collectively build the experience of sport-motor learning, that are rich and culturally meaningful (Azzarito & Ennis, 2003) is something that cannot be ignored by the initial teacher education.

Faced by this scenario, this reflection begins with the exploration of teacher education spaces, and follows with reporting some possible elements that can contribute to the debate around issues of teacher education, and the conceptions and practices of PE. The reflection is based on research data from a group of Faculdade de Desporto da Universidade do Porto (FADEUP) sport pedagogy teacher educators in the scope of the school placement in PE.

Teacher education spaces

The current Portuguese legislation assigns exclusively to the universities the responsibilities for the initial teacher education and the establishment of a network of cooperating schools to develop the activities to initiate the professional practice, including the supervised teaching practice. The reality in the United States and England is completely different. In the United States, the university, which had almost the monopoly of initial teacher education between the 1960s and 1970s, has been losing space for alternative ways of training and certification university teacher education programs are currently criticized by proponents of the deregulation of the initial teacher education and the de-professionalization of the teaching role. These powers, guided by neoliberalism, have been benefiting from the direct and indirect support of public policies on education and the teacher training programs implemented by the last federal administrations and several state governments (Cochran-Smith, Piazza, & Power, 2013; Grossman, 2008; Zeichner, 2013).

Similarly, in England, since Margaret Thatcher, a global movement that has been removing the space and the autonomy of universities in delivering teacher education programs is under development, though with different scripts and political orientations. This takes place through the promotion of alternative ways of pre-service training, the governmental prescription of the content of training courses, the imposition of a minimum quota of two thirds of the training in the schools, and the reduction of school placements allocated for university teacher education programs. This movement especially acts through the creation of control and evaluation agencies for the training programs and schools, such as the Teacher Training Agency and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) (Furlong, 2013; Kosnik, Beck, & Goodwin, 2016).

Kosnik et al. (2016) list a series of reasons evoked by the critics of university teacher education to justify the remodeling of pre-service training programs, namely the excessively theoretical and abstract format of the courses; the lack of attention to subject; the lack of connection between the academic component of the program and the teaching practice in schools; and the lack of preparation of faculty to work with pre-service teachers.

Though the criticisms cannot be disregarded or ignored, the motivations and intentions underlying the different critiques on university teacher education are far from having in their horizon the improvement of the quality of teachers training or the increase of their professional status. As stated by Kosnik et al. (2016, p. 123): “We believe that critical assessment of the various [reform] initiatives is in order; indeed, in some countries so called ‘reforms’ are doing a great deal of harm to teacher education and need to be opposed”. In fact, the most common criticism is that the university has failed in preparing teachers in terms of knowledge, competences, and dispositions necessary to teach. The critics point out as a solution “the creation of short duration ‘boot camps’ that cannot hope to provide opportunities for developing this knowledge base” (Tatto, 2007, p. 14).

These alternative routes, focused on a practicist mode, deflate the importance of the theoretical base of education and teaching, reducing the theoretical education to a little more than a manual of formulas, precepts, and techniques stamped with a label of proven effectiveness.

“Using photos from schools, easy to-read bulleted material, and highlighted sidebars that provide definitions of key terms and separate the ‘myths’ from the ‘realities’ of NCLB [No Child Left Behind], the Toolkit lays out NCLB’s four common-sense pillars for fixing the schools. One of the major pillars of NCLB – second only to accountability for results – is the use of educational programs and techniques that have been clearly demonstrated to be effective on the basis of SBR [Science Based Research]”.

(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2006, p. 673)

In the troubled scenario of initial teacher education in the United States, Zeichner, Payne and Brayko (2014), recognizing the risk of an exaggerated simplification, identified three competing positions: (i) the still majority, though weakened position of university supporters; (ii) the field of reformers, in favor of deregulation, competition, and market orientation; (iii) the field of transformers, opposed to deregulation and market focus, but who advocate substantial transformations in the traditional university system.

To analyze teacher education in Portugal, we were particularly interested in the arguments under debate between the defenders and the transformers of the university teacher education system. Zeichner et al. (2014) place the epistemological issues of teacher education in the center of the debate. According to the authors, the concerns have been focused on the knowledge and competences that have to be acquired in the initial teacher education, how they should be acquired, and who should be admitted in the teacher education programs, but have neglected “the issue of whose knowledge counts in the education of teachers” (p. 123)

To Tatto (2007), the image of the ideal teacher is projected around the following questions: “(i) who should be taught to teach?; (ii) what should be taught to teachers?; (iii) how do teachers learn to teach?; (iv) how should teacher education be organized?; and (v) what is the representative school for teacher education and how does it shape the opportunities to learn teachers have? (pp.15-16)

To answer these questions, the university-based programs struggle with a long time diagnosed difficulty – however always insufficient or poorly dealt both in the theoretical and practical frames – that centered in the relation theory-practice. Understanding that the university is not self-sufficient in teacher education and there needs to be an active collaboration with the school is a step, though modest, towards an epistemology for a teacher education that respects the interaction among school teachers, the university, and the respective communities of knowledge. As stated by Zeichner et al. (2014):

“Even in the current era of school-university partnerships, partner and professional development schools, colleges, and universities continue to maintain hegemony over the construction and dissemination of knowledge for teaching in teacher education … and schools remain in the position of ‘practice fields’ where candidates are to try out the practices provided to them by the university…”. (p. 123)

We can see in the words above the need for an essential change in the relation between university and school. To make this relation more dialogic and democratic, we have to assume that the school cannot be reduced purely to a space to apply the knowledge produced, certified, and taught in the university; or that the knowledge that makes teaching into a profession is restricted to the one established by authorities external to the profession (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999). In tune with this perspective, António Nóvoa (2012) published an article with a suggestive title – “Devolver a formação de professores aos professores” (Return teacher education to teachers). Four arguments sign a way to transform the initial teacher education, the author proposes to: (i) understand teacher education from “within’ the profession, its practices and identities; (ii) value teachers’ professional knowledge, i.e., teachers’ knowledge on their own profession; (iii) adopt new ways to organize the field of teacher education, creating an institution that gathers teacher education, research, and teacher practice, and (iv) promote a public space of education, that is, a space of debates and deliberation that reinforces the presence of teachers in society.

Conceptualizing teacher education from within the profession does not mean, for this author, to disconnect the university of teacher education, but, on the contrary, it aims for a closer and more committed relationship, more situated and shared with the education and professional problems. To undo any misconceptions, Nóvoa (2012) clarifies:

I do not advocate any “practicist design”, so dear to the conservatives, who try to define teaching as a purely technical activity. I do defend that our theoretical proposals only make sense when built within the profession, if they contemplate the needs of an actuating teacher in the classroom space, if they are appropriate from the reflection of teachers on their own work. (pp. 14-15)

The proposal to value teachers’ professional knowledge necessarily summons up the discussion on the establishment of professional knowledge. The perspective of the teacher as an education technician presupposes the existence of a teaching knowledge base that should be acquired to be enacted. The perspective of the teacher as an artist values the practical, experiential, reflexive dimension of education; it is supported by the idea that a good teaching “can be coached and learned (but not taught) through reflective supervision or through a process of coaching reflective teaching” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 269); it opposes the logic of practical rationality (knowledge-in-action, reflection-in-action, and the reflection-on-action) to the technical rationality (Schön, 1983). In the perspective of the teacher as an agent of change (of the school and the society), the knowledge of the practice is not presented as something pre-established, but as an object (problem) of critical inquiry of the practice. According to Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999), the perspective of critical rationality, inquiry as stance, is based on an enriched conception of knowledge, not confined to the theory-practice dichotomy; a conception enriched of teacher practice, professional learning along the career, community cultures, and purposes of education.

“Learning by engaging in systematic and intentional inquiry about practice … entails collaboratively reconsidering what is taken for granted, challenging school and classroom structures, deliberating about what it means to know and what is regarded as expert knowledge, rethinking educational categories, constructing and reconstructing interpretive frameworks, and attempting to uncover the values and interests served and not served by the arrangements of schooling”.

(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 279)

Nóvoa (2012, 2017) and Zeichner et al. (2014) advocate for the creation of a hybrid space in teacher education aiming to reconfigure the relation between school and university, to overcome the formal or implicit hierarchies of the agents, and the dichotomy of types of knowledge. The collaborative work in these terms will allow participants to perceive new goals and practices in a common “boundary zone” space, optimized by a relational agency, which Edwards (2011) defines as the capacity to work with others with the deliberate aim to find more robust and clear answer to complex problems.

The advantage of a relational agency is not only additive, of bringing to the table different points of view on the same problem or situation, expanding the “object of the activity”, it is also generative, as it allows new interpretations and kindles an alignment of positions and stances of the different parts involved. Faced by these challenges and aiming to educate teachers able integrate and contribute to the renovation of their profession, a research group in the area of Sport Pedagogy at FADEUP has been developing, for the last decade, several studies structured in a dialogical base between the teacher education spaces (school and university). It focuses on the issues of competence and professional identity, of convergence and collaboration between universities and school, and of interventions in PE.

Reconfiguring pre-service teacher education in PE: research contribution

Among all the studies of the research group, we highlight those more significant to the topic. On table 1 we present the master’s dissertations, PhD theses, research projects funded, and awards. These works resulted in a great number of publications – books, book chapters, and peer reviewed articles.

Table 1
Master’s dissertations, PhD theses, and research projects funded on teacher training

Dissertations/Theses
	PhD theses Batista, Paula (2008). Discursos sobre a competência: contributo para a (re)configuração de um conceito de competência aplicável ao pedagogo do desporto. Advisors: Zélia Matos, Amândio Graça Costa, Marta (2012). Análise do pensamento supervisivo nos contextos das propostas de práticas pedagógicas supervisionadas em educação física nas instituições portuguesas de formação inicial. Advisors: Amândio Graça, Paula Batista Cardoso, Inês (2014). A (re)construção da identidade profissional do estágio de educação física em comunidade de prática. Advisors: Amândio Graça, Paula Batista Silva, Teresa (2015). Funções, papéis e desenvolvimento profissional do professor cooperante no contexto da formação inicial em ensino da Educação Física. Advisors: Amândio Graça, Paula Batista Cunha, Mariana (2017). A (re)construção da identidade profissional em contexto de estágio no ensino de Educação Física: uma análise situacional de discursos e narrativas. Advisors: Amândio Graça, Paula Batista
	Master’s studies Silva, Teresa (2009). Elementos para a Compreensão do processo de reflexão em situação de estágio pedagógico: estudo de caso de um estudante-estagiário de Educação Física. Advisors: Zélia Matos, Paula Batista Machado, Manuela (2010). Compreensão e interpretação da reflexão na formação de professores: estudo em professores cooperantes da faculdade de desporto da Universidade do Porto. Advisors: Zélia Matos, Paula Batista Silveira, Gonçalo (2011). Contributos para a compreensão da identidade profissional do professor cooperante no contexto do estágio profissional em Educação Física. Advisors: Ana Luisa Pereira, Paula Batista Barros, Irene (2011). Contributo para a compreensão do processo de (re)construção da identidade profissional no contexto da formação inicial: estudo em estudantes estagiários de Educação Física. Advisors: Paula Batista, Ana Luisa Pereira
Research projects funded
	Main researcher: Paula Batista; Project team: Amândio Graça, Paula Queirós The role of the practicum in the (re)construction of the professional identity in the context of Physical Education. Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, 2009-2015 (PTDC/DES/115922/2009). Responsible researcher: Paula Batista; Project team: Ana Luisa Pereira O papel do estágio profissonal na (re)construção da Identidade Profissional no contexto da Educação Física: estudo num núcleo de estágio na Fadeup. Universidade do Porto, 2010-2011 (PP-IJUP2010- 83) Responsible researcher: Paula Batista; Project team: Tiago Sousa Adaptação e validação de um questionário para português: perceções dos estudantes-estagiários acerca do processo formativo vivenciado em contexto de estágio e do seu contributo para a vida profissional. Universidade do Porto, 2012-2013 (PP-IJUP2011- 69) Projects of pedagogical innovation: Distinction award. Team: Paula Batista and Luísa Estriga A construção do conhecimento profissional em contexto de estágio por recursos a metodologias ativas de aprendizagem e de autocopia. Projeto de Inovação Pedagógica. Universidade do Porto, 2017

The above quoted dissertations and theses started in 2008 within the scope of funded research projects were focused on the issues of competence, professional identity (PI), and teacher education programs. Their conclusions highlight the need to reconfigure some practices of curriculum development in the context of teacher education. The imperative of building competences and PI has emerged as a central precept to the success of teacher education programs. In fact, the issues on “learning to be a teacher” go beyond only learning “how to teach”; it is about learning “who am I as a teacher” (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Meijer, Graaf, & Meirink, 2011), implying relational and emotional elements, as well as c beliefs, identity, and mission (Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005).

The development of teaching knowledge and competences is only a part of the process of becoming a teacher. Another part, not less important, is personal and transformative in nature (Meijer et al., 2011). During their learning process, the undergraduate students, future teachers, transform themselves personally and professionally, and the amalgamation of these two dimensions will allow them to build and rebuild their identity as teachers (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004). Thus, it is key to recognize that becoming a teachers is a highly emotional journey (Zembylas, 2003) and that the construction of teachers’ PI takes place in schools, a result of the involvement in their social practices, the incorporation of a specific routines and language, the acquisition of technical skills, and the development of a sense of belonging (Williams, 2010).

In this pathway, based on the words of Stenhouse (1984) “it is not enough that teachers’ work should be studied: they need to study it themselves” (p. 143), while structuring and developing the inquiry pathway we considered the epistemological questions of teacher education of Zeichner et al. (2014) and those related to the ideal teacher of Tatto (2007). Thus, we have tried to question the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’, giving voice to the participants in their different roles (professionals, mentors, and pre-service teachers), attempting to establish the knowledge that matters in teacher education.

We now present a systematization of the themes of out studies focusing the horizon of teacher education, highlighting ‘how one learns to be someone who teaches’.

Competence and identity: connections and relevance on teacher education

Different guidelines of competence coexist with distinct focuses: (i) behaviorist, focused on the efficiency of observable behaviors (Wiemann & Blacklund, 1980); (ii) functionalist, focused on tasks and functions to perform (Mansfield & Mitchell, 1996); (iii) a personalist, centered on workers’ personal characteristics (Spencer & Spencer, 1993); (iv) interpretivist, which integrates personal, behavioral, and functional components(e.g.: Cheetham & Chivers, 1998; Hager & Gonzi, 1996; Parry, 1996; Spitzberg, 1983); and (v) structuralist, based on a dynamic process of continuous (re) construction of daily practices and in which individuals have to learn how to produce their own resources (Hong & Stähle, 2005).

Govaerts (2008), based on Albanese, Mejicano, Mullan, Kokotailo e Gruppen (2008), presents an informative systematization of the concept of competence, which, besides being integrative, recognizes the situation and the impossibility to be seen as a just a result of a behavior in a certain task:

“Competency is the (individual) ability to make deliberate choices from a repertoire of behaviours for handling situations and tasks in specific contexts of professional practice, by using and integrating knowledge, skills, judgement, attitudes and personal values, in accordance with professional role and responsibilities. Competency is to be inferred from task behaviour, outcomes and the justification of choices that have been made, as well as from reflection on performance and performance effects”.

(Govaerts, 2008, p. 235)

It is clear that competence goes largely beyond generalizable knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These elements or competence dimensions are only meaningful through reflection, a deep understanding, and the committed engagement on the tasks of the professional practice (in situation). In other words, to know is not enough to be able to do, nor doing is enough to learn. Competence is situational, it requires experience and reflection in and about the professional practice, and its development happens in a continuum (Batista, 2008; Batista et al., 2012).

Similarly to the construct of competence, the concept of identity is covered by different meanings, including designated identities, which result from expectations and beliefs on what we are or what we should be (Sfard & Prusak, 2005); a sense of self (Helms, 1998); a dynamic discursive process (Enyedy, Goldberg, & Welsh, 2006); the relationships lived within a community of practice (Lave & Wenge, 1991); self-understanding marked by a strong emotional component (Holland, Lachicotte Junior, Skinner, & Cain, 1998); to be recognized by oneself and others, as a certain “type of person” (Gee, 2005). Despite this diversity of meanings, it is a consensus that the identity is not a fixed attribute of a person, but a relational phenomenon, dynamic by nature. The identities are relational and multiple, based in the recognition by other social actors and differentiation, having social interaction a crucial role in this process (Mendes, 2001, p. 490).

It is clear that the identity is built and rebuilt in and through the experience in interaction; in and through the discourse in specific historic and institutional places, in specific practical-discursive formations and precise enunciative strategies (Mendes, 2001). In our understanding, identity is built of interpretations and narratives of experiences (Luehmann, 2007). In the words of Wenger (1998), “the experience of identity in practice is a way of being in the world” (p. 15). As systematized by Akkerman and Meijer (2011), identity is constructed in a dialectic unit of opposites, comprehending a dialogic process “of as both unitary and multiple, both continuous and discontinuous, and both individual and social” (p. 308) . This process reinforces what has been said on the dynamic nature of identity, which is not confined to a fixed and stable property, as it alters itself with time and context (Cardoso, Batista, & Graça, 2016).

According to what was written above, it is clear that the constructs of competence and identity share similar points, starting by its dynamic, relational, and situational nature. Another intersection point is that both are concepts applied to the professional field. In our understanding, their coexistence makes sense in the teacher education field. In fact, to equip pre-service teachers, future professionals, with the requirements of competence cannot be completely fulfilled if disconnected from the identity question, ignoring the way they give meaning to their own practices (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). We strongly believe that without a real immersion of preservice teachers in the professional culture their education will hardly be completed. Thus, a central concern in the teacher education institutions is to create conditions for pre-service teachers to reach real teaching spaces, in a logic of collaborative work with schools (Batista, 2012, 2014), recognizing the situational and emotional nature of building teachers’ PI (Bloomfield, 2010) and professional competence (Batista, 2012, 2014). Nóvoa (2017) proposes the creation of a new space, a hybrid space, in a cross-border area between universities and schools, to undertake the imperative of professionalization.

School placement architecture aiming to build professional identity

We consider school placement as a privileged space to build PI, here understood in the terms of Beijard et al. (2004), as (i) multifaceted and dynamic in nature; (ii) an ongoing process, in constant transformation; (iii) involving both person and the context; (iv) implying sub-identities that need to harmonize; and (v) comprehending agency, as long as teacher follow their principles, answering to the type of teachers they intend to be. We add to this perspective the notion that the emotional component marks indelibly the ‘learning to be a teacher’ (Zembylas, 2003).

To establish a space for the configuration and reconfiguration of professional identities, the immersion in the professional culture of school needs to be progressive and reflected (Batista, Pereira & Graça, 2012). So, only the convergence and the inter-institutional collaboration allow the conductive field for pre-service teachers to build their PI on a consistent base (Batista & Borges, 2015). The university must value and create the conditions for teacher educators to completely fulfill their role, frequently hindered by the lack of pedagogical criteria for faculty assignment, the undersized time frame allocated for the work with pre-service teachers and the cooperating school teachers, or the excessive number of pre-service teachers to supervise, preventing a close and personalized follow-up of the pre-service teachers, as well as a closer and more collaborative relationship with the school staff. The harmony, proximity, regularity, and complementarity among between the leading elements (school and university) are key to teacher education, and this collaboration must be effective and broad. It is important that the voices of the school practitioners and university researchers can converge towards the improvement of the pedagogical practices of pre-service teachers, and even students’ learning in PE.

The cooperating schools, as spaces of professional socialization, are crucial in the processes of building pre-service teachers’ PI. The way school welcomes pre-service teachers influences (positively or negatively) their integration to the school life and, consequently, the way they learn to be teachers. Therefore, schools cannot simply be spaces to receive pre-service teachers with reduced and unauthentic accessibility to the set of areas and tasks that make up the spectrum of teachers’ functions and roles, thus denying them the true experience of what it is to be a teacher (Batista, 2014). An experience relegated to the periphery of the school daily life (McLaren, 1994), with neither opportunities for participative centrality nor incentive of autonomous decision making, will compromise the process of building PI.

In the case of PE, pre-service teachers consider that their school PE teacher and their specific spaces are relevant elements and distinctive from the other school teachers sometimes for the support and expertise they provide, others by the sense of security and well-being they cultivate, especially when they make them feel recognized as future colleagues (Alves, MacPhail, Queirós, & Batista, 2018) and can share their concerns and successes (Alves, Queirós & Batista, 2014). Still, the construction of PI cannot be circumscribed to a content area. It is important that the school in general assumes a formative mission, coupled with the active role of the cooperating teachers to provide environments and experiences of socialization in the different facets of the profession.

In this sense, the practices of school placement mentoring need to go much beyond the instrumental support (monitoring classes, assisting planning tasks, managing and organizing the instructional process, providing pedagogical feedback), or emotional support and personal counseling (i.e. collaborating and sharing ideas, stimulating reflection, helping in dealing with personal problems)(Silva, Batista & Graça, 2017). A mentoring focused on self-development (Kemmis et al., 2014) requires that mentors help pre-service teachers to be members of a professional community, in which all participate as peers in a professional dialogue aiming the individual and collective self-development. In this type of mentoring the participants are involved in an environment of co-learning, of dialogic interaction, materialized in an investigative attitude of the practice, and centered in the search for solution for real problems. Everyone works as a co-author in the practice, which engenders mutual professional development through the reflection and the conceptual grounding of the options adopted and the respective consequences. This atmosphere personifies the concept of community of practice⁴, as a space of sharing and reflection, of relational agency, as a fertile terrain to build PI, and the gradual learning, but intrinsically assumed, of expectations, limits, values, principles, and values of being a teacher.

A favorable atmosphere demands “power relations between future teachers and supervisors to be more diluted, allowing them to build new knowledge together, committed with the educational quality, and the renovation of professional practices, without, however, dismissing their individuality” (Alves, Queirós & Batista, 2017, p. 177).

Pathways to teach Physical Education

PE in Portugal, in a recent past, has gone through policies of devaluation that are now being altered due to the intervention of professional associations⁵. During this period of marginalization of the school subject area, the professionals recognized the need to find new pathways and renew their practices and discourses to capture the interest and involvement of the students, as well as the respect and recognition of their peers and the community (Graça & Batista, 2013). Together with this professional mobilization, the teacher education institutions recognized that one of the problems of PE, well-described by Azzarito and Ennis (2003), is that the curriculum development of PE persisted with outdated formulas and merely survival strategies, therefore, there is the need to try new pathways, able to attract and incite the will and the energy of students and teachers, in an effort to build together enriching and culturally meaningful learning experiences.

Actually, if we want students to recognize the value of PE and find satisfaction in the classes, there needs to be an improvement in the quality of the teaching and learning processes (Hardman, 2015), namely through the use of different teaching models that can be used to support the transformation of PE discourses and practices, and the reconfiguration of the roles, responsibilities, and relationships between and among its actors (Batista, & Queirós, 2015). Faced by this scenario, it is important that the concepts, as identified by Bart Crum (1993) – whose ideals are, respectively, biological (education of the physical) and pedagogical (education through the physical), that result in a process oriented towards either physical fitness or entertainment and disciplinary control –, give way for practices mainly focused on very teaching and learning (Graça, 2012). This transformation on the PE discourses and the practices, as well as the reconfiguration of roles, responsibilities, and the relation between and among actors, can be supported by the use of learner-centered models such as sports education (Siedentop, Hastie, & Mars, 2011), cooperative learning (Dyson & Casey, 2012), sport for peace (Ennis et al., 1999) , and personal and social responsibility (Hellison, 1996).

Among the contributions for this renovation process, we can highlight those emerged from the pedagogy of the student voice (Fielding & Rudduck, 2002; Mitra & Gross, 2009; Rudduck & Flutter, 2004). Robinson and Taylor (2007) highlight four principles that should guide the pedagogy of student voice: (i) the concept of communication as dialogue; (ii) the assumptions of participation and democratic inclusion; (iii) the recognition that power relations are unequal and problematic; and (iv) the possibility of change and transformation. Voice, dialogue, and joint action open new possibilities to PE and present teachers and students new challenges while learning from one another. Answering to Lincoln (1995): “Teachers who help students find students voice, will discover that their own voices are clearer and stronger in the process” (p. 93) –these challenges need to be expanded to teacher education, aiming to renovate ideas and practices of pre-service teachers, mentors, and teacher education in schools and universities, as well as boosting changes in an extremely teacher-centered PE, so unfavorable to autonomy, and so widely devalued.

In times of certain educational ambiguities, PE has to be grounded by approaching the relationships between pedagogical theory and practice, in order to justify its value to school, local community, and the whole society. This requires innovating and experimenting new models, strategies, methodologies, contents that may contribute to a comprehensive education of children and young people, and the critical appropriation of contemporary culture (Betti & Zuliani, 2002), with a clear appreciation of its learning and knowledge (Batista & Queirós, 2015). This can help overcome the vicious circle of the PE teacher education programs which are clearly marked by the inability to move away from beliefs on teaching and learning that pre-service teachers tend to bring to their initial teacher education and that linger in the school contexts in which they do their school placement (Batista, Graça & Queirós, 2014).

This is a double challenge teacher education institutions should face. On one hand, they should appeal to this voice pedagogy for structuring and developing the many curriculum components, namely the school placement, in which they tend to continue with centralized processes with restricted interactions and circumscribed to the university and the school pre-service teachers’ supervisors, on the other, they need to structure the intervention in PE grounded on these principles of voice pedagogy.

With this intent, FADEUP has been advancing with curricular proposals, structured by cycles of research-action, with which we aim to turn pre-service teachers into builders of their own learning processes and, simultaneously, to involve the whole cooperating schools in the process of initial teacher education, avoiding to confine the school placement to itself, by opening it up to the collaboration with PE department (Graça, Batista & Queirós, 2016), as well as specific didactics faculty, who may work towards the renovation of PE practices by assisting pre-service in the processes of conception, planning, enactment, and evaluating innovative projects.

The benefits of these participative and cooperative proposals involving the university and schools were highly acknowledged, not only by pre-service teachers, namely at the level of subject matter knowledge and teaching competences, but also by teacher educators and mentors, who better learned the process of scaffolding the pre-service teachers’ work. Also, the specific didactics faculty reached higher levels of understanding on the relation theory-practice, and the PE students showed substantial improvement in the subjects taught⁶.

Final remarks

Resuming the Zeichner et al. (2014)’s analytical framework, we consider that teacher education should happen within a fruitful relationship between university and school, in an environment of ongoing questioning on what knowledge matters to teacher education. In this conceptual framework, it is important to invest in the reorganization of teacher education considering that this should take place within the profession, in spaces shared between the school and the university, around the processes of learning to teach in which each pre-service teacher, as well as each student needs to have voice, making his/her learning conscious. In the words of Lange and Burroughs-Lange (2018), each pre-service should focus “on your learning to teach and why and how you can become a self-observing, self-regulating, enquiring, outstanding professional” (p. 9). However, despite being key tools to professional learning, they gain true expression in interaction spaces, namely in contexts of community of practice in which participants work towards common goals, sharing experiences, reflecting, and (re)building knowledge, in an atmosphere of co-learning. In fact, learning the profession in and through interaction empowers not only the present but also the future professional.

The pathway to follow is to assume the imperative of professionalization, by creating the third space proposed by Nóvoa (2017), in which school and university work together in unison and collaboration, in a space that does not belong to any of them, but to both. This premise matters not only for teacher education, but for the transformation of professional practices in different subject areas, as it allows to overcome the walls of the discussion on the relationship theory- practice.

• 2
  Normalization, preparation and Portuguese review: Lucas Giron (Tikinet) – [e-mail]
• 3
  English version: Viviane [e-mail]
• 4
  “Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 4)
• 5
  A continuous effort of Conselho Nacional das Associações de Profissionais de Educação Física e Desporto (CNAPEF) and the Sociedade Portuguesa de Educação Física (SPEF) together with the Ministério da Educação and society in general, aiming to recover PE school hours and the paritary statue with all the other subjects in high school – regarding the accountability of classification for the high school average and the access to higher education –, resultanting from the curriculum reorganization of 2012.
• 6
  The development of one of the projects – “A construção do conhecimento profissional em contexto de estágio por recursos a metodologias ativas de aprendizagem e de autocopia” – can be seen in: http://tv.up.pt/premiums/111.

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• 1
  Responsible editor: Carmen Lúcia Soares. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4347-1924

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  26 July 2021
• Date of issue
  2021

History

• Received
  06 Aug 2018
• Reviewed
  22 Mar 2019
• Accepted
  26 Apr 2019