CPD for Teaching and Learning in Physical Education

Global Lessons from Singapore

Susan Capel, Julia Lawrence, Melanie Martens, Hanif Abdul Rahman, Susan Capel, Julia Lawrence, Melanie Martens, Hanif Abdul Rahman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000567236
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation physique

Drawing on best practice for the continuing professional development (CPD) of practising physical education teachers, this book encourages teachers to reflect on their own practices and how these can be developed as they continue their professional journey to support student learning. The book covers three main themes: improving students' learning and supporting student progress; the teacher as learner – developing your expertise as a teacher; and supporting professional development – how as a teacher you can lead and own your continuing learning in a sustainable manner.

Throughout the book, teachers are encouraged not just to reflect on where they are now, but also what changes they INTEND to make to their practice, how they IMPLEMENT those changes and then to review the IMPACT this has had on students' learning. Each chapter includes tasks embedded within the content to encourage the reader to reflect on how they could apply the new knowledge they are acquiring from reading and engaging with the chapter.

Written for a global audience, the book brings together examples from the Singapore Physical Education and Sports Teacher Academy (PESTA), which provides CPD to teachers in the high-performing Singaporean system. Offering high quality research and practice, this book is a pivotal resource for physical education teachers undertaking CPD all over the world.

1 Continuing Professional Development in Physical EducationDoing It Our Way

Fathul Rahman Kamsani and Melanie Martens

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171973-1

CPD Is Central to Better Teaching and Learning

Teacher ownership and leadership is when teachers, driven by a sense of mission, individually or collectively, exert intentional influence to achieve an enhanced state of professional excellence within a climate of trust and supportive relationships.

(Ministry of Education (MOE), 2019, p. 55)

Continuing professional development (CPD) is important for teachers to hone their teaching skills and to remain relevant in an ever-changing education landscape. All teachers, including physical education teachers, should be learning continuously throughout their teaching career. This is our commitment to self, to our colleagues, and, most importantly, the many students that come under our guidance over the years.

The focus of teaching in physical education should be on students’ learning and development of their skills and knowledge in physical activity so that they can achieve and sustain a lifetime of healthy active living. The aim of this book is therefore to support your development as a physical education teacher to enable and empower your students to achieve this outcome in school and carry it into adulthood.

Teaching is a complex activity and is both an art and a science; teaching is not a mechanical process and there is no one correct way of teaching. An effective teacher puts students’ learning first, is interested in and can motivate students, is able to adapt their teaching to the needs of students in their lessons, is able to integrate theory with practice, uses evidence to underpin their practice, and uses structured reflection to improve their pedagogical practice.

This book looks at various aspects of CPD which physical education teachers in Singapore have found useful in helping them improve the effectiveness of their teaching so as to enhance student learning.

The Singapore Context

Singapore is known to have one of the best education systems in the world according to different International Benchmarking studies – Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). This success can be attributed to sound educational policies that are complemented by good infrastructure and a strong teaching workforce built on a deliberate approach of attracting, developing, and retaining the best talent in education.

In developing the best teacher-talent, CPD policies and practices have had to evolve to meet the shifts in focus in an ever-changing global, economic, and education landscape. These CPD policies recognise that there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach to CPD for all teachers and call upon teachers to take greater ownership and leadership of their professional learning and growth in various ways.

Firstly, CPD in Singapore is designed to facilitate learning through multiple platforms – at the individual level through face-to-face, blended, or online learning workshops; at the school level through school support or partnership programmes; and when teachers come together to learn and collaborate as either Networked Learning Communities or Communities of Practice. This allows teachers to identify the most appropriate learning platform and attend relevant CPD based on their self-assessed needs.

Secondly, CPD is positioned to cater to the different teacher segments in the Singapore system. One example is the introduction of three career advancement tracks with the objective of greater teacher retention in the service. The three tracks are: the Teaching Track, the Leadership Track, and the Senior Specialist Track. With these three career tracks, CPD is designed to better match the career profiles of teachers in the respective tracks. For example, CPD for teachers in the Teaching Track focuses on deepening teaching mastery and pedagogical excellence, while CPD for those on the Leadership Track focuses on skills and competencies needed in leading and managing a team or department of teachers.

Thirdly, teachers are encouraged to remain current and equip themselves with the necessary competencies to develop in students a diversity of skill sets that will prepare them well for the future. As such, CPD opportunities are offered through providing a Professional Development Leave (PDL) scheme where teachers are allowed to take paid leave for continual upgrading of their professional skills and qualifications, and through a Teacher Work Attachment (TWA) scheme where teachers take on short-term local or overseas attachments in external organisations. These opportunities help teachers broaden their perspectives and contribute to their skill set to shape new learning experiences for students.

More recently, MOE as part of the ‘Learn for Life’ movement in schools introduced the Skills Future for Educators (SFEd) initiative which serves as a CPD roadmap to guide teachers to be learners for life and support them to continually deepen their beliefs and further strengthen their classroom practice. CPD activities are now aligned to the six prioritised SFEd areas of practice (i.e. Assessment Literacy, Differentiated Instruction, Inquiry-Based Learning, e-Pedagogy, Character and Citizenship Education, and Special Educational Needs).

CPD in Physical Education

A dedicated teacher academy, Physical Education and Sports Teacher Academy (PESTA) was set up in 2011 to enhance the quality of teaching in physical education. Its purpose is to raise the pedagogical expertise of teachers to ensure quality delivery of physical education in our schools. PESTA has developed a range of practice-oriented professional development programmes in the areas of Subject Content Knowledge (SCK), Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), and Professional Practice. These programmes are intended to deepen the professional knowledge, hone the professional practice, and enhance the professional engagement of physical education teachers.

With its mission to ‘Empower, Inspire, Transform Lives’, PESTA has sought to improve its CPD efforts to inspire physical education teachers to embark on CPD to elevate the quality of their physical education lessons and sports activities in and outside schools with the intention to bring about transformation in the lives of people who are impacted – students, teachers, and the wider community. In the ten years since the inception of PESTA, we have learned and are still learning about what effective CPD is and how to deliver it. We are coming to grips with how to encourage and support the motivation for CPD among physical education teachers, and have learned that effective CPD for our physical education teachers must be aligned to the five principles for effective CPD that research supports. Namely,

1. Coherence to the standards and outcomes of education in Singapore;
2. Focus on Subject Content Knowledge (SCK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK);
3. Provision of opportunities for active learning;
4. Ensuring collaborative learning; and
5. Supporting sustained learning.

(MOE, 2015, cited in Chapter 16)

From our regular internal reviews, surveys, and focus group discussions, we have learned that teachers want authenticity in the content of the workshops and programmes. They didn’t want workshops that showcased the ‘perfect’ lesson. They wanted to learn how to teach and cope with “the day to day complexities of teaching” (Armour and Yelling, 2003, p. 2) that emerge in a classroom. We learned that situating a workshop in a school and with a teacher participant (from that school) and a PESTA CPD officer demonstrating how theory translates into practice in a real classroom setting produced not just impactful learning but generated deep discussion and reflection long after the workshop ended.

In providing authentic experiences and settings, we learned we needed to partner stakeholders such as schools, the National Institute of Education (NIE), and the national governing body for sports in Singapore (Sport Singapore (SportSG)). We recognised that for us to achieve what we set out to do we could not do this alone. We needed to include everyone in this collaborative and collective effort, who we feel has a stake in the development of our young.

In order to ensure the learning didn’t end with the last day of a workshop or programme, PESTA CPD officers continue to support workshop participants in the application of their learning back in their schools with a variety of approaches that include face-to-face lesson observations or co-teaching with physical education teachers in schools using digital platforms to enable all workshop participants to observe and discuss (synchronously and asynchronously) a fellow participant’s video of a lesson using newly acquired SCK or PCK. We use digital technology and technological hardware such as wearables (electronic devices that can be worn as accessories like Apple watches and Fitbit) and cameras with video-analysis applications, and software using interactive and online application tools that offer virtual and augmented reality, to deliver our programmes as well as support the application and reinforcement of learning by participants. This is especially significant during the COVID-19 pandemic where PESTA has had to pivot its many face-to-face CPD programmes to online and virtual platforms by converting the face-to-face content to e-pedagogy with synchronous and asynchronous learning via Zoom and the creation of Micro Learning Units which deliver short, bite-sized content for learners to study at their own convenience. In using this approach we have found that creating opportunities for like-minded participants to come together to discuss their learning, not just their successes, leads to greater engagement and desire to continue with CPD. PESTA CPD officers supporting physical education teachers’ efforts to form networked learning communities and/or communities of practice have become either a ‘knowledgeable other’ to these communities or are able to provide access to other knowledgeable others, either within the school system or connecting with our key partners like NIE and SportSG.

How the Book Is Designed

The book is designed more for you to dip in and out of, to look up a specific problem or issue that you want to consider, rather than for it to be read from cover to cover although you may want to read it that way too. The chapters in the book cover both the theory and practice of various aspects of teaching and learning of physical education. The reader will find that each chapter has its objectives stated at the beginning. Embedded in the body of the chapters are case studies from the Singapore context that apply theory to practice and/or examples from physical education, and tasks based on the content of the chapter for the reader to engage in, in relation to their own context. At the end of each chapter, the reader will also find a summary and the key points raised in the chapter, followed by a weblink to lists of further resources for each chapter that the reader can turn to as a start, if they want to deepen their understanding of what they have read. There are, of course, a whole wealth of other resources on each topic.

The book is loosely grouped into three sections:

Section 1 provides an overview on supporting student progress. In any good teaching, students will always be at the core of what you do. Chapter 2 covers topics of continuity and progression, and Chapter 3 starts with the fundamentals of knowing the students as individuals and recognising that every student is unique with different needs. It focuses largely on student development. This is followed by a chapter on games-centred approaches and nonlinear pedagogy that emphasise students as active learners and teachers as facilitators in the teaching-learning experiences. Chapter 5 of the book explores student readiness and how to create a positive climate to support student learning. Chapter 6 offers the reader insight into inclusive practices in physical education and how to plan for and manage it to benefit both students and teacher. The reader is introduced to Bronfenbrenner and Morris’ (1998) Ecological Framework, and how it can be adapted to better understand the needs of students, particularly those with special needs. To conclude this section, the next two chapters dive into the use of formative assessment to measure students’ learning and progress, and understanding affective processes and how to be deliberate in planning for them in physical education lessons.

Section 2 focuses on the teacher as a learner and the various competencies you need to be equipped with to better support students to learn and to prepare them for the future. The first chapter in this section (Chapter 9) is devoted to who you are as a teacher – your identity and how that relates to your philosophy of teaching and the learning experiences you want to achieve for your students. The remaining three chapters are related to teaching competencies, starting with teaching approaches you can adopt in physical education, the use of digital technologies, reflective practice and classroom inquiry to enhance the quality of learning.

Section 3 outlines/describes what goes into the organising of CPD and how as a teacher you can lead and own your continuing learning in a sustainable manner. It helps you to have a better understanding of the importance of CPD; what is involved when you take on the role of being a mentor; how you and school leadership can take on a leading role in the management of your colleagues’ CPD; and how to deliver effective CPD at an organisational level (whether it be in-house school CPD, or at a zonal/district/national level...