The data for this paper were generated during a three-year, Participatory Action Research project, with 41 15-19-year-old female co-researchers and activists, within and beyond the walls of a secondary school. The purpose of the larger study was to work with these students to understand and transform their self-identified barriers to physical education (PE) engagement and physical activity participation. The focus of this paper is on one of the transformation sites, the students' formal PE curriculum. Participatory Action Research (PAR) constituted the theoretical, pedagogical and methodological framework for this study. The specific questions we seek to address in this paper are what does a negotiated PE curriculum process look like, and how does students' increased involvement in curricular decision-making impact on their engagement with physical education. Data for this paper were generated through individual and group conversations with five student researchers and curriculum designers during the first year of the study. These conversations were guided by participatory research artefacts (e.g. photographs, posters). Findings suggest that participatory approaches to research and curriculum-making can serve to promote students' meaningful engagement in the critique and the reimagining of their PE and physical activity experiences. The girls in this study, when provided with guidance and encouragement, rose to the challenge and took ownership of their learning, and doing so was a positive, energizing and exciting experience for them and one in which deep learning occurred and deep insights were produced. Negotiating the curriculum was not without challenge however, and both students and adult allies needed support in persevering beyond the transition and the novelty of initial excitement.
The purpose of this study was to explore enhancers and inhibitors that impacted 4 secondary physical education teachers to make changes in their programs. An interpretivist approach was used to understand the physical educators' change process. Data were collected from document analyses, participant information sheets, interviews, discussion groups, and observing classes. Data were analyzed as 4 case studies using inductive analysis that examined emergent themes for each participant. A cross-case analysis highlighted the common enhancers and inhibitors for the teachers' change process. The enhancers to change were the teachers' visions and beliefs of physical education and support from principals, colleagues, and students. The inhibitors to change were district practices and policies and educational priorities. Gaining a better understanding of the teacher change process will help to design more effective professional development programs for secondary physical education teachers.
Drawing on data from a three-year Participatory Action Research project, undertaken with 41 teenage girls within and beyond the boundaries of a designated disadvantaged urban school, this article is an effort to critique the use of participatory methods as a means of producing different knowledge, and producing knowledge differently with students. In pursuit of this aim, we work to introduce participatory methods and the theoretical grounding of these methods; share our participants' perspectives on their engagement with two participatory methods, namely photovoice and timelines; and we also critique the value of these methods. We conclude this article with a discussion of the benefits and the challenges associated with the use of the participatory methods and present some implications for physical education research and practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.