Curriculum interpretation and policy enactment in health and physical education: researching teacher educators as policy actors

Abstract

Past research in Health and Physical Education has repeatedly highlighted that curriculum development is an ongoing, complex and contested process, and that the realisation of progressive intentions embedded in official curriculum texts is far from assured. Drawing on concepts from education policy sociology this paper positions teacher educators as key policy actors in the interpretation and enactment of new official curriculum texts. More specifically, it reports research that has explored four teacher educators' engagement with a specific feature of the new Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE); five interrelated propositions or 'key ideas' that underpinned the new curriculum and openly sought to provide direction for progressive pedagogy in Health and Physical Education. The paper provides conceptual and empirical insight into teacher educators consciously positioning themselves as policy actors, motivated to play a role in shaping policy directions and future curriculum practices. As such, the teacher educators in this project are identified as policy entrepreneurs and provocateurs. The paper details a dialogic research process between the researchers that was designed to make curriculum interpretation a more transparent, collaborative and generative process. The data reported illustrates the research process supporting teacher educators to engage in productive debate about the possible meanings and enactment of the five propositions. Analysis reveals differing perspectives on the propositions and a shared investment in efforts to support their progressive intent. Empirically, the paper highlights the critical role that teacher educators will play in the ongoing enactment of a new curriculum that is overtly identified as 'futures oriented'. Conceptually, the paper adds depth and sophistication to understandings of teacher educators as policy actors. Methodologically, we propose that the research process described can be usefully adopted by other teacher educators and teachers engaged in similar processes of curriculum development, interpretation and enactment.

The enactment of setting policy in secondary school physical education

“…Policy enactment, and the work of Ball et al (2012), was the theoretical frame used to examine the multifaceted and multi-layered nature of the appropriation and recontextualisation of setting policies in PE in these three schools. This paper adds to policy enactment research in PE, and education more broadly, that has drawn attention to the multiple dimensions of context that collectively shape the local adaptation and translation of policies in schools and classrooms (Alfrey et al, 2017;Lambert & Penney, 2020;Maguire et al, 2019). Our data and discussion also draw attention to the complex influence of context upon setting policies, conceptualisations of ability in PE, and in turn, issues of equity and opportunity.…”

Artefacts and influence in curriculum policy enactment: Processes, products and policy work in curriculum reform

“…This paper builds on and extends findings from a research project that followed the curriculum policy interpretation and enactment journey of four HPE policy actors 1 and teacher educators (female professor, senior lecturer and lecturer, and a male senior lecturer) in an Australian university. These findings have been published elsewhere and we acknowledge that original research project and its broader methodology 2 and findings (Lambert and O’Connor, 2018a; Lambert and Penney, 2019). By starting from the findings from our past policy work we keep policy enactment open and unfinished.…”

“…At the time of writing there have been three related publications. The first focuses on initial practitioner interpretations of the Five Propositions (Lambert, 2018), the next on documenting the initial research process and findings (Lambert and O’Connor, 2018a), and the third reflects upon the policy actor work of teacher educators (Lambert and Penney, 2019). The cards appear as artefacts in the latter two.…”

“…Research that has directly pursued the strategic production and dissemination of artefacts amidst curriculum reform, particularly by teacher educators, is however, limited. This paper responds by exploring the processes of production and dissemination of a specific set of artefacts arising from the policy work of four teacher educators seeking to guide the interpretation and enactment of the Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE) (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2020a) as entrepreneurs and provocateurs (Lambert and Penney, 2019). The analysis reported in this paper addresses four research questions: (a) What was the rationale for producing a set of artefacts focusing on a particular feature of the AC HPE?…”

“…We recognised that a range of voices would fill some gaps, join some dots, and prospectively open up and bring policy to life in and through both interpretation and enactment efforts. Recent literature has highlighted that teacher educators have an important part to play in the interpretation and enactment of curriculum and that like teachers, they occupy a variety of positions in relation to policy, for a variety of reasons, with a variety of consequences (Lambert and O’Connor, 2018a; Lambert and Penney, 2019). We consequently recognise the value of diverse, varied and multiple stances and suggest that policy actor roles are not finite, meaning that how policy is ‘done’ or manifests is open.…”