One Step Forwards, Two Backwards: Deprofessionalization within Physical Education.

Overview & Synopsis

This paper describes several key issues which are shaping the profession of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). The issues include tertiary education, teacher education and schooling, and deprofessionalization. Drawing from data at an Australian case site, the paper argues that these key issues shape the profession's knowledge, values, attitudes, and practices. In doing so, PETE courses may constrain the professional development of physical education and physical education teachers. Interviews with 18 faculty and 292 college students found that PETE students often arrive at their institutions of higher education with particular technocratic values venerating science, masculine perspectives, or entrepreneurialism, and may find that these values are reinforced throughout their courses despite these values being incompatible with those that will benefit them and their students as teachers in schools. In conclusion, the argument is made that the proletarianization of PETE faculty and students needs to be arrested by particular measures which will be of benefit to the intellectual work of physical educators. It is suggested that PETE may need to align itself with the education departments and faculties in tertiary institutions rather than with what are essentially departments of sport sciences, despite claims of their balanced, multidisciplinary structures. (Contains approximately 70 references.) (JDD)