Research Impact Summary: This paper explores how the Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE) specification was constructed. Ten Physical Education Development Group (PEDG) members, who had the responsibility of such construction, were interviewed. This construction process was analyzed by drawing on Elias’s (1978) ‘game models’ framework, and the framework allowed us to understand the power-struggles in the curriculum content and assessment deliberations. The outcome was one that no ‘player’ could have anticipated, and Elias’s game models framework shed light on how a curriculum with original intentions became a curriculum made up of unintended consequences.
Scanlon, D., MacPhail A., and Calderón, A. (2018). Original intentions and unintended consequences: the ‘contentious’ role of assessment in the development of Leaving Certificate Physical Education in Ireland. Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education, DOI: 10.1080/25742981.2018.1552500
PESS News & Information 