Publication: Physical education teachers’ reality and experience from teaching during a pandemic

Research Impact: Most physical education (PE) research pertaining to COVID-19 has focused on the (negative) implications and difficulties PE teachers face during this pandemic period. In fact, despite informed calls for reform and radical change in PE, little attention has been paid to the (potentially positive) implications for teachers’ pedagogical practices and, more importantly, for the future of PE. Drawing on a social constructivism, this paper explores the reality from several PE teachers’ perspectives and reflects on the ‘type of PE’ that the global pandemic conditioned. We approached this analysis informed  by Lawson’s (2009) and Quennerstedt’s (2019) calls for the PE community to (re)act and drive PE to its twenty-first century version.

Three major themes were constructed:

1. Impact: PE teachers reinventing themselves to allow PE to continue being educative;

2. Resilience: learning and flourishing together to overcome the challenge and improve the PE system; and

3. Selective expansion: more physical activity (PA) and digital technology.

The authors concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has agitated the foundations of PE as a field, creating a scenario in which teachers show high levels of collegiality and improved readiness to overcome current and future challenges. This could be another stage of the PE journey towards community aspirations (whatever they could be).

López-Fernández, I., Gil-Espinosa, F. J., Burgueño, R., and Calderón, A. (2023). Physical education teachers’ reality and experience from teaching during a pandemic. Sport, Education and Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2023.2254795.