Communities of Practice cultivation along the course of a Physical Education Teacher Education programme in the pursuit of pedagogical innovation: a two-year ethnography

Abstract

The aim of the present thesis was to understand the professional development process of Pre-service Teachers in a Physical Education Teacher Education programme and how the development of social learning strategies (e.g., communities of practice), was contributing (or not) for their development towards student-centred approaches implementation. This study was developed throughout a longitudinal ethnographic approach that followed-up the entire course of the pre-service teachers' programme, embracing a naturalistic set of methods to capture the real essence of the intricacies of the social dynamic interactions between the participants (pre-service teachers and their mentors) in its spontaneous occurrence. This data was captured mainly throughout an immersive participant-observation from the ethnographer that build a field diary, a reflexive log and audio recordings and further analysed through a constructivist revision of Grounded Theory. This methodology allowed a comprehensive in-depth integrative exploration of the process of pre-service teachers' development inside collaborative structures. This study acknowledged the development of the ontological position of the ethnographer, therefore, challenges and strategies to become an ethnographer in a Physical Education field were interpreted. Additionally, findings revealed that Physical Education Teacher Education programmes that advocate for communities of practice as a learning strategy to promote the implementation of innovative pedagogies such as student-centred approaches are experiencing major challenges in the cultivation of such practices. Specifically, (i) Challenges in Negotiating Meaning of their social learning experiences and (ii) Challenges in generating value in social learning experiences along the journey from learning to implementing student-centred approaches were deeply analysed. Practical applications for Physical Education Teacher Education design towards the reinforcement of effective cultivation of social learning strategies were proposed aiming to contribute to a broader development of student-centred approaches implementation in the future by pre-service teachers.