Background: Physical education (PE), as a prominent school subject, relies on teachers' agency to foster meaningful participation of all students, including those with visual impairment (VI). It depends largely on how PE teachers design, adapt, and mediate learning activities to address students' diverse needs. Little is known about how teacher agency is enacted or constrained in including students with VI in PE in Nepali integrated schools.Purpose: This article explores how PE teachers in integrated schools in Nepal exercise agency in including students with VI. It examines the conditions that enable or constrain teacher agency and how these contradictions shape pedagogical practices intended to support inclusion in integrated PE settings.Method: A qualitative research design was employed. Eight PE teachers were purposively selected from three integrated schools in Nepal. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews. All the interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis informed by the ecological model of teacher agency.Findings: Guided by the ecological framework of teacher agency, comprising the iterational, practical-evaluative, and projective dimensions, three interconnected themes were constructed: (a) ableist legacies and the framing of training, (b) resource limitations and structural constraints, and (c) deficit expectations and preference for segregation. The iterational dimension revealed that exclusionary practices were rooted in teachers' past experiences and reinforced through entrenched beliefs about disability and the purpose of PE. The practical-evaluative dimension reflected that teachers' current decisions were primarily shaped by structural, institutional, and material constraints. The projective dimension indicated that future-oriented aspirations were constrained by deficit-based expectations, limiting teachers' capacity to envision inclusive possibilities.Conclusion: Teacher agency in including students with VI in PE is profoundly constrained by systemic and institutional factors. Exclusion emerges not merely from individual intentions but from broader structural forces shaping teachers' agency over time. These findings raise critical questions about the effectiveness of integrated schools operating with inadequate support systems. The study highlights an urgent need for interventions across all three dimensions of teacher agency by challenging ableist legacies, strengthening structural and curricular supports, and cultivating inclusive professional aspirations.Impact Statement: The study informs teacher education and systemic reforms to strengthen pedagogical practices that support the inclusion of students with VI. It highlights how teachers' past experiences, present conditions, and future aspirations shape agency in integrated school settings in Nepal.
Background Social media shapes young people's sport-related behaviour and body perceptions, presenting new pedagogical challenges for physical education (PE). Yet, little is known about how PE teachers perceive these influences on students' physical activity, sport-related behaviour, and corporeality.Purpose This study explored PE teachers' perceptions of social media's impact on students' physical activity, sport-related behaviour, and corporeality, and examined whether these perceptions differ by gender, age, teaching experience, or school type.Methods An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was applied. 153 PE teachers from Germany completed a questionnaire assessing perceived impacts of social media on students' physical activity/sport-related behaviour and corporeality. Descriptive statistics and ANOVAs examined group differences. 22 PE teachers participated in in-depth interviews, analysed using structuring content analysis.Results and Discussion Quantitatively, most PE teachers associated social media with declines in students' physical activity and motor skills, while recognising motivational benefits, such as access to informal sport. Grammar school teachers and those aged 40-49 were more likely to acknowledge these benefits. Qualitative findings confirmed this critical stance, specifying affected motor skill domains and situating perceptions within broader societal dynamics. Teachers expressed scepticism about students' knowledge acquisition via social media, highlighting a perceived decline in pedagogical authority. Regarding corporeality, social media was seen as reinforcing performance pressure and unrealistic body ideals, with stronger concerns among female and mid-career teachers. Teachers described body curation for approval, gendered ideals, and a marginalisation of body diversity. Teachers emphasised both risks and potentials, and reported limited pedagogical strategies for addressing social media in PE.Conclusion Rather than viewing social media solely as a risk, this study shows that PE teachers recognise its ambivalent role in shaping students' physical activity, sport-related behaviour, and corporeality, yet lack the pedagogical repertoire to respond effectively. By identifying systematic differences across teacher groups and revealing a clear professionalisation gap, the findings provide an evidence base for integrating media pedagogy and critical embodiment into PE teacher education.
Background Although traditional physical education (PE) practice emphasises the teaching of techniques, a range of research-based and locally implemented pedagogical innovations exist. One such innovation is Models-based Practice (MbP). However, whilst there is a body of research that shows the potential of MbP, little is known about how teachers and students experience a locally implemented MbP curriculum.Purpose This study explored how teachers and students experienced a MbP curriculum across a full academic year. Specifically, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), how the subjects, objects, mediating artefacts, rules, communities, and divisions of labour interacted within the activity system and how these interactions produced both supportive and constraining conditions for the implementation of MbP were examined.Methods The study draws from a wider case study with seven PE teachers and nine Year 7 students (aged 11-12) from a school in England. Data were generated through 14 teacher interviews, with each teacher being interviewed at the beginning and end of the academic year, and three group interviews involving nine students. One group of five students was interviewed twice, and a second group of four students was interviewed once.Results The first finding, Shifting the Culture of Teaching, shows how MbP affected teachers' work, planning, and work culture, and reveals that teachers became mini experts in individual models. The second finding, Shifting the Culture of Learning, illustrates how teachers worked together, negotiated roles, and took joint responsibility for pedagogical development. The third finding, Contrasting Perspectives Between Students' and Teachers' Experiences, explores the different viewpoints held by teachers and students regarding the aims of PE, and shows that while students embraced broader outcomes, some teachers continued to value traditional skill-based approaches.Conclusion This study examined teachers' and students' experiences of MbP. Findings revealed the complex dynamics of activity systems, as MbP helped reshape routines, challenged established practices, and broadened curricular aims. While not without limitations, this account highlights MbP's potential as a teacher- and student-driven approach, adaptable to local contexts without reliance on researcher-led implementation.
Background Coach development programmes (CDPs) represent a key avenue for enhancing coaching quality. Although existing research has yielded valuable insights into the effective operation of CDPs across contexts, it remains characterised by over-reliance on cross-sectional approaches, scarcity of post-programme follow-up, and insufficient integration of learning theory into practice. These limitations could obscure the processual nature of coach learning within/beyond CDPs and hinder the alignment of programme design, delivery, and evaluation across the theory-practice continuum.Purpose Drawing on transformative learning theory, this study developed, implemented, and evaluated a collaborative coach development programme (CCDP). To examine the outcomes, processes, and conditions of learning in the CCDP, we longitudinally traced coaches' behaviours/perspectives throughout three seasons of a professional football academy.Methodology Underpinned by a social constructionist paradigm, 17 coaches, a head of coach development, and a critical friend participated in the CCDP as co-creators of knowledge. Coaches were grouped by athletes' developmental stages. A methodological bricolage - systematic/participant observations and stimulated-recall/semi-structured interviews - generated multi-layered datasets and supported coaches' learning. Observational data were analysed using the coach analysis and intervention system; interview data were interpreted through reflexive thematic analysis.Results and conclusions Of the 17 coaches, 16 exhibited changes from baselines in at least one intended behavioural domain. Changes in coaching perspectives were likewise evident; nevertheless, efforts to foster transformative learning through critical assessment of assumptions and acquisition of knowledge/skills for implementing new plans were limited throughout the CCDP. This suggests a risk that coaches' perspectival changes may remain partial adjustments within extant belief structures rather than progressing towards fuller transformation. Post-programme trajectories diverged across Groups 1 (stagnation/regression), 2 (continuity/delayed change), and 3 (sustained development). Such divergences may reflect the influence of group-specific learning conditions, which shape idiosyncratic resonances among the core elements of transformative learning. The findings extend understanding of CDPs by illuminating what changed in situ, how such changes unfolded, and why they were - or were not - sustained.Impact statement Moving beyond longstanding critiques of decontextualised, one-size-fits-all approaches to coach education, this study highlights CCDP's potential as an alternative that (a) positions coaches as agents who take ownership of their development in collaboration with facilitators rather than recipients of transmitted knowledge, (b) demonstrates how research methods function as pedagogical tools that create opportunities for coaches to critically reflect on, support dialogic engagement, and experiment with their frames of reference, and (c) deploys coaches' workplaces as legitimate sites for in-situ learning.
