Enacting and further developing a socially just Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (SJ-TSPR) approach in physical education teacher education

Teachers and teacher educators report uncertainties about the how of integrating social justice content into physical education, for example, teaching about, through, and for social justice. As one possibility for addressing this challenge, we have both re-imagined the existing Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model through a social justice lens and implemented the teaching and learning of social justice matters in physical-activity-based contexts of teacher education. The purpose of this research was to examine our teacher educator practice implementing a socially just TPSR (SJ-TPSR) approach across diverse tertiary course modules in three countries (Ireland, Australia, and Canada). There were 8 teacher educators involved in this exploration, organised into 3 communities of learners (Ireland [3], Australia [2], and Canada [2]) with one macro critical friend. Collaborative self-study methodology informed by LaBoskey’s characteristics of quality self-study guided this research. Members from each community enacted the approach, while the other member(s) acted as micro critical friends. Data included a) learning plans and other course artefacts, b) teacher educator reflections, c) whole group interrogations of reflections with teacher educator responses; d) recorded weekly or fortnightly critical friend meetings, and e) recorded monthly meetings with the whole group and macro critical friend in which reflections were further interrogated. Results from this research share the realities of translating a theoretically informed vision into practice in ways that support the next generation of teachers’ learning about and through innovative pedagogy. Preliminary findings demonstrated the complexity in enacting the SJ-TPSR approach, for example, a) the definition of social justice matters; b) the need to co-design with students; c) the connection between social-emotional learning and a SJ-TPSR approach. Enablers to the approach were found to be a) the TPSR learning plan; b) content; and c) context. Honouring Hellison’s forty years of (re)developing the theory of TPSR based on what is learned in practice, we suggest that colleagues from the physical education teacher education community may consider these findings in their endeavour to reconsider existing pedagogical models through a social justice lens, and as they strive to teach about, through, and for social justice.