Research has highlighted the role of workplace experiences in relation to outcomes, such as job satisfaction, among inservice physical education teachers. More recently, scholars have extended this line of scholarship to explore how higher education faculty members experience and navigate the sociopolitical context of higher education. Guided by…

Physical education teacher education is at a "tipping point" in history, where the survivability of the profession in many institutions of higher education may be in question. This monograph reflects an initial attempt to understand recruitment and retention in physical education teacher education programs from the perspective of program…

Teacher change in physical education has long been called for; however, current theoretical models guiding the change process do not address contextual aspects of the teaching workplace. Occupational Socialization Theory (OST) addresses contextual factors related to change but omits individual teacher characteristics that develop independently of…

Purpose: Grounded in occupational socialization theory, the purpose of this investigation was to examine U.S. physical education teacher education faculty members' work role preferences, how their actual work role responsibilities compare to institutional expectations, and differences in these preferences and responsibilities based on gender and…

Purpose: To examine the workplace experience of physical education teacher educators while accounting for gender and institution type. Method: Participants included 286 U.S. faculty members (151 females and 135 males). Data were collected using an online survey that included measures of negative (i.e., marginalization, isolation, role stress,…

The purpose of this study was to determine how the research intervention called Healthy Eaters, Lifelong Movers (HELM) and associated San Luis Valley Physical Education Academy (SLVPEA) influenced teachers' beliefs about physical education and the extent to which they sustained pedagogical changes over time. Seventeen physical educators who…

In response to the global pressure that has led to an increased emphasis on international comparisons of student achievement since the 1980s, multiple federal reforms aimed at producing greater consistency in curricula have been initiated in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of a national curriculum and…

The preceding chapters of this monograph have served to situate the study of physical education teacher education recruitment and retention within relevant literature and theory. This chapter outlines the sequential explanatory design methods, whereby participants in an online survey were selected using stratified random sampling to participate in…

Purpose: To address the obesity epidemic and promote children's health; several health organizations recommend that schools develop comprehensive programs designed to promote physical activity and health behavior. Given a lack of empirical investigation, the authors sought to understand how physical education programs are perceived within such…

Physical education teachers have been criticized for not implementing progressive or innovative instruction resulting in enhanced student knowledge and skills for lifetime participation in physical activity. Purpose: To investigate how teachers with varying dispositions toward change perceive socializing agents and teaching context as barriers to…

In line with trends in general education, physical education teacher education programs have faced lowering enrollments over the last few decades. These circumstances have led to the closure of some PETE programs while faculty members at others have been called to increase recruitment and retention efforts to reverse the negative enrollment…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate factors associated with high school physical education (PE) teachers' adoption of a supplemental online instructional system. Method: Semistructured, open-ended phone interviews with 28 high school PE teachers were used as the primary data collection method. All teachers were using or had used…

Background/Purpose: Teacher educators must help students overcome faulty beliefs they developed through acculturation while also retaining highly qualified candidates through to graduation. This aspect of this study sought to understand physical education teacher education program coordinators' perspectives about their role in the process of…

Purpose: The landscape of physical education has shifted in the 30 years since Metzler and Freedman's seminal study examining the demographics of physical education teacher education faculty. Changes in the structure of physical education and academia justify an updated investigation, with particular emphasis on the gender and institutional…

Purpose: Given criticism of P-12 physical education and wide variability in instructional quality and subject matter outcomes in the United States (US), a national curriculum has been debated by some scholars as a mechanism for improving the status of the subject matter. Grounded in the systemic reform (SR) model, the purpose of this study was to…