Book Description

"The exclusionary nature of physical education (PE) has created calls for a greater emphasis on social justice and teaching for cultural responsiveness, diversity, and inclusion in a discipline ensconced with issues like race, ability, and gender. Despite the attempts of physical health education teacher education (PHETE) programs to empower pre-service PE teachers in disrupting the relationship between PE, sport, and society, transformation has been minimal. An interpretive qualitative methodology guided by occupational socialization theory was used to explore how early-career PE teachers utilize their understandings of inequities and social justice and negotiate the tensions between what they have learned in PHETE programming and the reality of teaching for social justice in PE settings. This study was conducted with four early-career PE teachers using semi-structured interviews and critical incident reflections. A reflexive thematic analysis of data revealed that enacting social justice pedagogies during these early years has been complicated by 1) the degree of support early-career PE teachers receive, 2) the social positioning of early-career PE teachers and PE within schools, and 3) the preparedness and ability of early-career PE teachers to implement social justice pedagogies in practice. These results can inform shifts in PHETE to improve how early-career PE teachers experience the transition into schools and their ability to build inclusive school learning environments by supporting putting social justice into practice. The experiences shared by early-career PE teachers have highlighted the need to go beyond theoretical conversations around social justice towards offering experience sharing opportunities, practical examples of social justice pedagogies in PE settings, and the promotion of a school-wide value commitment to fostering socially just educational environments"--