‘It’s how PE should be!’: Classroom teachers’ experiences of implementing Meaningful Physical Education

Abstract

Meaningful Physical Education (PE) is a pedagogical approach to PE instruction designed with the aim of helping teachers explicitly prioritise meaningful experiences for students. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a small-scale implementation of a preliminary version of Meaningful PE with a sample of five primary classroom teachers in Ireland to receive their feedback on the approach and their experiences of implementing it in their classrooms. Qualitative data were collected across an eight-week implementation period. An actor-oriented analysis was used to focus specifically on teachers’ decisions concerning both what and how to implement the approach, as well as the reasons why they implemented Meaningful PE the way they did. Results show teachers were generally supportive of Meaningful PE as they attempted to implement several components of the approach in their classrooms. Teachers’ implementation was highly related to their positive interpretations of the approach, in relation to both their perceptions of beneficial student outcomes and in drawing connections between the approach and prior experiences of and beliefs about teaching. This study adds further support to prior small-scale studies where implementation of Meaningful PE has been assessed and provides insight into how the approach might be introduced to and implemented more broadly by teachers in the future.