Tennis shoes required: The role of the facilitator in professional development

Reform efforts to improve physical education often rely on facilitators to promote positive change. Although it is becoming more common, little is currently understood about the facilitation role. Our purpose was to examine facilitators’ collective knowledge and experience with ongoing physical education professional development (PD), specifically regarding conceptions of their role in the process. Participants included 12 experienced PD facilitators. Data sources included formal semistructured and informal conversational interviews and participants’ curriculum vitae. Results indicated that facilitators held common beliefs about teacher learning and self-identified actions aligned with those beliefs. Adhering to constructivist views of learning, facilitators underscored the role of prior knowledge and the active and social nature of learning. Their remarkably similar views emphasized multiple aspects of teacher capacity building.