The aims and outcomes challenge: Preparing physical education teacher educators and teachers for twenty-first century redesign imperatives and accountability requirements

Global, national and local shifts in political, cultural, economic and educational discourses mean Physical Education (PE) teachers and teacher educators must understand, adapt and respond to a bewildering array of challenges and do so frequently. One of these challenges is the dual-edged, perennial one of clarifying the aims and outcomes of PE and PE teacher education. A global re-think of the purpose and potential of PE in the twenty-first century may not be needed, but local, partial, lived and contextualized re-thinking certainly is. And all reconstructions necessitate learning, particularly teachers’ continuing professional development. PE teachers report frequently on the marginalization of PE and on it not being a core contributor to the educational objectives of secondary schooling. They lament the lack of expectations for student learning by parents or school administrators and that PE is neither recognized nor rewarded in any formal certificate of student learning.