The research and development challenge: Better aligning teachers’ and teacher educators’ needs, priorities and demands

A physical education (PE) teacher’s role is complex, partly because the lines are blurred between teacher of curricular PE, teacher of academic PE and school sport coach. Despite PE teachers and teacher educators having similar missions, objectives and tasks, and often sharing the same initial preparation and induction, several processes and experiences serve to distinguish each role from the other. P. Bourdieu would suggest that teachers and teacher educators pursue their work on different fields, which may explain why they tend to value things differently. Being positioned in different fields contributes to various socializing experiences that may produce specific ideas about who teachers are and what they should do, and likewise for teacher educators. Many teacher educators express good intentions in wanting to work with teachers rather than on teachers. In order to create an integrated approach to teachers’ and teacher educators’ work, it is useful to consider the dominant conceptualizations of the processes of teaching.