Preparing physical and health education pre-service teachers to support students’ physical activity and wellbeing during the school day

Increasingly, physical education teachers are expected to become the cog in an ever-expanding physical activity (PA) promotion wheel. This requires such teachers to be equipped with new knowledge and skills, with attendant consequences for how physical education teacher education is approached. In this paper, a new teacher education module in Finland aimed at encouraging pre-service teachers (PSTs) to adopt flexible and creative approaches to the promotion of adolescent PA and wellbeing within the school day is presented. The context within which the module was developed is detailed along with findings of a research study which investigated the experiences of 16 physical and health education (PHE) PSTs who participated in the module. In particular, this study focused on participants’ experiences of planning and implementing PA projects in high school settings and how this affected their perspectives on their future professional roles. The module, which was rooted in tenets of phenomenon-based learning, was shown to be effective in giving students a better understanding of the role PHE teachers can realistically play in promoting PA. The opportunity the module provided for students to reflect upon their role was seen to be particularly beneficial.