Aim: The research illuminates the experiences of a teacher’s of Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE) implementation of the LCPE specification in their school setting along with the teachers’ experiences of the model of professional learning for teaching LCPE provided by the professional development service for teachers (PDST). An ecological approach to teacher agency (Biesta & Tedder, 2006) was used. .
Methods: Data were generated through a self-study design. This comprised of a teaching journal and critical friend observation notes to capture the LCPE teaching experiences. The experiences relative to the PDST professional development experiences were captured through participant journal and focus group discussions with the cluster community. Data were analysed with deductive and inductive thematic content analysis and triangulation.
Findings: The results revolved around negotiating the constraints of the school setting and time, and debating the responsibility for creating blended (practical-theory) student learning experiences and assessments in a high-stakes climate. Teachers embraced the LCPE specification all the while recognising the significant demands on their teaching practices. The research found that teachers valued the contribution of learning from their PDST training days.
Conclusions: The paper concludes by contending for more explicitly structured exemplars of student work to support teaching and learning in the LCPE classroom. This research provides valuable insights into the experiences of teachers enacting curriculum policy at the micro level of the classroom, using Ball’s concept of ‘policy enactment’ and ‘policy actor’. Priestley et al. (2015) framework of teacher agency as a key construct in this paper and its practical-evaluative dimension is drawn on to make sense of the teacher experiences of teaching LCPE.