18.07.2022
Challenging German physical education teacher educators' health-related beliefs through Cooperative Planning
A recent study by Julia Hapke (Tübingen), Clemens Töpfer (University of Jena) and Julia Lohmann (University of Augsburg) investigates what health-related beliefs physical education teacher educators have and how they develop within a cooperative planning process.
The health-related beliefs of physical education teacher educators are assumed to play an important role in fostering and implementing the public health agenda. In this article, we report on a Cooperative Planning intervention in which physical education teacher educators (university lecturers and teacher trainers), physical education teacher students, study course coordinators and researchers worked together to develop health-related courses for physical education teacher education. Specifically, we investigated what health-related beliefs teacher educators had before a Cooperative Planning intervention, how these developed throughout the intervention and how teacher educators’ opinions of Cooperative Planning can explain how their beliefs changed. Based on interviews and observations, we analysed teacher educators’ epistemic beliefs about health, that is, their general understanding of health, their beliefs about the health topic in physical education and physical education teacher education and their process-related beliefs about Cooperative Planning. The findings showed that teacher educators’ health-related beliefs were rather stable but could be challenged through Cooperative Planning. Epistemic beliefs about health remained, whereas more practice-related beliefs about the health topic in physical education and physical education teacher education changed in individual ways. A change in beliefs was more likely when the Cooperative Planning participants were open to change and when the Cooperative Planning offered opportunities to engage in concrete lesson planning.
Hapke, J., Töpfer, C. & Lohmann, J. (2021). Challenging German physical education teacher educators’ health-related beliefs through a cooperative planning process. Health Promotion International, 36 (S2), ii26-ii39. doi: 10.1093/heapro/daab163