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PETE-PS teachers‘ understandings about the sport teaching and learning in physical education are formed by socialisation processes. Prominent in this

socialisation of expectation of the form and function of sport teaching is the

‗apprenticeship of observation‘ (Lortie, 1975; see Chapter 1). Research has indicated that sport is a significant socialising agent in the choice to be a physical education teacher and in understanding what it means to be a physical education teacher (Capel, 2005; Green, 1998; Sofo & Curtner-Smith, 2010). Much of this understanding is arrived at by acculturating15 _{influences upon the teacher‘s biography away from,}

outside of, or before the professional socialisation of PETE.

The PETE-PS teachers‘ initial understanding of sport teaching in physical education was arrived at by acculturated experience. Perceptions related to the design, enactment of sport teaching were initially nested in experiences of physical education at school, school observation experiences as part of their university course work, and community sport/sport coaching interactions. An anticipated primacy of declarative content knowledge in sport teaching was apparent.

15Acculturation is the influence on the individual of interactions with significant people

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Prior to the intervention of the curriculum specialisation topic dealing with sport pedagogy through the lens of sport literacy the PETE-PS teachers appeared to view sport in physical education as consisting substantially of the technical skills of sport and how to progress or extend the development of those skills, and the rules of sport. While tactics were also commonly cited as knowledge integral to teaching students how to play a sport, there was no evidence in the responses of a

requirement for teachers to have deep understanding of sport in order to enact sport units of work. For example, this was typical of the comments articulating the

recognised knowledge base for sport: Abasic knowledge of the sport to enable them to plan a unit around this in relation to how to do the skills, how the game is played

(i.e. rules), tactics of the game (PETE-PS teacher comment, Survey 1).

The PETE-PS teachers used basic and good as the typical descriptors related to the depth of knowledge of sport required by physical education teachers. It could be speculated that this was also indicative of the expectations of the PETE-PS teachers about student learning in physical education sport settings. If only a ‗basic‘ or ‗good‘ knowledge of sport was expected to be able to teach sport it could be that they only expected a need to design ‗basic‘ or ‗good‘ sport experiences for students. However, one PETE-PS teacher‘s comment stood out as demonstrating a greater awareness of procedural knowledge, and for its greater expectations in relation to the depth of knowledge required by the teacher.

PE teachers require in-depth knowledge of the skills, rules and tactics that they wish to cover in each unit throughout the year - importantly

making connections between the units where necessary. [This] will

allow PE teachers to plan effectively i.e. taking into account the need to adapt their units depending upon what year level and ability group

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they are teaching and how to devise appropriate assessment

methods which meet their desired outcomes (PETE-PS teacher

comment, Survey 1).

This recognition was, however, atypical of the responses received.

The importance PETE-PS teachers initially place on content knowledge has been reported in other studies (Hayes et al., 2008; Herold & Waring, 2009). Hayes et al. (2008) recognised the dissonance between the conceptualisation of subject

knowledge as content knowledge by PETE-PS teachers and in-service teachers, and PETE broader conceptualisation of subject knowledge. In this study, recognition by PETE-PS teachers of sport teaching being informed by knowledge about sport as a socio-cultural or vocational practice was not evident in the data gathered.

The PETE-PS teachers regarded experience as a sport participant or player as essential in providing the knowledge for sport teaching. It was generally

considered that experience in a sport was essential in the design and enactment of sport teaching for quality learning. The challenge arising from this expectancy is that it is not possible for a PETE-PS teacher to experience every sport that could possibly be taught in a school during their PETE course work. While there are over 60 sports registered as members of SportSA (SportSA, 2010), there is no curriculum directive from the SACSA H&PE Curriculum Framework as to which sports to teach and there is no teacher registration requirement for physical education teachers to be

experienced in sport or sport education, as there is in some other states. The choice as to which sports and the curriculum ‗packaging‘ of sport experiences is left to local school and teacher decision making. However, the PETE-PS teachers indicated that there are sports commonly taught across secondary schools in South Australia. Over the journey of a PETE-PS university degree sport knowledge must be developed in

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other ways, or PETE-PS teachers must be provided with a tool or framework through which to acquire this knowledge.

Ennis (1995) asserted that the enacted curriculum of teachers is closely connected to pedagogical content knowledge. As the pedagogical content

knowledge of physical education teachers can be highly domain specific, due to the variability of experience with the sports they are likely to teach (Griffin et al., 1996), I argue that the opportunity to formulate a framework through which to interrogate specific sport knowledge is important in PETE. The results indicated that PETE-PS teachers were most confident with continuing with a sport literacy approach with sports they were familiar with. Therefore, a constraint on the development of a teacher‘s ability to implement a progressive curriculum approach, like sport literacy, will be the range of sports a teacher has been pedagogically exposed to during initial PETE. The results of this study lend support to the suggestion that sport pedagogical content knowledge is a constraint upon progressive sport teaching for the PETE-PS and in-service teacher.

Griffin et al. (1996) explained the influential nature of content knowledge for TGfU informed physical education teaching. Inexperience or a lack of theoretical and applied exposure to a tactical emphasis across a range of sports was recognised as a barrier to the use of TGfU iterations by teachers. Solomon et al. (1991) asserted the importance of teacher content knowledge in physical education because of its deterministic influence on the effectiveness of teacher analysis of student

performance and the quality of corrective feedback. They also reported that physical education teachers with high content knowledge interacted more with students about their learning and that skill improvements were likely to be more rapid for students who had a high content knowledge teacher. Knowledge across a range of sports and

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sport categories was frequently cited as a major part of the content knowledge of physical education teachers by the PETE-PS teachers when questioned about the knowledge domains informing physical education teaching and, the content of secondary physical education.

It was evident that the domain (sport) specific content knowledge that would inform the sport literacy of PETE-PS teachers for unfamiliar sports was constrained by the limitation of university course work experiences. The time constraints on university course work and the nature of the university teacher education program where learning is ‗packaged‘ into discrete ‗boxes‘ called topics was positioned as problematic from the PETE-PS teacher perspective. The PETE-PS teachers

indicated that they had not been exposed to enough sport experiences during their course work because of the curriculum design and content emphasis of their PETE program. This feeling was evident in both the survey results and the PTP4 interview results. For example:

I really believe that we have not done anywhere near the amount of practical we should have. For us to have a unit plan and at least a session or a block of practical experience for most sports, so that we feel confident and we have the knowledge of skills, rules, safety and understanding of the game to deliver a range of sports to students (PETE-PS teacher, comment, Survey 1).