Teaching outdoor and adventure activities: an investigation of a primary school physical education professional development p

in italics
) will be discussed. 

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Each child attending an Irish Primary School should receive 30 minutes 
active physical education each day.
According to the 1999 Curriculum 
one hour per week is the recommended time allocation.
A modern syllabus, which emphasises the importance of psychomotor 
skills among primary school children, should be published in 
consultation with teachers.
In 1999, the curriculum was launched and 
teachers were involved in consultations, but it took until 2006 for the 
Physical Education Curriculum (Government of Ireland, 1999b) to be 
implemented. 
Publish a handbook giving teachers of all ages and levels of experience 
practical guidelines for teaching physical education in all classes.
Alongside the curriculum was published the Teacher Guidelines 
(Government of Ireland, 1999c) to fulfil this role. In January 2006, the 
resource materials for teaching physical education (Primary Schools' 
Sports Initiative, 2006) were launched. The resource materials 
contained on a CD-rom were distributed to all schools and consist of 
lesson plans and resource materials for each strand for each class group 
aligned with the curriculum.
Provide a National Certificate Course with a minimum of 120 hours, 
which can be undertaken at pre-service and in-service levels.
No such 
course exists as yet. Only St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra offer a 
postgraduate certificate course consisting of four, twenty hour modules.
Provide local in-service courses staffed by competent and highly 
motivated tutors.
The Irish Primary Physical Education Association was
formed in 2002 and co-ordinate a number of In-service Physical 
Education Summer Course’s in conjunction with the Education Centres.
A number of Teacher Professional Communities (TPCs) in primary 
physical education are in existence (6 in 2011) and these TPC’s facilitate 
at least one workshop a term for teachers. 
Appoint a group of specialist advisors who will motivate and provide 
practical guidelines to teachers in their own schools on the teaching of 
physical education.
A group of 26 teachers were trained as tutors to 
‘mediate’ the Physical Education Curriculum (Government of Ireland, 
1999b) as part of national in-service from 2004-2006. Following this 

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two year role they were reduced to 13 tutors. These tutors continued to 
support teachers until 2010, though the number of tutors continued to 
decrease each year and job descriptions changed. Currently support 
provision is being re-designed by the newly formed Professional 
Development Service for Teachers (PDST). 
Cutbacks continue to inhibit the consolidation of school physical education with 
the Minister for Education cutting the annual physical education grant in 2002.
Although many positive statements were made during the eighties and nineties 
concerning the value of the subject, no major change in the position of the subject 
within the curriculum occurred (Duffy, 1997). Physical education, due to lack of 
government investment at many levels (for example, provision of equipment, facilities, 
professional development opportunities and research) has only progressed marginally 
from its position at the turn of the 20
th
century. 
In the early 1990’s the publication of two reports by the Primary Review Body 
and the Review Body on the Primary Curriculum saw the beginning of the next period 
of change in the Irish Primary Curriculum. The Report of the Review Body on the 
Primary Curriculum (Government of Ireland, 1990) on physical education stated that 
while the vast majority of inspectors found the physical education curriculum suitable, 
teachers found it unrealistic and felt that they required specialist knowledge. The 
reporting committee found that in the case of primary generalist teachers, they required 
detailed specification of aims and objectives of physical education. Teachers needed to 
know what skills, knowledge and attitudes were expected of the children in their 
classes. Teachers felt that practical guidelines to achieve these were also necessary as 
well as the appropriate resources and facilities to be made available in order to 
implement the new curriculum. An appropriate programme of pre- and in-service 
training was also highlighted as an area to be addressed with the implementation of a 
new curriculum, mainly due to the lack of confidence of teachers with the delivery of 
the subject. The report also recommended that the physical education time allocation in 
the Colleges of Education be increased so that newly qualified teachers felt more 
confident teaching physical education. The Review Body recommended that some level 
of specialisation among teachers should be encouraged and that each school should have 
at least one teacher with a particular interest and expertise in this area to help support 
the other teachers in the school. Another recommendation of the report was that 

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employment of specially qualified teachers who could service a number of schools 
would also be of benefit for safety reasons and because of the nature of the skills that 
are required in specialised forms of physical education. The similarities can be seen 
between these recommendations and those made over half a century previously. These 
recommendations led to the NCCA initiating revision of the curriculum in 1991. The 
draft curriculum was published in 1997 which brings us to the current situation with the 
launch of the Primary Curriculum in 1999 and the national rollout of the programmes 
spread over the following four to six years. The implementation date for physical 
education in primary schools was September 2006, seven years after its launch.
The curricular reforms, reviews and recommendations outlined above show both 
how far we have come in Ireland and yet how far we have still to go to ensure teachers 
are prepared to teach quality programmes of physical education. Educational reforms 
which did not include teachers in their design, or account for teacher professional 
development in their implementation have been shown to be unsuccessful and 
professional development opportunities which are not embedded in curricular reform 
also struggle to be successful. Teachers can resent reform when it is imposed on them 
and they feel neither part of or supported to implement the changes (Villegas-Reimers, 
2003). Although many of the reforms and recommendations outlined above involved 
teachers at certain stages, they were not fully sustained due to lack of financial 
investment in on-going support, time investment in professional development nor did 
they have a local focus.