Narrative Accounts of US Teachers' Collaborative Curriculum Making in A Physical Education Department

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Narrative accounts of US teachers' collaborative curriculum

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Article in Sport Education and Society · December 2013

DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2013.774271
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Narrative accounts of US teachers'

collaborative curriculum making in a
physical education department
a b
JeongAe You & Cheryl J. Craig
a
College of Education, Chung-Ang University, Korea
b
College of Education, University of Houston, TX, USA
Published online: 04 Apr 2013.
To cite this article: JeongAe You & Cheryl J. Craig , Sport, Education and Society (2013): Narrative
accounts of US teachers' collaborative curriculum making in a physical education department,
Sport, Education and Society, DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2013.774271
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Sport, Education and Society, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2013.774271
Narrative accounts of US teachers’

collaborative curriculum making in a
physical education department
JeongAe Youa* and Cheryl J. Craigb
Downloaded by [University of Houston], [Cheryl J. Craig] at 10:03 07 October 2013
a
College of Education, Chung-Ang University, Korea; bCollege of Education, University of
Houston, TX, USA
Through the use of narrative inquiry, this research study explores the collaborative curriculum
making experiences of six teachers (three males; three females) in one physical education (PE)
department in an urban middle school in the U.S. Collaboration; as defined in this work, this has to
do with teachers’ voluntary interactions and their shared decision making in support of common
goals. Where curriculum making is concerned, it refers to interactions between and among the
four commonplaces of curriculum (teacher, learner, subject matter, milieu). The paper features
the perspectives of the department head (female), experienced teachers (male and female) and
teachers new to the profession (male and female). The narrative accounts of the individual teachers
are set against the backdrop of the PE department with which they identify and within the
storied history of the school in which they work. The story constellations representational form
conveys the interrelatedness of the narratives and instantiates the teachers’ experiences of
collaborative curriculum making. In the final analysis, this research enterprise makes a major
contribution to the study of PE as well as to education generally. To date, no inquiries have focused
on the collaborative curriculum making of teachers lodged in a PE department in one school
context, despite collaborative curriculum making most closely reflecting how PE teachers typically
approach the teaching task due to shared classrooms/gymnasiums/fields and the communal use of
equipment.
Keywords: Collaboration; Teachers as curriculum makers; Curriculum making; Physical

education; Narrative inquiry
Collaboration or a collaborative approach is not new in education and or in physical

education (PE) (Chen, Cone, & Cone, 2007; Doppenberg, Baks, & den Brok, 2012;
Voogt, 2011; Zellermayer, 1997). Collaboration has largely been viewed as beneficial
for teachers and students. Its most significant advantage is that it serves as a vehicle
to bring people with diverse backgrounds and interests together to share knowledge
and skills that generate quality teaching and learning at all school levels (Thousand,
Villa, & Nevin, 2006). In general, collaborative research and practices in education
have involved several entities and combinations such as shared work between
universities and schools, between general education and special education, and
*Corresponding author. J. You, Department of Physical Education, College of Education, Chung-

Ang University, 221 Heukseok-dong, Dongjak-gu, Seoul 156-756, Korea. Email: jayou@cau.ac.kr
# 2013 Taylor & Francis

2 J. You and C. J. Craig
between one discipline and another. Most studies about collaboration in education
and PE to this point in time have focused on the types of collaborative relationships,
roles and obstacles to successful collaborations (i.e., Boudah, Schumaher, &
Deshler, 1997; Chen et al., 2007; Mitchell, 1997; Sharpe, Lounsbery, & Templin,
1997; Wallace, Anderson, & Bartholomay, 2002).
When we refer to collaboration in this work, we mean ‘. . . a style [of] direct
interaction between at least two coequal parties voluntarily engaged in shared
decision making as they work toward a common goal’ (Cook & Friend, 1991, p. 25).
In this sense, collaboration is not merely congenial interaction among two parties.
For genuine collaboration to occur, an egalitarian culture of cooperation and
collegiality as well as shared purposes, planning and communication is prerequisite
(Chen et al., 2007; Hernández & Brendefur, 2003; Nevin, Thousand, & Villa, 2009;
Sharpe et al., 1997). Wallace et al. (2002), for example, have named some positive
elements that facilitate collaboration: (a) a shared vision for student learning and
teaching, (b) an enduring and shared commitment to collaboration, (c) school
communities of caring, (d) frequent, extended and positive interactions between
teachers and administration, and administrative leadership and power sharing. Just
as there are positive elements associated with the success of collaboration, there are
also elements related to the failure of successful collaborations. Mitchell (1997) has
brought to the forefront for discussion such barriers as the norm of individualism in
teaching, the absence of a shared professional identity and teachers’ differing
pedagogical orientations. Other barriers to increased collaboration impede suppor-
tive school cultures with a variety of structural conditions: larger schools, schools
with more specialized faculty members and schools with traditional governance
arrangements in which teachers do not participate in school decision making. These
conditions are the result of a lack of scheduled planning time, few professional
development opportunities and inflexible leadership. Such constraints embedded in
school milieus stymie collaborative efforts (Mitchell, 1997).
To date, collaborative approaches in the area of PE have been explored among PE
teachers and classroom teachers (Chen et al., 2007; Cone, Werner, Cone, & Woods,
1998; Placek, 2003; Stevens, 1994) and schools and universities (Martinek &
Schempp, 1988; Sharpe, Bahls, Wolfe, Seagren, Brown, Deibler, 1994; Sharpe et al.,
1997). Little of what has been written about collaboration among PE teachers
pertains to a PE department within a single school setting. In particular, how
collaborative curriculum making plays out in one department/school context has not
been addressed nor has the meaning it holds for teachers as individuals and members
of a school team been explored. In fact, PE as a school subject matter is one of the
unique curricular areas where most PE teachers in a school milieu necessarily share
space, facilities, equipment, resources, materials, etc. Even when the characteristics
of quality PE are known, little is known of collaborative work among PE teachers in
the same school or within the same department. In a sense, collaborative curriculum
making rather than individual curriculum making prevails in the PE subject area due
to shared classrooms/gymnasiums/fields and communal use of equipment. Put
Narrative accounts of US teachers’ collaborative curriculum making 3
differently, collaborative curriculum making reflects how PE teachers characteristi-

cally engage in their work.
This study explores the meaning of collaborative curriculum making and themes
associated with collaborative curriculum making in PE. In particular, this work tries
to identify perspectives of individual teachers concerning curriculum making,
depending on his or her positioning, and then to address how these different
perspectives on curriculum making might be respected and aligned within a PE
department. The study revolves around a group of diverse PE teachers (three
females; three males) who constituted one PE department in one urban middle
school in the mid-southern USA and how these individual teachers, as members of
the aforementioned department, collaborated and explored the pedagogical implica-
tions of shared curriculum making. In short, differences between and among PE
teachers’ conceptions of collaborative curriculum making based on their positioning
in the school milieu are featured. After that, several overarching themes are
unpacked. All in all, it is important to address why collaborative curriculum making
in PE is necessary and what it means to individual teachers in the same school/
department setting. Obviously, school milieus and department milieus shape and are
shaped by the contributions of each school/department member. Thus, under-
standing the points of view of individual PE faculty is significant because the insider
view shows how teachers’ personal ‘stories to live by’ (Craig, 2013)*their identities
understood in narrative terms*contribute to collaborative ‘stories to live by’ and
instantiate how collaborative curriculum making in one school/department milieu is
individually/collectively nurtured and sustained.
As such, this research endeavor addresses the needs of the pedagogical community
as well as the research community. For teachers, the advantages and challenges of
collaborative curriculum making are examined. For researchers, the study of
individual teachers’ perspective and roles in collaborative curriculum making is a
new topic in the PE discipline and in education generally, despite collaborative
curriculum making being a widespread phenomenon among PE teachers.
Theoretical roots
Education, said John Dewey (1938), is experience and ongoing experience is life. In
order to study how PE teachers collaborate with one another, their personal and
shared experiences need to be captured as their lives unfurl within the context of a
PE department in a single school setting. To do so, three qualities of experience need
to be attended to: continuity, interaction and situation (Dewey, 1938). In Dewey’s
view, each person lives within his/her own continuity of experience filled with
individual past memories, present actions and future intentions. This individual
continuity is always in interaction with social and physical environments and present
in collaborative situations that emerge. While meaning is continually constructed by
each individual based on his/her continuity of experience, this construction is
ultimately negotiated within a social context. In Dewey’s (1938) words:
As an individual passes from one situation to another, his world, his environment,
expands or contracts. He does not find himself living in another world but in a
different part or aspect of one and the same world. What he has learned in the way
of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding
and dealing effectively with the situations which follow. The process goes on as long
as life and learning continues (p. 44).
Dewey’s insights particularly reflect what took place with the six teachers who
shared common curriculum making experiences in the same department context
within the same school milieu during the same period of time.
Furthermore, images that teachers hold and express in their work are relevant to
this study. On the one hand, there is the dominant, technocratic image of teachers as
curriculum implementers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992), the image policymakers
(Lawson, 2013) and theoreticians have historically expected of them. With this
image, the teacher merely acts as a conduit (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Craig,
2002) through who educational mandates flow. An agent of the state, s/he is a
‘technician, consumer, receiver, transmitter, and implementer of other people’s
knowledge’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 16). S/he operates according to the
dictates that others inject into the educational system. Change through injection
(Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) means that teachers’ outputs are subject to the inputs
(prescriptions) of policymakers and administrators, those historically positioned
above them in the educational hierarchy. On the other hand, a second image of
teachers also exists: that of teachers as curriculum makers (Clandinin & Connelly,
1992; Craig & Ross, 2008). In this view, teachers are ‘agents of education . . . in its
entirety’ (Schwab, 1954/1978, p. 128). They are ‘the fountainhead of . . . curriculum
decision[s],’ as Schwab (Schwab, 1983, p. 24) put it, who ‘must be involved in
debate, deliberation and decision making about what and how to teach’ (Schwab,
1983, p. 245, italics in original). The image of teacher as curriculum maker
acknowledges the primacy of teachers in organizing, planning and orchestrating
learning because only teachers are positioned at the nexus of the curriculum
exchange and meet students face-to-face. Instead of being an inert prescriptive
document controlled by others (Aoki, 1990) (as was the case in the first scenario),
curriculum, in this second scenario, is what becomes instantiated when teaching and
learning fuse. In other words, curriculum is what becomes lived in the context of
people’s lives (Downey & Clandinin, 2010). As Setterfield (2006) put it, ‘human
lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others . . . Its
impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole’ (Setterfield,
2006, p. 58). This study of collaborative curriculum making in PE pays attention to
the parts*the practices and understandings of six individual PE teachers*while
spotlighting the whole*the PE department of one urban middle school in the USA.
Four commonplaces of curriculum making (Schwab, 1971) comprise the back-
drop of this study (see Figure 1).
In Figure 1, the teacher commonplace, the six teachers in one PE department on
one campus are positioned. In the learner commonplace, the diverse 1500 middle
school students are located because the six teachers collectively instruct all of them.
Figure 1. Four commonplace of curriculum making
The officially mandated PE curriculum constitutes the subject matter commonplace.

International Baccalaureate (IB) documents also are included in the aforementioned
commonplace because the campus participating in the study is an approved
International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IBMYP) World School. Milieu
is the fourth commonplace. In this work, milieu mainly refers to the PE department
within the school context. However, the larger backdrop of global competition is also
present as increased attention is paid to tested subject areas at the expense of non-
tested subjects like PE, which is not included in high status international comparison
tests. With milieu, the idea of dictates from out-of-classroom places spilling over and
shaping what happens in in-classroom places (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Craig,
1995a) emerges. Also with milieu, the notion of in-classroom and out-of-classroom
places comprising a ‘professional knowledge landscape’ of a school bubbles to the
surface. Such a landscape involves person, places and things, all of which are in
relationship. Professional knowledge landscapes, as described by Clandinin and
Connelly, are both ‘intellectual and moral’ places (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, p. 5).
The final pieces of this article’s conceptual frame have to do with teachers’
narrative authority (Olson, 1995; Olson & Craig, 2001), teachers’ personal practical
knowledge, their knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b, 1995c, 2001) and their
identities in the making. Narrative authority, a term coined by Olson (1995; Craig &
Olson, 2002), explains how teachers develop their knowledge transactionally. The
concept of narrative authority offers an alternative to the dominant authority of
positivism (Tom & Valli, 1990) that separates the knower and the known (Dewey &
Bentley, 1949). The narrative authority conceptualization provides justification for
teachers telling and re-telling their stories of experience (Connelly & Clandinin,
1990) individually and collectively, because it is the medium through which teacher
knowledge is accessed and communicated. The concept of teachers’ narrative
authority upholds the personal practical view of knowledge, which is:
. . . in a person’s experience, in the person’s present mind and body, and in the
person’s future plans and actions . . . It is knowledge that reflects the individual’s
prior knowledge and acknowledges the contextual nature of the teacher’s knowl-
edge. It is a kind of knowledge, carved out of, and shaped by, situations: knowledge
that is constructed and reconstructed as we live out our stories and retell and relive
them through the process of reflection (Clandinin, 1992, p. 125).
As for knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b, 1995c, 2007), they are the places
where teachers negotiate the meaning of their lived experiences and the sites where
personal meaning is made public and shared. In this work, teachers lodged in the
same PE department develop and express the narrative authority of their personal
practical knowledge in the company of fellow knowers who, in this case, are peers
teaching the same content area in the same school setting. Knowledge is mediated
through the narrative authority of the members of the PE department as they
participate in relational conversations involving dialogue, analysis and reflection. The
narrative authority of individual educators both enhances and constrains the
narrative authority of other members of teachers’ knowledge communities (Craig,
2004; Olson, 1995; Olson & Craig, 2005). In a nutshell, teachers’ communities of
knowing are:
. . . safe, storytelling places where educators narrate the rawness of their experiences,
negotiate meaning, and authorize their own and others’ interpretations of
situations. They take shape around commonplaces of experience (Lane, 1988) as
opposed to around bureaucratic and hierarchical relations that declare who knows,
what should be known, and what constitutes ‘good teaching’ and ‘good schools’
(Clandinin & Connelly, 1996). (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 178).
Intertwined with teachers’ narrative authority and their communities of knowing
are their ‘stories to live by’*their identities expressed in the narrative vernacular, as
earlier explained. Because teachers’ knowledge is held and expressed in their
professional knowledge landscapes (in this case, in a PE department in an American
middle school), their ‘stories to live by’ are unavoidably affected by the responses
their stories receive from others. Like other human beings, ‘multiple I’s’ (Cooper &
Olson, 1996) arising from ‘multiple selves’ (Orland-Barak & Makit, 2011) inform
teachers’ in situ knowing. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that ‘identity is formed
and reformed by the stories we tell and which we draw upon in our communications
with others’ (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004, p. 123).
Having presented the literature review that scaffolds this study of collaborative
curriculum making, we now launch into a discussion of our research methodology.
Research method
Overview of narrative inquiry
Narrative inquiry is the research approach we employ in this work. We chose this
method because ‘. . . narrative inquiry [is] a way to study experience . . . narrative is
the closest we can come to experience’ (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 188) and, in
our case, collaborative experience, which is the centerpiece of our investigation. Hence,
narrative serves as both method and form (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) in this
work. Broadly speaking, we use narrative inquiry to unearth stories of teachers in
relationship as we, as researchers, simultaneously develop interpersonal, context-
based relationships with them (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).
The maze of narratives present on the professional knowledge landscapes of
schools becomes evident when the idea of all people individually authoring stories of
experience is accompanied by the notion of all people serving as characters in one
another’s experiential, context-bound stories (MacIntyre, 1981). Crites (1975)
understood stories of experience as being situated inside one another like ‘nests of
boxes.’ More recently, Funk (1988) asserted that ‘human beings cannot get outside
of story’ (p. xxi).
Story constellations approach

These important considerations caused us to favor presenting our participant
teachers’ stories of collaborative curriculum making as a story constellation (Craig,
2007). The story constellations’ representational form seemed highly appropriate to
this research endeavor because we do not have a single narrative to tell. Rather, we
have a ‘plethora of stories in fact, both stories within us, and stories we are, in turn,
within’ (Randall, 1995, p. 185). Thus, we share a cluster of stories in this work. All of
these narratives are nested in the same subject area department in the same school
setting and occurred during the same juncture of time.
Figure 2. Story constellabtions of Physical Education Department

We explain further through focusing readers’ attention on Figure 2. Against the

local, national and international backdrop of society, the professional knowledge
landscape of T.P. Yaeger Middle School is located. Within T.P. Yaeger, we have the
PE department, the organizational sub-group with which the teachers identify and
within which they interact. Inside the department, we have its members organized
according to their positions/years of experience: Department Head (Suzie);
experienced teachers (Helen, Jason and Roberto) and novice teachers (Anne and
J.D.). Through the story constellations representational form, we hope to present life
as it unfurled in the department and school context without flattening or dismissing
teachers’ individual and collective stories of experiences.
Tools of analysis
To provide a sense of how the teachers’ lived experiences unfolded in their
department and school context, we pay close attention to the three-dimensional
narrative inquiry space defined by Clandinin and Connelly (2000), an idea which
builds on Dewey’s (1938) scholarship. The three-dimensional space includes the
temporal (pastpresentfuture), the personal and social (interaction) and the
contextual (situation and place). In the story constellation we present later in this
work, we have included these three dimensions of the narrative inquiry life space in
parentheses so that readers can better understand the inner workings of our method.
These important qualities, mutually interacting with one another, pervade the nested
stories we unpack. In addition, three interpretative devices further aid us in the
process: broadening, burrowing and storying and re-storying (Craig, You, & Oh,
2012).
Broadening is the research tool we use to situate teachers’ personal stories in
context. As Schwab (1954/1978) informed us, the milieu within which teachers’
experiences take shape never ends. Hence, what becomes shared about context is
what we, as researchers in relationship with our research participants, deem to be of
most importance. Where burrowing is concerned, it is an interpretative device we use
to hone in on the particular. We burrow into the teachers’ narratives in order to make
visible ‘moment-by-moment relationships and happenings on the landscape’
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 76). As for storying and restorying, we employ it
as an analytical tool to show ‘changing connections and differing orderings at
different times’ (Schwab, 1969, p. 10, italics in original).
Trustworthiness of research accounts

As we prepared this article capturing teachers’ experiences in a PE department in
one school context in the mid-southern USA, the aforementioned tools of analysis*
broadening, burrowing, and storying and restorying*were used to transition the
field texts we gathered (participant observations notes of lessons, transcripts of
interviews, units of study, archival data, videotapes of classes on the athletic field and
of a field study trip), into research texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Unlike
quantitative research methods, narrative inquiry, as a form of a qualitative research
method, does not seek capital ‘T’ Truth as is the case in the quantitative research
tradition. Rather, narrative inquiry’s research texts convey truth-likeness: a sense of
what is ‘true for now’ (Bruner, 1987). Because our study involves multiple teachers
and approaches them as independent agents/units of analysis, multiperspectival
viewpoints emerge. Field texts arising from multiple sources of evidence are then
triangulated across a continuum of time for individual research participants.
‘Narrative resonances’ (Conle, 1996) between and among research participants
are also sought. While storied evidence presented in one participant’s account does
not prove the account of another research participant, it does add heft (Geertz,
1983) or validity (Mishler, 1990) (as understood narratively) to the story constella-
tion and increases its trustworthiness (Mishler, 1990). On the whole, narrative
inquiry research privileges narrative truth (Spence, 1986) in that it follows where the
teachers’ stories lead (Olson, 2000b) rather than being driven by historical fact
finding. At the same time, we do not mean to suggest that narrative inquirers are
oblivious to historical truth (Spence, 1986). Time-event correspondence is critically
important to us, too. However, we enter our work narratively rather than historically
and present our research texts narratively rather than historically.
To this point in time, we have reviewed the pertinent literature, introduced our
research method and justified its use. We now present a story constellation of
collaborative curriculum making as experienced by our six research participants who
were fellow teachers in the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School at the time
of our study.
A story constellation of collaborative curriculum making in physical

education
In the following section, a series of multiperspectival stories are introduced like ‘nests
of boxes.’ We begin with an overarching narrative of T.P. Yaeger Middle School and
follow it with a storied account of the PE department lodged in the T.P. Yaeger
school milieu. Neither would exist without our teacher participants. Both are
abstractions which require human presence and interactions to exist. After that,
stories from our participating urban middle school teachers breathe their flesh-and-
blood experiences into the story constellation and illuminate why collaborative
curriculum making is necessary in PE.
T.P. Yaeger Middle School narrative

When one physically enters T.P. Yaeger Middle School (place), international flags
welcome guests on the first floor and banners of recent state and national honors are
featured in the second floor hallways. Lining the walls on both levels are showcases of
sterling silver sports prizes awarded alumni since 1926, the year the building was
opened (temporality). In fact, the development of T.P. Yaeger as a middle school

campus patterns the growth of the fourth largest city in the USA. Advertised in the
early years as being located on the city’s ‘wooded edge,’ Yaeger currently sits on the
longest street in Texas, a short distance from the business center. Originally slated to
be the high school for the upper class neighborhood surrounding it and given that
story of school (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996), the campus never expanded beyond
the middle grades. History interfered with its expansion. The federally forced
desegregation of the city’s public schools resulted in ‘white flight’ to the suburbs and
a mass exodus of sectors of the city population to private schools (sociality). To

manage the social and political upheaval of the 1970s (situation), the school district,
supported by the US Department of Education, then gave Yaeger Middle School a
different plotline. It would be a magnet school for gifted-and-talented students. This
resulted in qualified youth of all races and from all socio-economic backgrounds
attending the campus. It also ensured that the students learning alongside the
remaining upper crust neighborhood children were ‘the brightest and best’ that the
city had to offer (sociality). The campus’s later acceptance as an IBMYP World
School (temporality) further increased its academic stature and enhanced its
program offerings (situation).
The introduction of African American youth to Yaeger initially set in motion the
diversity and ethnicity for which the current campus is widely known. Diplomats
from foreign countries frequently elect to send their children to Yaeger (sociality).
One of the school’s best-kept secrets is that there is more diversity (both ethnic and
economic) present among students enrolled in the regular academic program than in
the gifted-and-talented strand, which currently has a White dominant population. A
state court order*in the aftermath of desegregation (temporality)*initially dis-
rupted that development. However, time intervened*and so did new legislation.
Recently, more weight has been given to the strength of students’ individual files than
the formulaic filling of school slots based on predetermined racial/ethnic quotas
(place and situation).
Perhaps an even larger of Yaeger’s secrets is the fact that the PE program at Yaeger
has integrated students across gender, racial groups and socio-economic levels since
desegregation occurred in the state’s public schools. Only in PE classes did boys and
girls*African American, Hispanics, Whites and Others; and those of low, middle
and high socio-economic levels*mix. Only in PE did students encounter youth
enrolled in programs (i.e., regular academic, English as a second language, and gifted
and talented) other than their own (interaction). It is little wonder then that the PE
department members so vigorously supported guided study groups (GSGs) and the
creation of cross-program area guidance periods at Yaeger in 2005. To the PE
teachers’ way of thinking, this would awaken all students and teachers to the broad
spectrum of youths attending Yaeger*not just those enrolled in one’s specialized
program area (sociality). Having shared this broad sweep of T.P. Yaeger’s social-
historical backdrop (temporality, sociality, situation and place), we now introduce
the PE department, which consists of six members.
Physical education department narrative

In reality, the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School in the mid-southern USA
does not physically exist (place). Rather, the department is a contrived entity, like all
of Yaeger’s other departments. It is a phenomenon to which human qualities have
been ascribed (situation). In actuality, the PE department defines the work of a
particular sub-group of T.P. Yaeger teachers. The particular teachers instruct the
same content area (PE) to the campus’s student population. The identification of
these teachers with the school’s PE department distinguishes their work from the
work of other faculty on campus. It also physically partitions their work from others
in the building (situation). Teachers in the PE department use the health room, the
weight room, the gymnasium and the field (as well as makeshift places in the library,
cafeteria and hallways) as their indoor/outdoor ‘classrooms’ (place). It is in these
spaces that teaching and learning (interaction) in the PE discipline occur.
Six people (sociality) comprise the PE department (place): three males and three
females. The department is led by Suzie, a White female teacher, who hails from a
northern state and has taught in the particular mid-southern school district at the
elementary and middle school levels for thirty years. Twenty-two of those years have
been spent at Yaeger (temporality). Joining Suzie are two experienced teachers, both
of whom are White and have 17 years of experience: Helen and Jason. Also hailing
from a northern state, Helen has taught at the elementary and middle school levels as
well as at an alternate high school that did not have a full-fledged sports program.
Jason has additionally taught from K-12 with his high school experiences unfolding
at a private faith-based campus. As for Roberto, the second male teacher, he is a
native Texan like Jason. Jason comes from a local family of teachers whereas Roberto,
a Hispanic, hails from a city bordering Mexico. Roberto has eight years of prior
teaching experience in an elementary school. Completing the roster of teachers at
Yaeger are Anne and J.D. Anne, a White female who is a graduate of a local, private
university, has approximately five years of experiences. She attended private schools
throughout her academic career and was coached by Jason when she attended a
local, faith-based private high school. J.D. is also a novice teacher. Like Anne,
Roberto and Jason, he is a native Texan. An African American, J.D. also reflects the
diversity present in the American metropolis having no racial majority. Of all of the
members of the faculty in the PE department, J.D. has the least years of experience
and is most cautious about participating in the research study (temporality). His
alma mater is the same university from which Roberto graduated in kinesiology and
at which one of the authors (Cheryl Craig) teaches. Together, Suzie, Helen, Jason,
Roberto, Anne and J.D. form T.P. Yaeger’s PE department (situation and ‘place’).
Department head’s story: curriculum making embedded in/synonymous

with department growth
Suzie who is Yaeger’s PE department head remains energetic and dynamic, despite
having taught for over 30 years (temporality). She is a doer who likes to initiate and
experiment with new ideas in Yaeger’s PE department. During her tenure at

T.P. Yaeger Middle School, she has been critically important to the evolution of PE
at Yaeger. She has been involved in fund raising, promoting innovative curriculum,
celebrating diversity, developing respect toward different teaching styles and creating
schedule changes. In addition, she has championed the importance of professional
learning and a constructive department culture (situation and ‘place’). Suzie’s
approach is evident in her explanation below:
But everybody [every physical education teacher] I try to have them at time in the
beginning of the year I say, ‘‘Okay, I want you to find a new game, a new activity,
and let’s just try it out a GSG [Guided Study Group] with us, just us and see if it
will work.’’ And then we’ll try it with our class once we all knew the rule know the
rules we’ll try it out. Some are successful, some are not. You know, that’s the way it
goes. So we see if the kids like it. So that’s basically and that’s why I like being in the
department, because I get to try new things. I mean, I feel like I’m never every going
to stop learning.
On the basis of her previous experience of writing district curriculum documents, she
also leads a school curriculum making project of her own at Yaeger through
mentoring and working alongside the other teachers in the PE department. Drawing
from these experiences, she tries to facilitate collaborative curriculum making
(interaction). She encourages the enactment of a variety of ideas in a department
experiencing a lack of equipment and limited space both in the building and on the
athletic field (situation and ‘place’). For example, the department has recently
initiated some new PE practices (e.g., ‘fishing trip,’ ‘mini-Olympic game,’ ‘orienteer-
ing’ etc.) as well as the concept of each PE teacher instructing only one grade of
students. This has resulted in Suzie teaching eighth grade youth for several
consecutive years and her developing a high level of expertise in working with that
particular age group of students. In addition, the department has received successful
evaluative feedback from students and other teachers in the school milieu
(interaction and place). At a department meeting, Suzie willingly shared positive
responses from students and teachers alike. It seems most students were satisfied and
wanted the PE program to continue in its present state in future years (temporality).
These sources of evidence formed reasons why she favored collaborative curriculum
making among department members (interaction). When Suzie became head of the
PE department, it was not in a good state of affairs due to a lack of administrative
support, a shortage of funding and worn/missing equipment despite the school’s
stellar reputation in the school district (situation). At the same time, she felt
challenged by the circumstance in which she found herself and has tried to change it
every year because she feels a pressing need to be accountable as department head.
As the leader of the department, she has held that vision and experienced many
things coming to fruition, as she states below:
That’s there’s been so many things that I’ve done that I’ve been proud of, you
know, as far as the field work and safety equipment that I’ve got here and all the
equipment here, and getting the program up top notch. I wouldn’t want to see it
disappear. I want it to continue growing. I want it to, you know-this is just the
beginning. I want it to even grow bigger.
Having a vision and sharing it with other teachers in a department (interaction)
has helped Suzie to overcome various obstacles she has faced as a Yaeger department
head (situation and place). In fact, she has struggled with several challenges such as
administrative workload, inequitable budget allotment and less-than-positive rapport
among colleagues at her school (situation and interactions). Moreover, role conflicts
exist between the PE department and the athletic department, and faculty members’
dual roles as teachers and coaches at the school (situation and interactions). In a
sense, Suzie understands that collaborative curriculum making is not learning from,
but learning with. From her story, we learn that she has created a learning
partnership with her colleagues and that they adhere to the same goals and relate
to them in their educational activities (interactions and situation). That is, as a
department head, she views curriculum making as being embedded in and
synonymous with department growth. This has resulted in the ongoing professional
development of all department members (temporality, sociality, situation and place)
and a sterling reputation for the department.
Experienced teachers’ stories: curriculum making on a contested terrain

The PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School (place) has three experienced
teachers: Helen, Jason and Roberto. Each teacher has his or her own unique teaching
philosophy and style. First, Helen is quick to discern the differentiated role between
athletics and PE. The former is for those who are talented and very competitive, she
tells us, and the latter is a place where there is a need to engage in physical activity
while having fun (situation and ‘place’). Due to Helen’s particular perspective on PE,
her classes involve a variety of atypical experiences in the larger PE scheme of things.
First of all, she thinks PE is a school subject (a discipline), not recess time (play). For
this reason, she has her students bring notebooks to PE class like other tested subject
areas because she believes her class has intellectual as well as physical and
psychological value (situation and interactions). From multiple sources of evidence
(field notes and videotapes) gathered in Helen’s classes, it is repeatedly evident that
her students brought P.E notebooks to class daily and that they had time to
reflectively write what they have learned and experienced through engaging in
physical activities. However, the use of the PE notebooks was not welcomed by most
school faculty (some PE teachers and some general program teachers as well)
(situation and interaction). The main concern was that students in PE classes might
be less active due to thinking and writing in their PE notebooks as opposed to
actively participating in nonstop physical activities during class time. However,
Helen is of a different mindset. She is confident that the PE notebooks promote
students’ learning in PE through facilitating their understanding and thinking about
the physical activities in which they engage. She asserts that movement without
understanding and reflection is ‘meaningless.’ In addition, she likes to showcase
activities that are considered ‘nontraditional sports’ in her classes. For example, she
has selected ‘orienteering’ and ‘fishing’ as part of the PE curriculum because they
emphasize inquiry-oriented movement, team-based problem solving, cooperative
learning, life-skill development, etc. (situation and interaction).
Helen’s personal story is interesting in that she quit the profession after 14 years of
teaching to run her own business (temporality). However, she returned to teaching
after an ex-student* and ‘not a particularly good one, at that’*reminded her that
teaching is her calling*‘her gift’*in life (interaction). This re-awakened the passion
Helen has for teaching PE and spurred her ongoing sharing of her teaching philosophy
with other teachers (situation and interaction). One of her most significant
contributions is her serving as a ‘mentor’ to J.D., a beginning PE teacher. Despite
her never teaching J.D. as a student or even having been officially assigned J.D. as a
mentee, Helen has enthusiastically accepted her informal mentorship role (interac-
tion). Of J.D.’s and her shared interactions (sociality), Helen had the following to say:
Helen: Oh, he’s great. You know, he comes back with ideas, you know, he shares
them with me and tries it. He liked what he saw the kids doing with that they were
on teams. And someone
Researcher: Uh-huh, so he encouraged you to do it.
Helen: Yeah, And I know if J.D. and I had our way, whoever was the strongest-we
would always team teach together if we had our way. And whoever was the strongest
would actually be the lead of that.
Researcher: Ah, you I wondered about that.
Helen: Cause in football he would be, definitely the lead.
Researcher: Yes.
Helen: That’s his passion. That’s his background.
Researcher: Right, it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Helen: And working with him being so much younger, he gives me

different perspectives, you know. When you’re 51, you have a totally
Researcher: Yeah, different perspectives.

The second experienced teacher in Yaeger’s PE department (place) is Jason who
expects and prefers to engage in team work with fellow teachers in the department
(interaction and situation). After coming to Yaeger, he became more open-minded
about how PE could be lived:
I think that’s great, because I’ve become- I think I’ve tried to become more on the
creative side. I’ve had to when I first started it was more traditional, this, this, this.
And now I have opened my mind after all these years, and I see different activities
and different things I can do. I can do more than that [the traditional approach].
In fact, Suzie, the department head, sets the curriculum schedule for the other
teachers. Thus, every three weeks, each teacher does a different activity. Jason
follows the general sequence, but he acknowledges that he has the freedom to teach
in his own way (situation and interaction). That is, he leads his classes in the
particular content area and bases his pedagogy on what he believes is most
appropriate for the middle school students he teaches (interaction). As for the
department, Jason points out that teachers’ ‘listening to one another’ is the most
important thing (interaction). He confesses that it is amazing how the department
(place) runs smoothly despite the dilemmas, issues and obstacles they face
(situation). For example, the small space in which a big PE program is run presents
challenges for all six teachers in the department. At the same time, Jason marvels at
how they cope. He says, ‘you know, and it’s what we do here is I just scratch my head
a lot of times going home thinking ‘‘how do we do it?’’ . . . It’s just incredible with one
gym at a school’ (temporality, sociality, situation and place). For Jason, the other
example of collaboration is his ‘team teaching’ with Anne who was his former
student at his past high school and is presently one of the beginning teachers in his
department (temporality, place and interaction). For three years, Jason and Anne
have taught seventh graders collaboratively. This team teaching arrangement
between an experienced teacher (Jason) and a beginning teacher (Anne) has involved
the development of several Grade 7 units of study, the creation of joint teaching
materials, the sharing of a common ‘classroom’ space and the co-teaching of
mutually planned lessons (interaction and situation).
Yaeger’s third experienced PE teacher is Roberto. He left the elementary school
where he previously worked because he sought coaching experience (temporality).
Roberto is fun loving and enjoys being the center of attention. He is also passionate
and talks a great deal about his teaching. Because of his outgoing personality, he
frequently discusses what his students do in class. In addition to recognizing different
teaching styles among teachers, he distinguishes different learning styles among the
students assigned to him. He believes the students appreciate the way different
teachers act (interaction). Sometimes, Roberto’s comments are misinterpreted by
others, but most of the teachers understand his words and actions. One of his
colleagues, Anne, said, ‘I don’t think [his approach is] aggressive. I think it’s just that
he has to defend himself all the time’ (interaction, situation). Like other teachers in
the department, Roberto also has a positive outlook on the diverse teaching
approaches used by the six teachers, and tries to work collaboratively with them.
He said, ‘The majority of the time (we always, of course, we’re going to have our
disagreements) . . . we’ll come to a conclusion together as a group.’ In fact, he is eager
to enter into negotiations and discussions with other teachers until a consensus is
reached (interaction). From the field notes of several department meetings prepared
by both researchers and a research assistant, it is clear that Roberto is the most verbal
and occasionally the most outspoken of the six teacher participants in Yaeger’s PE
department (interaction, situation and ‘place’).
Despite the enthusiasm he exudes in department meetings, Roberto also under-
stands that working together does not always work. Sometimes it works, he tells us,
and sometimes it does not (interaction). Thus, he takes a middle ground approach to
collaboration in the department probably because his teaching experience is neither
long nor short and he is a relative newcomer to the campus (temporality). His middle
position in the department, together with his personality and sensibilities, helps his
peers to remain awake to issues and motivated to unpack what collaboration truly
entails (interaction, situation).
In sum, Helen, Jason and Roberto have distinct teaching perspectives that impact
collaborative curriculum making in the department (interaction, situation and
place). Due to their personal characteristics and outlooks, department meetings
having to do with curriculum making morph into deliberations about complex issues
that are not easily solvable (interaction). In fact, because ongoing discussion of each
topic takes longer than the expected timeline (temporality), Suzie has difficulty
moving the PE faculty through department meeting agenda items (situation). For
example, a recent burning issue that the PE department debated had to do with the
school’s ‘rainy day’ policy. Among the three experienced teachers (Helen, Jason and
Roberto), conflicting opinions existed about what to do when stormy weather
disturbs PE lessons on the sports field in the middle of class periods. This developed
into a major issue when Roberto’s class on the athletic field came into the
gymnasium where Helen was teaching one rainy day. Roberto’s action upset Helen
because it disturbed her instructional time. As a result, the contested matter became
an agenda item at a department meeting that was facilitated by an assistant principal
of T.P. Yaeger Middle School (interaction, situation and place). Different teaching
perspectives held and expressed by the three experienced teachers further fueled the
controversy. At the same time, lengthy input from all parties involved (98 pages of
transcribed notes) resulted in a final decision that was universally agreed upon when
the meeting (interaction) ended (temporality).
Beginning teachers’ stories: curriculum making depends on/mirrors human

relationships
All beginning teachers undertake a role transition from being taught by an authority
figure to teaching in a position of authority (situation and interaction). Like other
novice teachers, Anne and J.D. are at this stage of their teaching careers. Anne has
wanted be a teacher ever since fourth grade. Her dream was reinforced by her many
sports team experiences. Because she is so active, she finds it difficult to remain still.
In addition, she has the ability to use technology in PE and sport. For this reason, she
integrates graphs, tables, posters, etc., into PE activities. Presently in her fifth year of
teaching, Anne is concerned about the status of PE as a school subject and the
identities of PE teachers as she explains below:
Anne: Yeah, like other teachers want to pull kids out of Physical Education to do
work in their class, but they don’t realize they don’t respect us like we’re teachers to
where that’s our class too. Like, they think it is okay*oh, it is just Physical
Education. I can take them out. But we’re actually teaching them things that they
need to know. We don’t just teach a sport. We teach them how to work in groups.
We teach them how to be a good team player. We teach them how to cooperate with
people we don’t necessarily get along with. They mix the clusters so everybody is
hanging out with everybody. That kind of thing . . . I think it is very important to be
in Physical Education, but I don’t think teachers respect us as teachers. They’re like
you all are Physical Education. You all just roll a ball out there and let them play
kind of thing. But if a teacher actually came to our class and saw what we did, I
think they’d be surprised how much we actually do.
At the same time, Anne feels a pressing need to engage in continuous learning
from the experienced teachers in the department (interaction, situation and ‘place’).
She follows Jason like a father because he was her ex-coach in high school
(temporality, interaction and situation) and Suzie, Helen and Roberto as well. She
recognizes their extensive knowledge and experiences in curriculum writing and class
management. Her desire to learn to teach well has made her a self-confident teacher.
She feels she is evolving every year. In her first year of teaching, she confessed she
cried a lot due to ineffective classroom management. At that time, she did not
understand why her students did not follow her directions and instructions. When
she improved her teaching skills, she realized that she gained respect from her
students (temporality, interaction, and situation). Regarding her relationships with
her colleagues, she is positioned in the middle of the group and is close to everybody
in the PE department. Among her colleagues, there are strong personalities and
opinions. However, she just ‘does what she is told,’ she tells us, and that ‘makes the
other teachers happy’ (situation, interaction and ‘place’).
Finally, the youngest teacher in the PE department is J.D. who is in his third year
at Yaeger and has a competitive sports background in football (temporality).
Interestingly, both Anne and J.D. have similar backgrounds, roles and perspectives
in the department. They both were student-athletes and currently are coaches at
Yaeger (Anne coaches volleyball and basketball; J.D. is a football coach). In addition,
they are currently working with two experienced teachers at their same grade levels
(J.D. with Helen at the Grade 6 level; Anne with Jason at the Grade 7 level)
(interaction). Among the different teaching philosophies in the PE department,
fortunately J.D and Helen have the closest belief systems, according to Helen. For
this reason, they are likely to try out new teaching approaches in their PE classes
(situation and interactions). This was evident in their innovative curriculum
development in their football and dance units of study. Their successful co-teaching
stories have been witnessed by Suzie and Roberto as well as by ourselves and our
research assistant. Regarding their team approach, Suzie noted that ‘you can see the
growth through the year in what they [Helen and J.D.] have done . . . They have done
so much . . .’ (temporality, sociality). In addition, Suzie credited Helen for ‘tak[ing]
[J.D.] under her wing and help[ing] him out’ and Roberto, despite his different
positioning in the department, and stressed how Helen and J.D.’s ‘teaching styles fit
beautifully together’ (situation, interaction).
From these experiences, the two new-to-profession teachers have come to believe
that curriculum making depends on/mirrors human relationships. They have come
to know that human relationships transform into teaching partnerships between and
among the PE teachers in the department. For Anne, she is personally close to Jason
due to their past relationship between coach and student-athlete (temporality,
interaction). For J.D., his relationship with Helen emerged around a shared belief
system, which, in turn, morphed into co-created innovative pedagogies developed in
a team teaching situation.
Collaborative team: diversity and harmony

In this study, the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School demonstrated

collaborative curriculum making characterized by both diversity and harmony
among the participating six PE teachers. In fact, in the PE department at Yaeger,
there exist a variety of biographical differences such as gender, race, age, teaching
experience and athletic experience. In addition, a diversity of teaching philosophy is
also evident among the six teachers. Both Suzie and Helen as members of the
collaborative team acknowledge the importance of curriculum making and allow
their beliefs to permeate their administrative and teaching practices. Along with these
two female teachers is Anne who uses technology to make ‘unit plans’ and
curriculum maps as well as relevant PE teaching materials. Where the male PE
faculty is concerned, there is Jason who has recently become more open minded in
his approach to instruction and is choosing more creative, ‘life-style oriented’
activities. As a result, he, along with Helen, designed, coordinated and led a fishing
trip that became a school-wide endeavor and eventually a hard-won campus
‘tradition.’ Like Jason, J.D. favors innovative pedagogy in the teaching of PE, despite
the fact that he is a beginning teacher. Finally, Roberto has a strong background in
football like J.D., but he is different from J.D. in that he has years of elementary
school experience that inform his more ‘lone wolf’ style of teaching. While both
teachers are student centered, Roberto, reflecting his elementary education roots,
incorporates more game playing than skill development in his teaching and tends to
teach alone more than he does together. Contributing to this phenomenon is the fact
that his eighth grade teaching partner, Suzie, has additional release time due to her
department head position.
In the department, the Yaeger PE teachers openly recognize the differences in their
perspectives and respect their different teaching styles. At the same time, they devote
time*though possibly not enough*to discuss and align their diverse viewpoints
toward what and how to teach, and in what way the PE department operates in the
Yaeger school context. Because they make minded, collaborative decisions about
what constitutes appropriate curriculum experiences for their students (Ennis, 2013;
Penney, 2013), they are best described as curriculum intellectuals*that is,
curriculum makers, not curriculum technicians (Penney, 2006). While enacting
this very important teacher image (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Craig & Ross,
2008), they concurrently struggle to reach consensus about what to include on a
‘curriculum map’ offering an annual PE overview at Yaeger. The most contested
issue the department has faced has had to do with the fishing field trip and whether it
is merely a ‘fun activity’ or a ‘learning activity’ with intellectual merit. Nevertheless,

the six teachers in the PE department at Yaeger focused their full attention on the
contentious topic. After lengthy consideration, they finally agreed that the fishing
field trip warranted inclusion as part of the formal curriculum offered by Yaeger’s PE
department.
However, department members do not necessarily reach agreement at all times as
Roberto earlier mentioned. As with the fishing trip, there were issues swirling around
the PE notebooks that Helen initiated in her classes. For Helen, the notebook is the
most important learning tool for linking student reflection with physical action. For
some of the other teachers in the department, the PE notebook was deemed
inappropriate for PE because writing in the notebooks impinged on the amount of
time students would be engaged in physical activities. In the end result, the notebook
was not endorsed by all department members. However, the assistant principal for
PE and Yaeger’s principal who had a strong IB background intervened and
‘encouraged’ the PE faculty to adopt the reflective notebooks as a common practice
in their IBMYP units of study. Even then, reflective journals promoting key
connections between body and mind (You, 2010) were not mandated. Thus, respect
for Helen’s practice grew amid dissenting opinions. In general, it is believed that a
common teaching philosophy is the most important factor for developing and
establishing collaborative relationship between teachers (Chen et al., 2007; Murata,
2002). But mutual respect and trust supports collaborative relationships among
teachers as well. Interestingly, in this study, teacher collaboration made it possible for
mutual respect for different teaching styles to develop despite the dissimilar teaching
philosophies that were obviously present among the teachers in Yaeger’s PE
department.
At T.P. Yaeger, differences of opinion not only existed between and among the PE
teachers, but so did concerns that emanated from other parts of the school as well.
For example, some colleagues teaching tested core subject areas referred to PE as
‘curriculum-lite,’ suggesting that it is ‘less-than-full-strength’ because it is bodily
debasing and lacking in intellectual rigor. Through ongoing example rather than
fighting words, the PE department members have worked hard to dispel this myth.
The fishing field trip previously discussed, for example, required core content
teachers to supervise students on the excursions. Working as chaperones, these
teachers began to see for themselves that the PE curriculum had the same IB
qualities as did the curricula in their content areas. Also, student work displayed on
the IB bulletin board outside the teachers’ lounge could not escape their attention. It
directly and indirectly spoke to PE’s contributions to students’ well-being. A small
piece of evidence of this can be found in Figure 3. In that figure, readers will find a
paragraph that a sixth grade student wrote about the IB trait, ‘balanced,’ for which
the student was commended.
All in all, the collaborative curriculum making among the department members
allowed harmony to exist amid the diversity of the six-teacher team and differences of
opinion stemming from elsewhere in the school context. There are two reasons why
this harmony was possible. The first reason is that the six teachers embraced their
roles as PE curriculum makers and did not act like coaches during the curriculum
making process. The second reason is that they recognized diversity is a strength of
the department and the school, not a weakness. In fact, three harmonious
partnerships emerged for the PE teachers: the administrative partnership, the
mentoring partnership and the teaching partnership. Concerning the first partner-
ship, Suzie, as department head, has tried to lead with vision by enacting annual
curriculum reform from within, and emphasizing department collaboration, regard-
less of conflicts that exist among department members. At the same time, other
teachers have followed her strong leadership, which has resulted in the growth and
development of the department and all of its members. According to Webb and
MacDonald (2007), Suzie is one of a few female department heads in the PE
community around the world who has demonstrated successful leadership in a
manner commensurate with males who dominant the field. You (2011), for example,
has maintained that a strong obstacle undermining female leadership is expert
knowledge refined over time. In Suzie’s case, her expert knowledge and experience in
district curriculum making (Dinan-Thompson, 2003) have positively influenced her
colleagues in the department and her gender as department dead has not been
contested by the other PE teachers, three of whom are male. In fact, Yaeger’s PE
department as a whole has facilitated more positive outcomes for Yaeger’s students
(which Figure 3 illustrates), felt happier about members’ individual and collective
work, and has been more predisposed to working collaboratively in the future.
The second harmonious partnership evident in the PE department is collaboration
between veterans and rookies. In general, most of the experienced teachers (Suzie,
Figure 3. Student Journal

Jason, Helen and Roberto) are positioned differently in the hierarchy than
inexperienced teachers (Anne and J.D.) Yet, they rarely believe that they are unable
to learn from novice teachers like Anne and J.D. On the contrary, experienced
teachers in the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School have discovered fresh
approaches to teaching PE and advanced uses of instructional technology in their PE
classrooms. As Ulvik and Langoran (2012) note, new teachers have innovative ideas
and are enthusiastic, digital competent and able to understand pop culture. This
study furthermore indicates that a collaborative culture in a school enables new
teachers to be more likely to develop positive attitudes toward teaching and to story
and restory their personal identities around their profession. Just as experienced
teachers interact with novice teachers, the beginning teachers also respect the
extensive PE knowledge that more experienced teachers contribute. Hence, the
newcomers in Yaeger’s PE department have received advice about class manage-
ment, parents meeting, etc. In fact our study confirms that, for novice teachers, it is
internal support within a school or department that is more influential than external
support (Gu & Day, 2007). According to Ulvik and Langoran (2012), most
experienced teachers tend to listen to the newcomers, but their fresh ideas are not
accepted or enacted in school contexts. In the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle
School, experienced teachers’ welcoming of newcomers and inexperienced teachers’
trust of experienced teachers are mutual.
The last harmonious partnership within Yaeger’s PE department is hetero-gender
teacher groups at the same grade level. It has been three years since the department
has had two teachers co-teaching students of the same age. That is, students are
assigned to Helen and J.D. in the sixth grade, Jason and Anne in the seventh grade
and Suzie and Roberto in the eighth grade. While female teachers and male teachers
do not physically share the same office space in the historically well-preserved
building, each grade level team has one male and one female teacher, which mirrors
the student population and creates an equitable gender ratio of teachers in the PE
department. Webb and MacDonald (2007) note that gender identification in PE
departments in US schools is strong and pervasive. This allows for differentiated
expectations toward behaviors and roles of each gender. In addition, females’
exclusion in the male-dominated culture in PE prohibits the growth and develop-
ment of professional leadership among female teachers (Harris & Penney, 2000;
Webb, 2003). In the case of the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School,
typecasting people by gender does not appear to be an issue in the collaborative
curriculum making process. Rather, the gender-based teaching partnerships function
like an ensemble, positively influencing both male and female teachers in a mutually
satisfying way. For example, Helen as a female teacher takes care of J.D. in a mother-
like fashion, while Jason guides Anne like a father figure. In this particular PE
department, gender issues are not a major issue.
Before transitioning to our conclusions, we want to emphasize that the
collaborative curriculum making partnerships showcased in this article would not
have been identifiable were it not for the story constellation version of the narrative
inquiry research method. The story constellation approach made it possible for us to
access multiperspectival views of individuals within and outside the PE department

and to lay them alongside one another. Also, the three-dimensional qualities of the
narrative inquiry life space allowed us to produce narratives that were robust and full
of life. Our narrative accounts were full-bodied, we would argue, because we
systematically intertwined temporal (past, present and future), personal and social
(interaction) and contextual (situation and place) considerations as we storied and
re-storied the human experiences of Yaeger’s six PE department members. These
tightly bound qualities presented in unison are arguably narrative inquiry’s strongest
feature because they distinguish the narrative research method from other forms of
qualitative and quantitative research.
Closing remarks
The primary focus of this study revolved around collaborative curriculum making as
experienced by PE department members in the southern USA. Through this
narrative inquiry, it became more evident that the collaborative curriculum making
of PE teachers is essentially needed. The members of the PE department mostly
work in open-spaced environment sharing educational facilities and equipment. That
is, the department members can observe and see what is going on in PE classes of
others due to the public availability of the images. This characteristic helps all PE
members to know one another very well in terms of personal, social and professional
aspects. For this reason, their various stories on collaborative curriculum making
within a PE department at a US middle school can be paid much attention to by all
other PE teachers who are employed at the workplace. As earlier mentioned at the
introduction of this paper, most of the studies on collaborative work among general
teachers and PE teachers have focused on different departments, different school
settings and different workplaces. In a sense, the collaborative curriculum making we
witnessed in T.P. Yaeger’s PE department has taught us important lessons
concerning what authentic collaboration in daily teaching practices looks like. Truly
collaborative curriculum making in a PE department reflects teamwork for
pedagogical action (Penney, 2013) while embracing conflicts and arguments among
diverse department members. In terms of curriculum making, each member has his/
her own role and responsibilities, mixing and merging his or her strengths and
challenges. One of the representative cases of collaborative curriculum making is the
case of the department head. Suzie initially could not fathom how the fishing trip
involved PE activities However, after a difficult consensus was reached by virtue of
department and school meetings, she acquired an adventure certification for
teaching the fishing trip as one of outdoor educational activities in the department.
In addition, intermittent conflicts between and among the six teachers (e.g., rainy
policy) awakened them to the affordances and constraints of their curriculum making
and their roles as curriculum makers in ordinary teaching situations. In the future,
research particularly needs to examine how beginning PE teachers can be cultivated
as curriculum makers and to explore conditions where their curriculum making
abilities are most likely to develop along their career continuum. From our study, we
do know that when diversity is transformed and harmony arises in the various
collaborative partnerships that are struck, tremendous human power is unleashed in
ways that scaffold and promote PE teachers’ and students’ learning.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded
by the South Korean Government (NRF-2011-413-017). The authors particularly

wish to acknowledge the ongoing support and contributions of Dr. Xiao Han who
served as a long-term research assistant on this project.
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Narrative accounts of US teachers’

Keywords: Collaboration; Teachers as curriculum makers; Curriculum making; Physical

Collaboration or a collaborative approach is not new in education and or in physical

*Corresponding author. J. You, Department of Physical Education, College of Education, Chung-

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

differently, collaborative curriculum making reflects how PE teachers characteristi-

Figure 1. Four commonplace of curriculum making

The officially mandated PE curriculum constitutes the subject matter commonplace.

Story constellations approach

Figure 2. Story constellabtions of Physical Education Department

We explain further through focusing readers’ attention on Figure 2. Against the

teachers’ individual and collective stories of experiences.

Trustworthiness of research accounts

A story constellation of collaborative curriculum making in physical

T.P. Yaeger Middle School narrative

opened (temporality). In fact, the development of T.P. Yaeger as a middle school

a mass exodus of sectors of the city population to private schools (sociality). To

Physical education department narrative

Department head’s story: curriculum making embedded in/synonymous

experiment with new ideas in Yaeger’s PE department. During her tenure at

Experienced teachers’ stories: curriculum making on a contested terrain

Researcher: Uh-huh, so he encouraged you to do it.

Researcher: Ah, you I wondered about that.

Helen: Cause in football he would be, definitely the lead.

Helen: That’s his passion. That’s his background.

Researcher: Right, it makes sense, doesn’t it?

Helen: And working with him being so much younger, he gives me

Researcher: Yeah, different perspectives.

Beginning teachers’ stories: curriculum making depends on/mirrors human

Collaborative team: diversity and harmony

In this study, the PE department at T.P. Yaeger Middle School demonstrated

is merely a ‘fun activity’ or a ‘learning activity’ with intellectual merit. Nevertheless,

Figure 3. Student Journal

access multiperspectival views of individuals within and outside the PE department

qualitative and quantitative research.

by the South Korean Government (NRF-2011-413-017). The authors particularly

31(3), 303331. doi:10.1111/0362-6784.00199

Hernández, V. M., & Brendefur, J. L. (2003). Developing authentic, integrated, standards-based

Mishler, E. (1990). Validation in inquiry-guided research: The role of exemplars in narrative

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