Chapter 4: Physical Education Teacher Education Initial Certification: Meeting the Challenges

The physical education teacher education (PETE) faculty charged with oversight and delivery of initial teacher licensure programs confront several challenges. Some necessitate responses to revised and new standards, while others can be reframed as timely opportunities for improvement and innovation, whether in response to or in anticipation of rapid, dramatic societal change. Six examples of challenges as opportunities are discussed in this chapter: (a) the need to determine the skills, essential knowledge, values, and sensitivities for work practices in the schools of the future; (b) the dual priority for evidence-based practices in PETE and in school programs; (c) PETE faculty members’ obligations to adapt their pedagogical practices and revise preservice programs in concert with expert, veteran teachers from schools with exemplary programs; (d) manifest needs to make choices among competing, evidence-supported physical education program models; (e) needs and opportunities to redesign PETE programs, especially those located in kinesiology departments; and (f) emergent policy imperatives to demonstrate the value-added effects, both short- and long-term, on tomorrow’s teachers.