Physical education podcasts: a thriving community of practice or a one-way mode of communication?

ABSTRACT

Background:

Educational podcasts are a new medium that provides content and profession-specific knowledge. Although educational podcasts are widely distributed and listened to within professional fields, little is known about the communities of learners or communities of practices (CoPs) that surround them. Within the field of physical education, effective CoPs have been documented within social media spaces, such as Twitter and Facebook, whereby physical educators engage to strengthen each other’s teaching practices and knowledge. Although scholars have suggested that CoP exist around these podcasts, no research to date has examined these communities. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine what motivates podcast creators and listeners within the field of physical education and how CoPs are cultivated using podcasts.

Methods:

A purposive sample of 15 participants (7 = podcast creators, 8 = podcast listeners) were interviewed for this study. This investigation was guided by an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach (IPA). Separate interview guides were developed for the PE podcast creators and PE podcast listeners, being developed using the CoP and research questions, with each guide having similar and overlapping questions. In addition, an inductive category development method was used to analyze the data.

Results:

Three themes were constructed: (a) enhancing and replacing professional development experiences, (b) degrees of community around physical education podcasts, and (c) attractive features of podcasts and areas of improvement.

Conclusions:

The findings support that an emerging CoP centered around physical education podcasts is being used as a means of knowledge-sharing. However, issues were raised that can negate the benefits of CoPs. These findings inform how physical education practitioners are engaged in informal professional development and the growing literature around CoPs that exist around educational podcasts in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational podcasts
• social learning
• gatekeeping
• flexibility
• online learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For the purposes of this study, PD study refers to experiences that include developing or facilitating the development of skills and knowledge to apply in a professional setting,