Experiences of PETE majors participating in an out-of-class-time physical activity promotion and facilitation-based internship course

Recently, much of the Physical Education and sport pedagogy literature has focused on confronting the challenges associated with the rising number of overweight children in America's schools. Given a changing climate, many scholars have suggested an expanded role for Physical Educators in which opportunities for physical activity are created on school campuses beyond the regular Physical Education classes. This is especially critical considering the rising number of exemptions provided in lieu of participation in Physical Education and decreased requirement for Physical Education. The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) majors in an internship course where they were responsible for promoting and facilitating out-of-class physical activity. Additionally, this study sought to examine the interactions the interns had with high school students during their internship placement and the implications associated with those interactions. Five PETE majors participated in the study; all of which were enrolled in the internship course and were at varying degrees of program completion. Data were collected using mixed methods including participant observation, interviews, systematic observation, and document analysis. Data were analyzed inductively. Several systematic searches of the data corpus were performed to determine emergent themes. Assertions were made based on interpretations of the themes that emerged. The interns demonstrated low percentages of time spent in physical activity promotion because, they experienced early programmatic success, they were frequently shot down by students during promotion efforts, and they had prior beliefs about the role of the physical educator. However, they did believe that promoting out-of-class time physical activity was the responsibility of the Physical Educator. Additionally, the interns reported that the most rewarding part of the internship was interacting with the high school students and that they valued the internship for this reason. The interns found that verbally promoting physical activity was unnatural and their preconceptions about high school students interfered with their ability to successfully promote physical activity.