‘The elephants in the room’: the multiple challenges that limit the impact of school-based professional learning for physical education teachers

Background Our study concerned a school-based professional learning (SBPL) innovation enabled through the Fulbright Specialist Program (FSP) at two non-government Australian co-educational schools. The SBPL focused on helping nine participants, four primary and four secondary specialist physical education (PE) teachers, integrate Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) pedagogy into their lessons for Year 4 to 6 (nine to 11 years old) and Year 7 to 10 (11 to 16 years old) students. We wanted to find out: (1) What challenges, if any, our teacher participants faced engaging in our SBPL, including the extent to which institutional social conditions may have come to influence their involvement and (2) What effect our innovation had on the progressive aims of quality PE (QPE). We sought to answer: How might institutional social conditions come to affect SBPL for PE teachers?