A narrative review about physical education learning strategies towards innovative teachers’ professional development: Are communities of practice being romanticized?

Physical education teachers, in all their levels of career development, experience complex processes of professional learning. Moreover, educational policies worldwide have moved towards a student-centred learning which highly increases the density of teacher's professional development. Communities of practice have been highly reported in literature as a powerful learning strategy for professional development concerning pedagogical innovation with the ability to promote change. Thus, the present narrative review aims at reporting specific work on how communities of practice work as a teacher learning strategy towards the implementation of innovative pedagogical practices. To that end, we firstly overview the theoretical framework used on communities of practice fieldwork in order to clarify the main concepts. Secondly, we present an analysis of the communities of practice benefits and challenges and the literature on teacher educators' development and pre-service teachers' development inside of a physical education teacher education context, as well as how communities of practice are used as a learning strategy towards student-centred approaches.