Professional identity in physical education: a review of literature

Abstract

Teachers’ professional identity shapes teachers’ educational views, impacting their behaviour, action and decision making. This study was designed with the goal of locating, compiling and analysing articles regarding professional identity in the physical education context and identifying elements that contribute to professional identity construction. We selected professional identity and physical education as search items in Web of Science, ERIC, SPORTDiscuss and Scopus. To investigate the previous decade of research, we limited the study to articles published between 2010 and 2020. This work combines recent publications written in Portuguese, English and Spanish. The database search yielded 27 relevant articles. The themes present in the articles can be divided into two groups: those linked to key actors and influences on physical education teachers’ professional identity, and those related to physical education preservice teachers. The following themes were discovered to influence teachers’ professional identity formation: relationships (established within their acting context), identity negotiation, identity transformation, lifelong learning, peer perception and the class context. The following themes impact preservice teachers’ professional identity formation: teaching practicum experience, prior experiences, a community of practice and the teachers’ body. Professional identity formation is an intricate process characterised by a diverse mix of personal, professional, environmental and social representations that interact in real time.

Vegetative regulation of vascular tone and features of the nervous system of pedagogical universities students. Is there a relationship with professional specialization?

“…And therefore, a high ability to switch attention is a strong point of professionals who work with young children. Accordingly, primary and preschool education faculties students, having intuitively chosen a pedagogical specialty, have precisely such properties of the nervous system as high mobility of nervous processes, high ability to switch attention [18,23,29]. But these properties are accompanied by insufficient stability of the nervous system [29].…”

“…This, in our opinion, is due to the fact that doing art requires a high concentration of attention for a long time. That is why these students have a small number of errors in reaction tests, since they are able to concentrate for a long time on creative work idleness And that is why they have a relatively low level of reaction speed, that is, the mobility of nervous processes, the ability to switch attention [18]. Due to their ability to concentrate attention on any task, these students are not prone to constant switching of attention and, accordingly, to quick reaction to external stimuli.…”

“…Students of pedagogical specialties related to creativity (music, fine arts) are distinguished by a higher stability of the nervous system and less mobility [18]. This is due to the fact that students of creative specialties are more inclined to concentrated work, which does not require frequent switching of attention.…”

“…Shorter reaction times were thought to correspond to higher rates of nervous system motility. Also, a smaller number of errors in the choice reaction test was considered an indicator of higher strength and stability of nervous processes [18,23,29].…”

“…Thus, it has been established [5,15] that students from different faculties differ in the features of cognitive activity. This is reflected in the preferences in the choice of sports and physical activity for the use of various physical exercises [16][17][18]. In order for physical education classes to be interesting for students and bring maximum benefits to their health, it is necessary to select the types of motor activity taking into account their interests, as well as functional capabilities [19][20][21][22] and properties of the nervous system [23].…”