Student Recruitment and Retention Efforts in PETE: Cloudy Skies or Silver Linings

Recruitment and initial socialization into adapted physical education teacher education

“…Bringing students who have diverse career interests into an APETE programme also provides the opportunity for faculty members to educate and socialize them into seeing career opportunities as adapted physical educators, which would be a meaningful avenue for future research. Further, if APETE programmes can market themselves in a way such that recruits view the degree as relevant to careers outside of schools, they may be able to avoid the enrolment declines that PETE programmes in the United States have experienced (Bulger et al, 2016).…”

A Theoretically Informed Conceptual Framework for Recruitment and Retention in PETE

“…While important recommendations and examples of recruitment activities, such as identifying and utilizing strategies that are developmentally appropriate for high school students (e.g., Bulger, Braga, DiGiacinto, & Jones, 2016;Moosbrugger, 2020), have been proposed, virtually no empirical data regarding best practices or approaches to coordinating recruitment are available. As a response, a multi-faceted study of PETE program coordinators was orchestrated to examine perceptions of PETE enrollment declines, coordinators' roles in recruitment and retention, and successful recruitment and retention strategies .…”

“…Beyond recruitment and initial enrollment, there is also a need to understand the processes through which students can be retained in PETE programs to degree completion . Similar to recruitment, the available literature pertaining to student retention is lacking, and primarily emerges from firsthand accounts (Bulger et al, 2016). In recent years, efforts to improve U.S. teacher education programs have been made in response to policy changes over the past two decades and a growing public concern for education accountability (Darling-Hammond, 2010).…”

Recruitment of Future Physical Education Teachers Will Require All Hands on Deck

“…As a result, PETE programs across the United States have experienced smaller cohorts of students enrolling and graduating with an initial PE teacher license, certificate or endorsement (Ward, 2019). To counteract this trend, many PETE faculty members have been tasked with the challenging job of generating recruitment strategies to attract and retain high-quality students in their programs (Ayers & Woods, 2019;Bulger, Braga, DiGiacinto, & Jones, 2016). Recognizing the significant impact PE teachers and interscholastic coaches have on the lives and decisions of young people, it would seem incomplete to not invite teachers to consider joining us in recruiting highquality future PE teachers.…”