Background and Purpose: ‘Classroom Ecology’ (Doyle, 2006) research in Physical Education requires the integration of the wider contexts in which a Physical Education subject department presents a privileged professional development context. Consequentially, this will facilitate the implementation of pedagogies that enhance the integration of different students’ social agendas as a strategy to promote student engagement and success. This study aimed to explore the ‘Bioecology of Human Development Model’ (Bronfenbrenner, 2005) in the classroom ecology research, for its under-utilized yet significant potential to facilitate the conceptual and empirical framing of classroom management within the Physical Education department.
Methods: During one school year, two teachers with differing pedagogical dispositions, working in the same Physical Education department, were observed during four of their Physical Education lessons (Siedentop, 1994). Data on the teachers’ pedagogical dispositions towards the students’ social agenda was gathered through a questionnaire. Students’ social agenda dispositions were collected through a questionnaire and analysed for emerging social agenda profiles. Data from both collection points were triangulated with good reliability scores.
Results: Four pedagogical profiles emerged, ranging from integrative to hybrid negotiation. In each teacher’s class, three student profiles emerged, ranging from a social-academic hybridism to academic social agendas. Across the two classroom ecologies, situated on department’s work, patterns emerged for pedagogical and curricular principles, and task systems’ management. Due to the teachers’ different pedagogical dispositions, specific patterns of interaction within their classroom ecologies also emerged, favouring the integrative as more pedagogically coherent and subsequently more congruent across the different student profiles.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates the potential of Bronfenbrenner’s model to open-up the “black-box” (classroom), providing a robustly contextualized framing to classroom ecology research. We conclude that, without the broader framing of the Physical Education department, the students’ pedagogical and curricular experience would be more dependent on the teachers’ individual capacity.
