Houser, NeilCanada, Stephanie2017-05-152017-05-152017-05-13http://hdl.handle.net/11244/50855Like many within the profession, my own beliefs and practices have been impacted by personal and professional struggles and experiences (Palmer, 2007), as well as the historical influences of physical education (Kirk, 1986; Fernandez-Balboa, 1995 & 1997a; Tinning, 1997). As a result, I naturally wondered how similar factors might impact my students’ perceptions. I suspected they might have influenced what my students’ believe and how they learn. Additionally, since many of my students’ biographies are similar to my own, it seems likely that they, too, may struggle with professional identity challenges as they prepare to enter the teaching profession. Following up on these notions, I began to help my students, future physical educators, reflect upon their own biographies and identities to better understand how such factors might influence their teaching, their students, and our society. Together we reflected on who we are, and who we want to become as teachers. Numerous scholars have addressed similar issues. Decades ago, Jean Piaget (1972) established that learners’ efforts to reconcile cognitive dissonance, or disequilibrium, are essential to their intellectual development. Scholars such as Paulo Friere (1970) and Maxine Greene (1988) promoted the idea of disrupting dominant assumptions to create the necessary social, psychological, and emotional spaces for learning to take place. Numerous others have explored what is required to promote dissonance, safety and critical reflection in the classroom in the service of ongoing growth (Kirk, 1986; Fernandez-Balboa, 1995 & 1997a; Palmer, 2007; Tinning, 1997). These beliefs contributed to my development of a critical curriculum for my physical education students. In light of my personal experiences and concerns, and with the assistance of many who have gone before, I developed and implemented a critical curriculum designed to disrupt my students’ perspectives of physical education and, in particular, their perspectives of teaching physical education, to help them challenge their own identities. For my dissertation, I developed a study to determine my students’ perceptions of the influence of this curriculum on their personal and/or professional development and understanding. Following up on the creation, implementation, and study of my curriculum, I sought to develop a practical take-away from this experience, thus creating an additional paper written for practitioners. These components make up three of the five chapters of this non-traditional, publication-ready dissertation. Findings from this case study revealed that my critical curriculum did have, to an extent, some influence on my students’ personal and/or professional development and understandings. These findings support the continued implementation and utilization of critical curricula, provide insight for my future teaching, and yield recommendations for other physical education teacher educators.Physical Education, Teacher Education, Critical Curriculum