RQES Table of Contents
Perceived Workplace Experiences of Adapted Physical Educators and Physical Educators
Wesley J. Wilson, K. Andrew R. Richards, Justin A. Haegele, and Steven K. Holland
Considering the contemporary educational climate,
which includes high-stakes testing and school accountability (Dworkin & Tobe, 2014) and a negative public
perception of teachers (Nuñez, 2015), the teaching profession has been recognized as a stressful career path
(Greenberg, Brown, & Abenavoli, 2016). Those who
teach “non-core” or “special” subjects, including physical
education (PE), often face additional stressors associated
with isolation, teaching large class sizes, and limited
resources that stem from their discipline being viewed as
marginal or peripheral to the mission of schooling
(Laureano et al., 2014). Physical educators may internalize
feelings of marginalization and begin to believe that their
subject area is not as important as “core” subjects, such as
reading, mathematics, and science (Richards, Gaudreault,
& Woods, 2018). Collectively, these stressors can contribute to the dilution of innovative teaching practices
through the washout effect (Blankenship & Coleman,
2009), feelings of burnout (Richards, Washburn, &
Hemphill, 2019), and early career attrition (Mäkelä,
Hirvensalo, & Whipp, 2014).
The workplace experiences of those who teach
adapted physical education (APE) may be different
than those who teach PE, given that job requirements
place greater emphasis on aspects of special education, such as individualized education programming
(Wilson, Richards, & Kelly, 2017). For example, APE
teachers must be prepared to teach high caseloads of
students with diverse ranges of disability types and
severities (Obrusnikova & Kelly, 2009) while contributing to individualized program development and
assessment (Nichols, Block, & Wilson, 2018). To
this end, APE teachers may feel the stressors associated with marginalization to a greater extent than
their PE counterparts (Wilson & Richards, 2019). To
address the stressors that PE and APE teachers
encounter in the workplace, researchers have examined how positive sociopsychological experiences,
such as resilience and perceived mattering, may
reduce stress and prevent burnout (Richards,
Wilson, Holland, & Haegele, 2019; Richards et al.,
2018). Nevertheless, it remains unclear how APE teachers experience workplace stressors in comparison to their PE counterparts. Since there is a dearth
of research in this area, this study serves an important, initial, and exploratory purpose by comparing
the workplace experiences of PE and APE teachers
through the lens of role socialization theory
(Richards, 2015).
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