As a consequence of the Covid 19 pandemic, teaching at universities had to be rapidly and substantially adapted to facilitate learning through online, distance or blended learning formats. This posed a challenge for all subject areas, and arguably also a particular challenge for the teaching of subjects with practical content such as sport-related degrees, since movement learning processes and also the learning and educational processes linked to movement require direct experience (O'Brien, Adamakis, O'Brien, et. al, 2020; Quennerstedt, 2019). One aspect of Physical education teacher education is geared toward the potential experience of the movement culture, and it aims to enable students to later show children and youths various kinds of positive experiences that they can have through cultivating their movements (Gaum, 2019). The focus of this investigation is therefore the exploration of the tension and challenges for teaching practical subject matter content, utilising largely virtual formats and new information and communication technology as a medium of delivery.

For this purpose, it was examined how teachers in different sports and exercise fields have adapted and redesigned their teaching in terms of content, topics and methods. The aim of this study is to draw conclusions about the specifics of interpersonal knowledge transfer (lecturer-student) from the understanding of teaching that emerges. The research project addresses the following questions: What are the central and specific requirements for teaching and teachers? Which of these requirements result from the specific (practical) subject matter and which from the possibly subject-specific forms of media use? How did teachers respond to these challenges and amend and develop their strategies for delivery? The following methodological steps can be summarized as a “contextualist method” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 9) which acknowledges “the ways individuals make meaning of their experiences” but also unravels the construction of those meanings.

As part of this international research project, 20 lecturers were interviewed at the universities of Bir Zeit (Palestine), Birmingham and Marburg using a problem-oriented and standardised interview guide that had been tested in a pilot phase. The participants were all lecturers on higher education teaching programmes that prepare students for employment in sport pedagogy related fields. Participants had differing teaching experience (between 3 and 25 years) in various practical courses (e.g. teacher education, coaching sciences, games, dancing, gymnastics, track and field). All interviews were conducted online via Zoom and then transcribed verbatim. All transcripts were first ordered into formal, structuring units of analysis, based on the interview guide before the case-related evaluation was carried out using thematic coding (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Flick, 2007). This coding is deductively based on the structure of the guided interview questions. In order to familiarize with the text and also to review these units for their thematic coherence and clear distinction, we applied the method of a keyword analyses (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013) and regrouped the unfitting units. Subsequently we used iterative procedures to search for secondary themes. These themes were continuously refined and the final coding grid was developed as themes were saturated with sufficient data and enclosed narrative to indicate their meaning. The comparison between the universities (specific cases which potentially generate similarities in practices and responses) is still pending and will be completed by the time of the conference presentation.

Preliminary findings indicate that the participants developed a range of diverse strategies and solutions to adapt their teaching to the specific demands and challenges posed through the pandemic and the resultant lack of face to face interactions and embodies forms teaching sport-practical subject matter. Preliminary findings also indicate a complex inter-relationship between teacher philosophies and their personal perception of the nature of the subject and the solutions they developed to translate this through the alternative media they had to available to them. For instance, lecturers who had a more explicit focus on teaching aspects of pedagogical content knowledge focused on the development of different strategies and approaches to those who prioritised technical content knowledge as part of the development of sport-related subject matter knowledge. Moreover, participants were mindful of the important need to develop their technological pedagogical content knowledge (Koehler and Mishra, 2009) to deal with the sudden demands resulting from the significantly altered mode of teaching. Potential consequences resulting from this for the future practice of teacher education in schools and higher education will be explored during the conference presentation. Limitations of this study are embedded in the expectable specific (teaching)-cultures of the different universities. Yet this research project is neither oriented towards generalization nor deductive reasoning. The exploratory character seems appropriate when examining challenges and opportunities which arose due to new and unknown conditions.

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