There has been a copious amount of research conducted on education within juvenile justice agencies; however, little attention has been given to PE juvenile justice programs for youth offenders. The purpose of this study is to frame my experiences as a PE teacher in an intensive educational and treatment facility for adjudicated girls. I attempt to bring my experiences from the traditional school setting and juxtapose my teaching experiences in the juvenile justice system. In doing so, the hope is to shed light on how to improve or help administrators, staff, PE teachers, and scholars understand how PE works for youth in these kinds of facilities and the difficulty teachers face in these types of institutions.
Method:
This descriptive study used autoethnography as a research method because it offered an approach that could best analyze my lived experiences teaching physical education in an all girls intensive education and treatment facility. Autoethnography as a research approach has the ability to connect the mundane day-to-day aspects of personal dealings within a set context. I drew retrospectively on my journal entries and journal dictations from the past two years as methodological tools to analyze my experience teaching in the juvenile justice system.
Analysis/Results:
Data was analyzed using thematic analysis whereby the author categorized the data into emerging themes and patterns. The four major themes included: SOAR program, staff, students, and PE program. The overall program and policies heavily influence not only how staff operate and manage the daily procedures, but in what manner it is achieved. On the other hand, how staff members carry out policies has a direct effect on student rehabilitation and PE programming. Consequently, the students then use the staff actions and reactions to guide, shape, and alternate their behavior. This, in turn, has an impact on policies, program, and staff.
Conclusions:
The data source is limiting as it was based retrospectively from teacher journal. . What was gleaned from this process is that PE the juvenile justice system can be messy and the road to success is not always open and the ride is not always smooth. Also, it was clear that while there were similarities between teaching in a traditional school setting and a detention center, there were apparent and considerable differences. These differences included staff, administration, students, space, and equipment, and, in some cases, they were amplified.