Physical Education Futures

It has been a long while since my last post. As someone that is intimately involved in the profession of physical education it is important that I understand and present information which gets people thinking, talking and discussing the issues that I present.

As part of my final seminar in my methods class at university, I presented a seminar titled "Physical Education Futures" (The slideshare of it is below). There was some interesting debate related to the topics of sport, health and academic content and its implications for the practice of this fantastic subject. Some of the students in the class were genuinely concerned about the physical education future. However can I say that while they worried, I was surprised by the number of them that had convictions for the educative component about what we do. They seemed to acknowledge that the instrumental purposes for our survival (health, fitness and physical activity) actually contributed to a weakening of our position in the curriculum - not strenghtening it. Given that shortly a shaping paper for the direction of this subject in our country will be released, I think it is all too important to understand what some of the likely consequences will be if we try and "back the wrong horse". Before we know where we are going in the future, we really need to understand we have come from.

I must highlight that I am simply disseminating this information. The work of Professor David Kirk (University of Bedfordshire) and Professor Ken Green (University of Chester) is where to content for my seminar has come from.

My position is that all teachers should understand that if we as physical educators, give even a small component away to the sectors of sport or health, if we continue to argue that sitting exams in senior PE is more important than experiencing movement then we are unfortunately on that slippery slope that Kirk calls extinction.

As individuals and a profession we must continue to argue strongly on the educative importance of our subject, and not get stuck in the logic of medicine, science or health promotion for our survival. Remember we are physical EDUCATION!

Enjoy the afternoon. Talk soon. Trent.

4423 mod7 futures_presentation_2011

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Researching Physical Education futures - BERA Invisible College

Hi followers,

I thought I would post some information that came out of the BERA (British Education Research Association) Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Special Interest Group meeting (called the Invisible College) held prior to this international conference. The focus of this years workshop was 'Physical Education' Futures. I have summarised the presentations very briefly and if you wish to read the documents in their entirety please drop me an email.

There were four presenters at the Invisible College this year:
Deborah Tannehill (Uni of Limerick) on Teachers and teacher education
David Kirk (Uni of Bedfordshire) on Curriculum/Pedagogy
Anne Flintoff and Hayley Fitzgerald (Leeds Metropolitan) on (In)equality and difference in PE
Fiona Dowling (Norwegian School of Sports Sciences) 'Evidence-base/Impact' - Methods; Ontologies and Epistemologies.

Teachers and teacher education
The importance of 'work' changes for teachers is at the centre of this dicussion. Whether this is curriculum change (junior or senior) or implications for registration we are in an environment where change is always upon us. Additionally it needs to be accepted that 'our' (PE) profession's practice has remained unchanged for many decades and this does no benefits to the education of the students we work with.

What I took out of reading about this was the importance of teachers being change agents. In this way it positioned physical education teachers as "...actors whose job is to facilitate the growth and development of other human beings" (Fullan, 1999; 1993). Additionally the importance of universities (working with pre-service teachers) and professional associations (ACHPER, AfPE, NZPE, AAHPERD, PHEC [working with in-service teachers]) in providing teachers with strategies to lead and make change, rather than those that simply follow change.

Curriculum and Pedagogy
This presentation by David Kirk highlighted a number of points:
1. we appear to have been unable to make a dent in the so-called traditional approach
2. day-to-day physical education lessons continue to involve the practice of de-contextualised sports techniques, pitched at an introductory level and so with little learning progression, introductory lessons that are taught again, and again and again across the secondary school years
3. We misdirect a considerable amount of resource into the secondary school when in fact the primary school, including early years, should be our priority
4. That educational benefits and lifelong participation are not achieved or well articulated by physical education teachers and/in their communities.
5. A way forward might be to consider the importance of Models-based approaches (MBP) such as SEPEP, Games Sense, Cooperative Learning, TSPR, HBPE, etc. etc.

Researching PE
In Fiona Dowlings presentation I was grabbed by the following sentence "...that the research community, more than at any other time, must be willing to dwell upon fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge on the one hand, and reflect upon the aims and values of education, including the aims and values of the physically educated person, on the other." (p. 1) Additionally, she posited the importance of acknowledging and understanding all languages (epistemologies & ontologies) for our research area - suggesting that inter-, multi-disciplinarity is likely to be advantageous. Take for example the following comment "...PE’s location in the multidisciplinary field of Sports Science ought to facilitate such ‘border crossings’. (p2).

I really liked the suggestion that future research partnerships between universities and teacher-researchers in schools should be fostered, so that PE teachers and researchers together can develop evidence-informed, reflective teaching practices.

The final point that I wish to leave you is a poginant polemic. She asks the physical education community whether our research has any ‘impact’ at all on policy, or are other actors in the field more influential? eg Are lobbyists with vested interests in the so-called ‘obesity crisis’ more likely to influence policy than our own research? Something to continue to discuss and develop. How might we contribute to this policy opportunity.

Inequaility and difference
From Flintoff and Fitzgerald I have highlighted the following points:
1. Far too much research pays insufficient attention to the intersections of disadvantage, and the multiple identities and positioning of young people and teachers.
2. Highlighting the point that research has moved from ‘single issue research’, where the focus is on one aspect of inequality, to a more explicit intersectional approach.

I like the focus that they ask all researchers to consider that "...an intersectional approach pushes us to consider how difference and inequalities are present in our research conduct and need to be accounted for the knowledge we produce, including how we ‘write’ our results. "(p. 2)

3. They agree with Louise Archer and her colleagues (Archer, et al, 2001), when they argue that there will still be a need to draw what they describe as strategic, provisional boundaries around particular groups in order to engage in particular political projects. Class, disability, sexuality, ethnicity and religion are, we would suggest, aspects of inequality that still require the drawing of such temporary boundaries in our future research.

Finally they write that "...we suggest that the increasing gap between theory and practice is something that should concern us." (p. 3) They ask - what impact has our research on inequalities actually had on everyday practice? They go on to describe that such work can not be theory-less but requires some insight and thought on how research can be more accessible to students and teachers through various representations.

Final comments
This is my interpretations and editing. But I hope that it provides you as a researcher or teacher in physical education with some 'food for thought'.

Trent 22/09/2011

Instructional models - SEPEP and Cooperative Learning

Hi all,

thought I would point you in the direction of a couple of great YouTube videos that I have recently come across on Sport Education. Must thank @JoeyFeith for one of them, and the other was produced via Xtranormal.

Well worth 10 minutes checking them out.

Sport Education by Joey Feith


Sport Education by sldietr


Cooperative Learning by sldietr


Trent 14/9/2011

Curriculum Development - a meaningful introduction

I was recently in a seminar with some of my final year students that are only months away from graduating and become teachers of physical education. One of the topics of that we discussed related to planning a curriculum across the four years (these are secondary students and we were focussing on Yrs 7-10). The topic turned to how we are to engage students more 'meaningfully' in the work that we do in physical education. Now this is something that interests me, puzzles me and continues to do so today. Part of my research agenda is to try and unravel and uncover some these mysteries, so I will start by providing you all with some of my thoughts of late and how I have come to this position:
1. Physical Education needs to justify itself as being educationally worthwhile. How often is a PE program cut? its funding decreased? or its marginalised in the curriculum space? (is this currently happening in Aust?) Too often we use the health crises, obesity crises and cardiovascular diseases as our reason of being. I think PE is treading on dangerous ground when this becomes the reason we should be in the curriculum (I think it is a falsehood). Take for example the notion of a school principal stating they might get a PT group in to conduct 'boot camp' for students; just to improve their health and fitness, what would this do to PE? Secondly what happens if the scientists create a pill that we could take that allowed us to be lean, healthy and fit? What would PE's role in society be then?

1a. Following on from above, education is about meaningful (moving) experiences. And additionally education should be about how we can contribute to the development of a good life, and importantly a meaningful life - for me I think this is often missed in physical education because we are so concerned with the skill, drill, fitness mentality.

2. If we are to examine the importance of meaning, we need to start of understand the 'lived experiences' of the participants and the teachers that work in the field of physical education. Addressing these lived experiences it is helpful for teachers to understand a little bit about phenomenology...yet we rarely teach about phenomenology to undergraduate students in PETE. Or do we actually get them to reflect deeply on their own personal movement, sporting and physical activity experiences meaningfully through a phenomenological approaches??

3. The 'hairy chestnut' of sport and fitness. These in and of themselves are not bad things for PE. I acknowledge that these can be taught very badly, very very badly sometimes, so pedagogy is important to note here. I am not advocating for one minute that PE should not ever NOT have sport as content. What I would like to see from teachers in the field is a much more balanced approach/content with other 'moving' forms being as important to teach about as sport. Fitness is similar. Fitness in PE is often 'fitness tests'. Now this does nothing educationally if the teacher does not use appropriate pedagogies to explain the rationale for why these are being used and how it is of meaningful benefit to the students that are using them; otherwise they are a waster of time.

4. Thinking about PE as a process. One concept that I think has this nearly right is that of physical literacy (PL). PL at its core is about the embodied subjective responses to movement and therefore I think it has a very important place in curriculum development in PE (for further information on this see the physical literacy website - www.physical-literacy.org.uk).

5. Drawing on strong philosophical positions for the subject. One of the most robust and well respected positions here comes from the physical education philosopher Peter J Arnold. Education 'in, through and about' movement is a really useful point for understanding the types of experiences, knowledges, skills, attitudes and beliefs that students in physical education need to develop. A must pre-reading for curriculum development.

In a later blog posting I will provide some relative loose framing positions on moving towards a more meaningful curriculum (development) for physical education.

Trent

24 hours later...Reflections on 9/8/2011

Today has been a pretty slow day. Not slow as in the amount of work, slow because of lack of sleep (kids not sleeping, not working all night!), hence the posting last thing of the day.

I have had some pretty good feedback from a number of students already about yesterday's class, so I would like to thank those students for their thoughts and reflections.

In retrospect now I think it was interesting, provocative and a little bit challenging. Clearly curriculum planning is something that you really should get your head around - it does and will clearly drive your practice. But hand in hand with this is that I can not reiterate how important it is to do the reading, pre-reading, post-reading, reading, reading, reading. This helps with how you conceptualise ideas and more importantly often gives you a frame from which to operate. My gut instinct is telling me that about 50% of the class is keeping up with it...others see it as a bit of a chore. Perhaps there is no meaning in the approach....... :-)

I am really interested in how each and every one of you will develop this process, (i) as a result of class and (ii) how it might be influenced by placement. I want you to consider it an invite to speak with me about this interesting topic. Come and see me, get me on the phone, tweet me or skype me to discuss your thoughts. The downside of all of this is that you wont get much of a chance to do this exercise when you become a teacher...you will be lumbered with numerous tasks to get stuff done, so I really implore you to examine this when you can now (relatively now!).

I am hoping that my pedagogy was useful and different. Concept mapping I find is really helpful, but like many skills you need to really work on it. It's useful because it demonstrates what you know and understand, what connects with which concept - importantly it also gives you a chance to have a look at perhaps what you don;t know, which is also good also. It provides you with an opportunity to think about how (the process; the people, the places) of finding out information and to support you. {Remember that when you give support there is a small part of you that suggests you need to be reciprocal in the relationship. Great way to develop a community of like minded practitioners which can include me.... :-); twitter, facebook also}. A good tool to use when you are confronted with something that you know a little bit about, but not a great amount. Give it a try...

The individual activity was partially in response to some FB received from students that group work can often been 'choking' and hard to get through the political processes. My rationale for this was to give you some time to think individually about how you might best tackle this problem...yes collaboration is important and I know that some of you really used this effectively. How is it that I can be a little more accessible to all of you as you collect and develop your thoughts>? ANy ideas, pls comment or tweet....I also consider this as an ongoing project so please dont put this in the bottom of your bag!

I would like to have had a little bit more time to present the VCE stuff. I did not know, nor understand the type of reaction that it received. Maybe lecturing this sort of stuff is not really the answer; podcast, vodcast, skype a teacher some other thoughts anyhow....Perhaps the stuff that you have been learning at university is paying dividends in terms of your thinking. Part of me thinks that if you are able to see the bigger picture then as future leaders (who is going to be the next ACHPER president!) you will be able to go through the process of making significant change both socially, practically and politically.

I am still a bit flat, so really short and sharp today. Enjoy and see you next week.

TB

My reflections after class on Tuesday 2nd August

Hey there everyone,

I thought that class went OK yesterday. I mean we covered content that I thought is going to be useful for you in terms of POLT, VELS, the E5 instructional model. I am a little sorry that it was only the week before in 4006 that you looked at POLT - I am hoping that by contextualising to PE it made it more understandable...additionally hence some of the difficulties with working with content when staff are on different campuses operating in different programs (Education, Sport and Outdoor Recreation, other).

For me it is important that you understand where and how the VELS and other documents are likely to have developed...does this historical picture get covered in other Education units? I am not sure...I tried to be brief as possible so that I could give over the time to some more productive discussions on POLT and later on unit planning.

In retrospect the discussions around POLT were very intriguing (thanks to all those who brought chairs! Keep it up for next week!) as you had to really be explicit in what you actually do in the class (not classroom as picked up by one student!). But being explicit is really important, not only for this task, but also for putting your thoughts on paper for unit planning and subsequently (next week) curriculum planning. It is likely that it is really going to be the last time you get dedicated 'space' and 'time' to really think/act/feel/reflect on what and how you want physical education in your classes to be like. Without sounding like a broken record, I am really hoping that you understand this...!

I do not know why, but I get a little paranoid in seminars, lectures when students start copying me and my gestures. I found myself seriously thinking about pausing for a moment or two and asking those students whether there was anything wrong with me - but you know I do not know what they are thinking at any given time and I might be completely wrong and ignorant in terms of what I understood them to mean with their gestures. Importantly it suggests that you really do not know what students are thinking or doing at any one given time in the space that you are teaching within.

Not sure I did such a great job introing the e5 instructional model. The 5 e's are important to understand but like the POLT students need time to disseminate these to fully comprehend them. Remember that your teachers should know and understand how to enact these - so use the opportunity during your professional experience rounds to really drill down and ask them how they 'operationalise' them...It just reaffirms for me the importance of the two-way relationship that needs to occur on your rounds, not only are you asking for support from them in developing your teaching, but you need to find out as much information as possible about what they are up to and how they enact some of these issues, models and principles.

I am concerned and frustrated at the same time that students are not really reading that much...for me this hampers the breadth that can be covered in the seminar. Part of the final activities were based on the readings of Rink and case study #2 on Penney and Chandler (a reading that I asked students to complete last week!). There did not seem to be a really positive reaction when I asked how many people had completed the readings...am I reflecting too much on this??? Maybe I am. Maybe the students have done the reading they are just not explicitly stating this.

I really did not give too much time for the discussion to get both case studies completed...what was I thinking presenting two case studies. My rationale was to start with a simpler one on a unit of soccer and then progress to a more difficult one with the thematic approaches. Most of the groups started with the first one (my guess is that they did not want to embark on #3 because they (a) had not done the reading or (b) were too brain dead to start really conceptualising something at 5pm???) - this is also a little more realistic as most of them will be presented with this on rounds and in their first appointments. I am optimistic that some will go away and nut out some solutions for this, however part of me feels that only a couple of the 30 will do this - it is important!!!! Planning, planning and planning will make teaching a little easier, but is important because teachers will teach to their plan - especially if they have done one.

Some really interesting thoughts on how you might be able to get or use student centred approaches in PE in such a short time. Remember 'small steps'. Don't go trying to do a unit of SEPEP in 4 weeks, take some important parts from the pedagogy, but remember that what drives the design is likely to be the unit rationale followed closely by the unit objectives (which can be more than one!). Then think about what sorts of pedagogies are likely to help you succeed in achieving those objectives. Remember that the activity is the 'vehicle' for meeting the planned unit objectives. Planning, planning, planning is important (have I said this before?)

I do not want to overuse the group think and work thing either. Two weeks is enough! I need to think about finding some other pedagogies that get students to critically reflect on the content and ideas that I am proposing to them. I think I need to give them time to individually reflect on the content that I am proposing. What is it that I can do next week related to curriculum planning?? I am going to have a think over the next couple of days...I have some thoughts, might just have to wait and see.

4423 Tuesday 2nd August Pre-thoughts

Hi there!

I am really looking forward to class today. I know and understand that the content of 'unit planning' might seem boring at first but this is where you can do so much planning that makes and values the educative component of physical education. It is done here, in line with your philosophy of teaching and of the profession (see they are linked!) that you take control of your destiny.

In our discussion last week we talked about the issues that are likely to challenge us and face us in our careers, especially as beginning teachers of physical education. WE discussed occupational socialisation, survival, multi-activity curriculums and so much more. Here is the chance to put your (our) spin on how you want to teach. This is an important pre-cursor to the actual content that you are likely to deliver. I am really hoping that some really rich discussion about the topics of Principles of Learning and Teaching (POLT), the VELS, models-based practice and unit planning are forthcoming.

Using the case studies towards the end, I hope that if provides some 'real-life' examples of what you are going to face in ~6months time. There are likely to be thousands of different examples of these scenarios that you could create in your head before you begin to teach - and I hope that you do. I see this process as only dipping your feet in the water. Much of the work that you have looked at in terms of research (Penney and Chandler; Penney and Jess; Brown and Payne; O'Connor, Ward and Payne; Kirk; Tinning; others) are all trying to get the academic and practitioner community to think/act in this process of unit(/curriculum) planning. But you know what....you as the practitioner can quite easily engage with this process and undertake self-study or action research. You do not need to be an academic to make it real. Take for example sport education. Siedentop first wrote about this in the late 70s and early 80s, but it did not really take hold in the academic community and with teachers until much much later...As I said before this is only the first part of the planning/teaching (for your future process). Discuss, debate, talk, engage, reflect, discuss and debate and reflect some more. Ask questions, but most of all be creative (for those of you who have not viewed Sir Ken Robinson it is a must!). Don't let literature hinder your thought process if there is something that you think could be done better!

I really hope that today's class turns out in the way that I hope, because as I mentioned am looking forward to it immensely.

See you later, Trent.