Education is supposed to be about teaching for the holistic development of the child or adolescent. Within physical education this is often construed too narrowly, where skill development, fitness and physical activity are the main activities that make up its content and pedagogy.
As a researcher and teacher educator responsible for researching and teaching future physical educators I have an interest in the development of the holistic being, that primarily being the child. One aspect that I think is often forgotten by physical education teachers is that of affect. For me the affective qualities relate really to areas such as feeling, emotion, sensing, pleasure, meaning and meaning-making and are best understood, I think by terms such as fun, joy and delight. My own area of research, of late, is beginning to understand how this can be taught in physical education. Several of my recent papers have examined these concepts. The one thing that I can say for sure is that it is under-researched (so if you are looking for an Honours/Masters project can I suggest you contact me: trent.brown@monash.edu) although there has been move of late within the literature of interest in these areas.
One of my concerns is that future physical educators do not really understand these concepts well and are not taught these concepts within their undergraduate studies. It is really a marginalised area of research and as a result teaching. Having said this the work of several influential educators, philosophers and academicians (Pope from University of Waikato, Kretchmar from Penn State, Tinning from UQ, Sandahl from Norway, Kentel from Leeds Met, Pringle from University of Auckland) have attempted to adjust the agenda with relation to affect. Whilst I am buoyant about the possibilities, I do wish to share a concern I have about this work.
Some of the work have insinuated either implicitly or explicitly, that for affect to be meaningful it needs to occur in an alternate pedagogical form of physical education such as Sport Education in Physical Education Program (SEPEP) or in Teaching Games for Understanding (see Pope, 2005, 2005a; Kretchmar 2005). Should not it be the responsibility of the physical educator to teach for movement affect, movement delight or movement meaning irrespective of the context of the program? My answer is overwhelming YES! In physical education the teacher should be responsible for the teaching of these concepts irrespective. It should be at the forefront of the physical educators mind, when planning and teaching and that everytime they enter the physical education classroom joy, emotion, sensation, fun and delight are at the core of what they do. In doing so they should not privilege this, but be aware that if holism is an appropriate objective of physical education that these concepts should be taught next to skill development, fitness and physical activity.
It is important that such ongoing development of alternative models continues, so in this way I do not wish to deny that such work is therefore important. My concern with the model(s) is that some teachers might say that they teach affect only when they use SEPEP or TGfU.
In summary I implore teachers to teach for affect in all of their physical education classes INCLUDING those when they use models such as SEPEP and TGfU. It is an important but often neglected area of pedagogy - I am guessing that you like mean want to make sure that student's are engaged with experiences that are meaningful.
Trent
