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