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
Nice one browny!
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