What's the purpose of PE? Academic perspectives from my Masters of Teaching
Boy walks up a tree without using his hands during Rafe Kelley’s weekly outdoor movement class at Volunteer Park in Seattle. https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/grown-ups-and-kids-play-jump-and-climb-together-during-rafe-kelleys-outdoor-movement-classes/
Before the Masters of Teaching, I held strong views that, despite immense resources, Australia was providing inadequate physical education to our young people. This view was built upon my experiences of chronic injuries throughout school, likely derived from poor movement patterns performed during excessive sport combined with poor nutrition and being cast to a chair and black leather shoes (Bowman, 2014). Since then, I continued to observe young people grow to view physical activity as either a sport (most often to watch rather than play) or a chore to prevent them from an early death. I believed that physical educators were too focused on sports and lacked a holistic understanding of human movement, and its relationship to human flourishing. Because of this, I feel the need to inspire my students to experience the breadth and depth of the human body, and discover the profound meaning that is implicit to our lifelong relationship with it.
Meaning Through Movement
It was poignant that my first assignment for the PE learning area was to discuss the nature of physical literacy. Having never been exposed to the term, it appeared to be the holy grail that would help me explain my frustrations as well as my inspiration. Here, the primary aim of PE is to develop "motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding of movement and the principles of health and fitness, to value and take responsibility for maintaining physical activity for life" (Whitehead, 2015, p.25). This discovery, combined with my previous experience in 'Movement Culture' (Portal, n.d.) has inspired me to pursue physical education at it's most primordial level, where each student has an opportunity to explore their bodies, in relation to other bodies, objects and the space around them. Sport and even fitness are specialised, one-dimensional and often perturb many students to avoid physical activity altogether (Kirk, 2011). However, movement is a cross-disciplinary philosophy of physicality that inspires generalised movement practitioners toward an awareness and understanding of being an embodied individual. Physical literacy places emphasis on the lifelong aspect of participation in physical activity, which is needed in our sedentary society.
This notion of physical literacy prompts us to seek the most effective method to develop it in our students. As physical educators, our goal is not to produce world-class athletes from a few select students but to teach and inspire all students to find a love of movement. To educe means to bring out (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Therefore physical educators seek to draw out the physical domain from our students. To achieve this, PE teachers need to have this domain brought out from them. To help our students love movement, we need to love movement and everything about it. This love needs to be diverse. As Pill, Penney and Swabey (2012) show, PE teachers teach what they are most familiar with and teach how they were taught or observed to teach. If a teacher loves basketball and observed this in their initial teacher education (ITE), then they will tend to teach their students how to dribble and shoot. If they have a background in strength and conditioning, they will tend to teach the deadlift and back squat. Rather than showing our students how much we know, or how much of an athlete we are, it's critical we instead seek to understand what movements do our students love (Forencich, 2019). Expertise is essential for PE teachers, but more important, is the passion for movement coupled with sincerity and dignity. By acting as a servant leader, PE teachers can help students find their way back to rapport with their bodies and the feeling of being alive.
The aims of PE can be categorised into intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic aims are those embedded within the nature of physical education and not included in other disciplines, such as fostering physical literacy, while extrinsic aims are those cross-curricular outcomes of general education, such as developing creativity. Whitehead's (2015) survey of PE teachers identified thirty-one aims, which range from promoting joint flexibility and muscular strength (11) to alerting pupils to be aware of safety at all times (26). I argue that aims are goals, and when the list of goals grows to thirty-one, it becomes more of a wish-list. PE teachers need to prioritise and focus on the aims that are the most important to their students. This focus must be placed on the intentions of PE, not the beneficial by-products. Developing perseverance (23) and independence (22) are essential for success in life, but PE teachers don't plan their lessons specifically to achieve this. Likewise, winning inter-school matches and tournaments (25) should not be a priority. This is not the role of PE teachers, but instead sports coaches. For me, the purpose of PE is to create health-promoting and meaningful movement experiences that foster physical literacy for life. This demands a student-focused approach, where the teacher must seek to understand what their students find meaningful. With this approach, PE teachers can continue to be advocates for their discipline as a critical component of schooling and ensure the longevity of their profession as well as their students' health and wellbeing.
Shifts in Thinking
Before this course, I understood the power of play as a medium for motor, cognitive and social development (Forencich, 2019). This belief in play reduced my precautions for teaching risky activities such as martial arts, or roughhousing, and gymnastics. While risk-free situations do not exist in PE, and mild injuries are inevitable, teachers must place a high emphasis on teaching safely. Despite the riskiness likely contributing to a significant amount of the excitement and challenging nature of PE, thereby making it an attractive and stimulating subject, teachers have a responsibility to ensure their students are safe from serious injury (Chappell, 2015). This newfound awareness of safety in PE has prompted me to think about what and how I will teach my classes in the future. My placement mentor highlighted the risks associated with the activity I was teaching, and it's associated environment. For him, every risk was worth pointing out. Cautioning the students to not run into the wall may seem common sense, but it is warranted to protect the students and protect yourself from being liable for severe injuries. Safety is now front of mind as a primary consideration for lesson planning and instruction.
I have learnt more new concepts (scaffolding, differentiation, assessment, and inclusivity for example) about the practice of teaching PE than can be discussed within this essay. One critical area that has been explored in academia as well as placement is teacher communication. There are many nuances to communication, including linguistic and non-linguistic components, such as pitch, speed, pause, stress, volume and enunciation. For example, the lesson pace is often dictated by communication speed. If a teacher speaks slowly, students may take more care in listening and engaging in physical activity, while a fast pace will energise and excite the students. PE has specialist language, knowledge and skills, and therefore requires effective questioning and feedback for students to achieve the learning objectives. Questioning is a complex process, and many types of questioning can be used to support the progression of students' learning along Bloom's taxonomy. Feedback focuses students' attention to learning objectives, informs them of their progress and their path towards mastery. As Zwozdiak-Myers (2015, p.76) puts it "the most valuable feedback is given to an individual, is encouraging, specific, informative and constructive and should lead the pupil to further learning." This poignant conclusion highlights the fact that to become exceptional teachers, physical educators need to master the use of feedback. My placement mentor was focused on my use of instructions, questioning and feedback, and provided me with feedback for my development. I learnt that I need to pay attention to giving specific feedback, ask true (as opposed to pseudo) open-ended questions, and improve my ability to instruct the class.
Since my schooling experience, I have been influenced by many great movers and thinkers in various physical disciplines who have promoted this more profound connection and meaning associated with being an embodied individual. So it's not surprising that one of my primary focuses is to help my students find a deeper appreciation, or at least connection, to their bodies. I hope that this will help them realise that they are always moving, whether sedentary in a chair, kicking a football, or climbing a granite cliff face. As humans, we have a body, and it pumps blood, moves lymph, breathes and sends electrical impulses. We do not have a choice whether we move or not. It is a question of how well we move. This is the essential idea I want to teach my students. The technique for a drop punt is optional. Movement is constitutional.
References:
Capel, S. (2015). Starting out as a PE teacher. In S. Capel and M. Whitehead (Eds.), Learning to Teach Physial Education in the Secondary School (49-66). Routledge.
Chappell, A. (2015). Teaching safely and safety in PE. In S. Capel and M. Whitehead (Eds.), Learning to Teach Physial Education in the Secondary School (184-203). Routledge.
Bowman, K. (2014). Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement. Propriometrics Press.
Forencich, F. (2019). The Exuberant Animal Experience: Teacher’s guide to philosophy, physicality and rapport.
Killingbeck, M. and Whitehead, M. (2015). Observation in PE. In S. Capel and M. Whitehead (Eds.), Learning to Teach Physial Education in the Secondary School ( 49-66). Routledge.
Kirk, D. (2011). Children learning in physical education: A historical overview. In. K. Armour (Eds.), Sport pedagogy: An introduction for teaching and coaching (24-38). Prentice Hall: Routledge
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Educe. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved October 28, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/educe
Pill, S., Penney, D., & Swabey, K. (2012). Rethinking sport teaching in physical education: A case study of research based innovation in teacher education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37 (8). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2012v37n8.2
Portal, I. (n.d.). Culture [blog]. Retrieved from http://www.idoportal.com/culture
Whitehead, M. (2015). Aims of PE. In S. Capel and M. Whitehead (Eds.), Learning to Teach Physial Education in the Secondary School (18-30). Routledge.
Zwozdiak-Myers, P. N. (2015). Communication in PE. In S. Capel and M. Whitehead (Eds.), Learning to Teach Physial Education in the Secondary School (67-86). Routledge.