In the previous blog it was suggested that we need to look hard at the gendered nature of physical education and consider starting again from scratch. In seeking to make physical education genderless we have favoured one idea of engagement i.e. team games, over any other and then watched, confused, when girls show through their actions and inaction that they don’t like being in the boys’ classroom. Last week’s blog suggests that only by being gender sensitive and understanding what it takes to lead an active life will we make physical education a place for all.

In this blog explores physical literacy and asks if there isn’t a better way of doing things. In considering the notion that our experiences are embodied – in other words that they are lived and physically experienced rather then simply being intellectual understandings – then the blog ask just how important are the experiences of movement that we each experience as individuals? If we live our lives through movement then it seems to be a right of each child to develop what they ‘can do’ rather than simply show how they meet our expectations around movement.

Paper 24:

Whitehead, M. (2007/2012). Physical Literacy: Philosophical considerations in relation to developing a sense of self, universality and propositional knowledge. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 424-442) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

Many of the blogs in this series have questioned what we do in the name of physical education. Not because people think that being a good games player or an elite performer is a bad thing - far from it - but because it is not the only thing that someone might be either physically good at or aspire to. It seems reasonable to suggest that physical education is not about being good or an expert performer, but being able to achieve to the best of your ability. Yet, how many children have been denied opportunities to ‘showcase’ themselves or even improve in physical education? Do we cater for all or do we teach to the middle? If, as the former paralympian Baroness Grey-Thompson suggested, disabled children are being sent to the library during PE then what chance do these kids have of developing any of the attributes of being physically literate? In other words, how can all students be encouraged and supported in the development of their physical competencies.

I think back on the early lessons I taught - both as an unqualified and then a qualified teacher, and the unconscious divides I placed around ability, and the finite definitions I harboured around ability and non-ability. I think of the limits I placed on children’s and I wonder what I achieved. One of the key ideas behind physical literacy is “motivation, confidence, physical competence, understanding and knowledge to maintain physical activity at an individually appropriate level throughout life” and I am not sure how well I facilitated this through a physical experience dominated by games and a teacher-centred approach. I think in some of the later lessons I planned and taught through pedagogical models I did better. By considering what physical education was and does, I increased the chances for the kids I taught. However, the fact that I have no data around the current physical activity of any of the kids I taught seems to be a failing on my part, but the here and now (or the then and there) seems to take much greater precedence over the life course.  

What would happen if we made the life course the underpinning goal of all movement. In other words, we considered what sort of impact an activity would have on the future (both near and far) of the kids that we teach? Ideas such as balance, coordination, flexibility, agility, control, precision, strength, power, and endurance take on new meanings when they are considered in a forty-year old (like me) rather than a four or fourteen-year old. What would happen if we focused less on specific activity skills and immediate fitness and became concerned with developing positive attitudes and actions towards physical activity? What would happen if we considered more how, as individuals, we interact with natural aspects such as gravity, gradient, fixed and moving object, and water or man made items such as ladders, escalators, cars, and the manipulation of implements? Body awareness on each of these ‘realms’ and in relationship to each of these objects is important and they define much of who we are because they influence what we can do. Enhanced mastery in the physical domain, even at a modest level can have positive effect on performance and achievement in other areas of the curriculum. So why do we make such stark divides between academic success and physical competence?

The Paper 

This paper asks us to consider what physical education might be like if we worked to both a shared goal of physical literacy and shared understanding of what this meant. Drawing on critical philosophical debates around physical literacy that started in the 90s, Whitehead suggests that “we don’t have a body; rather we are embodied”. In other words the body is not something that carries around the intellect, but has little worth on its own, it is something that is lived and which is integral in our understanding of the world. “Meaning”, as Whitehead argues, “is, therefore, not created by a result of apply the rules of cognition of the strictures of grammatical correctness but arises through our embodied interaction with the word.”

Ideas such as balance are not intellectual terms that can be understood through a set of rules. Instead, they are ideas that are experienced and lived. Similarly, emotion is not just a thought but a physical response to a situation, one that we show on our faces and feel in the pit of our stomach. Writing is a “brain-body coalition”. Developing previous work in this area, Whitehead suggested, “the original sense of ‘I’ is ‘I can’, a practical sense of the body’s possibilities”. It is not defined by thought or even by a visual sense of self (having looked at myself in the mirror) but by what ‘I can’ do. This sense of embodied dimension goes way beyond the absence of disease or the enjoyment of sport and puts the sense of what can be achieved at the heart of learning. It also puts the individual at the heart of education and suggests that it should rotate around the child and not the other way around. In this way every child should have a personally rewarding experience in PE and should leave compulsory education with an attitude towards physical activity that opens doors, in similar ways that numeracy and literacy open doors. But do we really open doors to the physical activity for the life course?

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Vicky Goodyear whose work behind the scenes as copy editor is an important part of getting this blog out on time and in a semblance of coherence. 

In the previous blog we explored that through ‘our’ actions and inactions, and our voice and ‘non-voice’ we have been compliant in western societies pursuit of being slim as a measure of a healthy good-looking citizen. The blog explored hidden and demonstrable roles that physical educators have played in enforcing and reinforcing the mandates of the ‘Cult of Slenderness”. In other words, in doing nothing we are guilty of collusion, but the blog also asked if we have supported the idea of slenderness through the idea of physical education.

This week’s blog explores suggests that we need to look hard at physical education and its gendered nature and consider starting again from scratch. In seeking to make physical education genderless we have favoured one idea of engagement i.e. team games, over any other and then watched, confused, when girls show through their actions and inaction that they don’t like being in the boys’ classroom. The blog suggests that only by being gender sensitive and understanding what it takes to lead an active life will we make physical education a place for all. 

Paper 23:

Vertinsky, P.A. (1992/2012). Reclaiming space, revisioning the body. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 396-423) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

Given some of the ways I think I behaved as student (both in high school and university) and as a young teacher I feel that I am the last person who should be writing this blog this week. I don’t ever recall doing anything ‘wrong’ but on reflection (and I have a lot of time to do that) I was a product of a very traditional games programme at school and went on to maintain that as a player of rugby and cricket and then as a games teacher. It made sense to me to continue to advocate for such a programme and to maintain the status quo with regards to single-sex classes based on traditional sports. Therefore, this blog could be similar to the ex-smoker who in seeing the error of her or his way when he/she becomes an anti-smoker.

I guess my previous actions and beliefs is one of the things that strikes home the hardest when reading a paper like Vertinsky’s. It seems that the old saying “you can’t see the wood for the trees” applies to teaching in physical education, and as a result we end up seeing what suits us best. I saw that that the programmes of traditional sports that I had engaged with as a student of physical education and a rugby player worked, and therefore I felt these served as a measure of good practice for the students I would teach as a physical educator . I didn’t challenge my part in student disengagement or even consider why my friends would ‘opt out’ rather than ‘buy in’. Instead I tried to engage students in the physical education experience that had engaged me. This lack of acknowledgement and “you can’t see the wood for the trees” seems to be the issue at the heart of Vertinsky’s paper.

Indeed Vertinsky argues that we have readily accepted male-defined standards of strength and power for physical education. We have stressed the differences between men and women rather than acknowledging that, while there are differences, we are more closely related to one another than any other species on the planet. In this way, we don’t challenge enough how physical education is organised and taught in schools and what learning outcomes should be expected

However, we’ve also been guilty of adhering to a self-fulfilling prophecy; by ‘accepting’ that boys take the dominant leadership roles (e.g. a coach) and girls the subservient ones (e.g. a recorder); by allowing boys to thrive on competition and girls cooperation and by using practices that lead boys to dislike ‘sporty’ girls and label these girls as ‘lesbians’ - because they beat them at for example, Football.

If we continue to adhere to a self-fulfilling prophecy then we support the current social misconceptions around gender rather than looking at the biological ones. “Girls can’t throw” is just not true - there are many women who can certainly out throw my 37 metre javelin personal best and yet the label is made to fit. Boys don’t like dance is also a convenient lie, especially when you see the number of boys appearing on talent shows to highlight their obvious skills.

So how do we  take things forwards?. How do we change physical education and move beyond the self-fulfilling prophecies that were potentially how we were taught in school? Could we metaphorically enact the Great Flood that Moses endured in the bible and wash everything away? What would happen if we did? Could we start from an idea that was fundamentally different to the one that we have now? Seems like the time for tinkering has passed...it is time to make a real difference, if we are to break the gendered stereotypes that exist in our classrooms.

The Paper

Vertinsky argues that we need to transform physical education through agency and action. We need to shift our focus from the body and training to one that looks at social and cultural analysis of issues pertaining to health. We need a radical review of the range of activities typically available in schools, and we need to acknowledge that many girls simply do not like their current physical education programmes. She argued that the place for this to start is with teachers and teacher training, but that it would also require the profession to convince parents and administrators who often act to hold teachers in check and maintain a notion of physical education that they recognise.

She does this by exposing a number of myths and common (yet well entrenched) views that women are frail and that therefore girls need to be protected and limited in the types of exercise and sport that they have access to. In this way, men and boys engage in masculine sports that celebrate speed and power while women and girls engage in gymnastics and dance - rhythmical activities. Even when equal opportunity legislation came in, coeducational physical education simply reinforced these ideas. Vertinsky holds that girls were simply invited into the boys’ physical education classrooms and that these classrooms simply did not acknowledge the needs of both genders. The boys were more active than girls and the girls were blamed for having the wrong attitude. Subsequently, the boys actively harassed girls, controlled the available space and limited girls’ participation in games. Even when teachers modified games to favour girls (i.e. only girls can score) this only served to ‘prove’ that girls needed help to beat the boys, and they didn’t have the strength or power that was needed to score without these conditions on the games.

As a result of participating in a boys’ class, the girls were put off physical education and they opted out. The idea that they weren’t as good was simple reinforced through a lack of practice time in comparison to the boys. Teachers weren’t in a position to help as they lacked the experience (having taught single sex classes for most of their lives) and the pedagogical knowledge to do anything differently (we all know what it is like to bring in an activity that we know little about). However, what Vertinsky argues is that co-ed didn’t equate to gender equitable classes. In other words opportunities were often weighted in the favour of boys.

On the basis of the findings discussed in this paper, Vertinsky  argued that we need to develop a ‘philosophy of gender-inclusiveness’ that “locates gender inequality in the social relations of exercise and sport rather than in biological and behavioural differences between girls and boys”. In other words we need to change the gender stereotypes we learnt, and that have existed since we were students and sports players. One of the ways that she suggests is to look at what ‘gender-sensitive active living’ might look like. Girls don’t want ‘girl appropriate sports’. Therefore this means changing the spaces in schools and the pervasive language and opportunities that limits girls to what we feel are appropriately ‘girly’ things.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the idea of valuing the physical activity life. It suggests that the opportunity to be self-active is not an individual thing but a community thing. Valuing the physically active life is a frame of mind that rests in the community, not just in the individual and is one that requires investment in policy and provision well beyond what exists at present. The blog and paper argued that physical activity opportunities should be considered as being as much of a right as clean running water.

This week’s blog explores suggests that through ‘our’ actions and inactions, and our voice and ‘non-voice’ we have been compliant in western societies pursuit of being slim as a measure of a healthy good looking citizen. The blog explores hidden and demonstrable roles that physical educators have played in enforcing and reinforcing the mandates of the ‘Cult of Slenderness”. In other words, in doing nothing we are guilty of collusion, but the blog also asks if we have support the idea of slenderness through the idea of physical education.

Paper 22:

Tinning, R. (1985/2012). Physical Education and the Cult of Slenderness. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 387-395) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

Tinning suggested, nearly thirty years ago, that physical educators (and in this he includes teachers, teacher educators, researchers, fitness consultants, coaches, and administrators) have done little to fight against the growth in society of the ‘Cult of Slenderness”. Reading his argument - which is a persuasive now as it should have been then - I can see his point and wonder at my own acceptance of the idea that slim is good while fat is bad. That is not to say that we are not victims ourselves of the media enforced and society driven idea that we must ‘battle the bulge’ and ‘fight fat’. Yet, we are the ones who are supposed to know better.

The key arguments in this paper remain as true today as they did in the mid 80s and that worries me. This invariably leads me to wonder ‘exactly what have we been doing for the last ~30 years?’ It seems that we have ‘kept quiet and carried on’ as many people remain trapped in their preoccupation with their bodies and their concern with their own physiques. People are locked into a daily battle with the calorie and yet take little or no account of biological reinforcers around physique. Instead of understanding and accepting that some people have genetic differences that lead some of use to store sugar as fat, while others are better suited to being ‘athletic’, slenderness is the default position for everyone.

What concerns me (both professionally and personally) is the apparent lack of voice that physical educators have had in challenging the idea of slenderness. My daughter has already started suggesting that she is fat. She’s seven and runs around all over the place and yet somewhere in the psyche of the school playground, or the programmes she watches on TV, or our discussions around healthy eating and exercise she has got this idea in her head. But ‘who will challenge this?’ Can I rely on her teachers to do this or will their own predilection towards slenderness stop that? Who are the voices who are shouting out against these ideas? I guess the buck stops with me and emanates outwards but I do think that we need to work harder than ever to be the profession that begins to break down this cult. Others are equally guilty but now is not the time to look around for scapegoats. Instead, as physical educators, we need to find our voices (and soon) and make sure we shout out about the errors we have allowed to become truth. Furthermore we need to make physical education a place where everybody can challenge the social engineering that has occurred for decades around slenderness. How? One lesson at a time seems like a place to start.

The Paper

In exploring Tinning’s paper I will start in the middle. He introduced two women (but I would argue that these could also have been men - although not in equal proportion) as an example of the differences between slenderness and health. The first - described as slender, bright and attractive - engaged on daily exercise and had recently won Miss America. A paragon of health and beauty perhaps? And yet such was her battle with weight and calories that her conversations at home were conducted from a stationary bike. Any binge eating (the example used was a piece of coconut cake) was immediately treated with ‘overexercise’ and was worked off on the bike. The second woman was described as aggressive, athletic and successful and lived the fitness life with running, cycling and walking seen as key parts of her weekly exercise routine. That, and the fact that she suffered from bulimia and was sick three times a day. 

Both of these women, Tinning argued, could have been considered as paragons of the cult of slenderness and yet they exist on what he calls the ‘purge continuum’ - alongside those who take diuretics or weight lose pills. Who hasn’t purged and engaged in a bout of highly demanding exercise following a particularly calorific day - isn’t that why new year resolutions often focus on losing the Christmas bulge. Yet, for these women the purge was a daily occurrence and was as much a part of their ‘physique’ as good eating and appropriate daily exercise.

The drivers for this ‘obsession’ was society and its acceptance of slim. It is good to be seen to spending a lot of time trying to lose weight even if the aim is a shape that you were never meant to be. The stereotype of slenderness is seen in many places and there are a lot of beneficiaries -  drug companies, fitness club owners, clothing and equipment manufacturers, magazine owners who sell slenderness, government departments who can spend less on healthcare, and physical educators. The cult of slenderness has cemented the position of PE in the school curriculum - but it this because of its compliance with slenderness or because of its advocacy of education and understanding around healthy living?

I have argued here before that games (even though I love them) don’t allow children and the adults they become to “value the physically active life” and engage in “lifelong physical activity” so I don’t buy the argument that PE has educated against the cult of slenderness. Tinning suggests that physical educators recruit people who are similar to them, not just in terms of attitude and beliefs, but also in terms of body type. The mesomorphic PE teacher is selected in the image of the selectors and rewarded for maintaining the traditions of the subject. This has meant reinforcing feelings of inadequacy that some students feel about their abilities and the bodies.

Instead of the changelessness of PE, Tinning argues that “physical education in schools is an opportunity for social engineering with respect to challenging the negative aspects of the pursuit of slenderness”. This means exposing the folly of the media, changing our own behaviours and tolerances of different body types, and changing our ‘non-voice’ into actions that make change possible even if this means biting the hand that feeds us.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the ways in which being good at sport and physical education affords learners physical capital, which in turn allows them to develop their social status. However, it also argues that this capital is gendered and that boys gain more from it that girls. Furthermore, it explores the idea that where girls gain capital from being slim, pretty and tanned, boys gain it from being strong, skilful and powerful. These differences are upheld in society and yet kids are not equipped to address them nor challenge them.

This week’s blog explores the idea of valuing the physical activity life. It suggests that the opportunity to be self-active is not an individual thing but a community thing. It is a frame of mind that rests in the community and not just in the individual and is one that requires investment in policy and provision well beyond what exists at present. It argues that physical activity opportunities should be considered as being as much a right as clean running water.

Paper 21:

Siedentop, D. (1996/2012). Valuing the physically active life: contemporary and future directions. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 376-386) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

We have spent hundreds of years and millions of pounds, dollars, yen, euros, and so on, providing clean water supplies to communities and we continue to do so. Rightly so. Historically water born disease has been a huge cause of human death and we - as a planet - are working hard to ensure that everyone has access to clean water as a fundamental human right. 

As we move into the 21st century it becomes increasingly clear that physical inactivity is a major contributor to morbidity and is a significant risk factor in, for example, cardiovascular disease. Yet instead of having a community response - as we did with clean water - we have had an individual response. Instead of investing in physical activity as a fundamental human right we are currently suggesting that ‘individuals are ultimately responsible for their own health and their own behaviour related to health’. This to me seems like the equivalent of saying “you have access to water. OK it’s not clean but it is your responsibility to boil it to make it safe. Yes, I know the lake is seven miles away but you can walk and get it can’t you?”

If we don’t start thinking of physical activity as a fundamental human right and providing high quality facilities that are staffed by the best people and are convenient for all to access, then what chance do we have in encouraging physical activity? Yet in this whole notion of community comes the key idea of school and education. We cannot expect people to simply seek out high quality and appropriate physical activity - just like we can’t expect people to simply know that they need to boil water to purify it - they have to be educated.

This is where physical education and community sport comes in. We need to create opportunities for young people to engage in physical activity during and after school, with their friends and family and in local sports facilities. But, specific to physical education and potentially coaching, how do we ensure the transfer of learning? How do we make the connection between learning the exact technique of throwing a “3-pointer” or hitting a hockey ball forty metres with lifelong physical activity? Learning to play the game is one thing, but an obsession with precise replication that uses elite athletes as the ‘YouTube role model’ seems to be increasing less important to me. As does the very idea that ROBing (Roll Out the Ball) children of an education is in anyway acceptable. Neither of these adds up to an education capable of helping people make informed choices about physical activity.

However, it is more that just education and it can’t be just about the individual. Instead it has to come from the community and the family. Schools can become the focus of a ‘developmental triangle’ that is funded and supported by government. In the UK we had the political slogan “the big society” and yet this is what Siedentop terms a pseudopolicy i.e. something that sounds good but does nothing. I don’t know what ‘big society’ means but if it meant that we invested in society’s sense of community and its ability to provide physical activity for all then that would be a great thing.

What can you do, or do you already do, to promote physical activity in a community sense?

The Paper

I spoke this week with Adam Howell in his #PHYSEDagogy session about the “rip van winkle” effect (Goodyear, 2013) ( a guy who fell asleep on top of a mountain for 20 years and then awoke bemused to find society had changed) in other words how, if like Rip, if you fell asleep for 20 years, would you find things markedly different in your gym? In keeping with this - and although this paper was written over fifteen years ago - Siedentop’s message that we need to advocate for the values of a physically active life is as equally powerful, important, and worrying now, as it was when it was written.

Siedentop asked what could be done to ensure that a large number of the population were able to adopt and maintain a lifestyle in which physical activity of the right kinds and the right amounts were prominent. He said, that in order for this to happen, the population needed to value physical activity and be critical of the current inequalities that exist and the barriers to physical activity they present.

By valuing, Siedentop held that it was very important that participation habits were such that people organised their lives so that regular involvement in activity occurred throughout their lives. This meant that the daily and weekly schedules that we make include physical activity even when other important and attractive alternatives exist. Participation is key but so is the willingness ‘to participate in ways that are literate and critical”. At the heart of being literate is the idea that people are willing to use their knowledge to preserve, protect and improve their practice of activity. Being critical, according to Siedentop, is a willingness to acknowledge that fair access to all (regardless of race, gender, disability, age or socioeconomic status) is vital if the population is going to be more active.

However, physical activity is seen as an individual pursuit and talked about from an individual perspective. It has become the focus of the private sector and subject to a pay-to-play mentality. In some cases it has become a medicine to cure the ills of an individual but it has failed to become a focus for public policy and resources that can provide an infrastructure that promotes and supports participation in physical activity. This is especially important as the research that Siedentop draws on strongly indicates that social class particularly is a key determinate of physical activity.

Those with a disposable income and free time are best placed - both geographically and financially - to engage in physical activity. Local contingencies have a strong impact on how people view activity. The location of a well-equipped facility for physical activity is an important but Siedentop suggests that this distance is measured in steps and not miles. Yet without such a facility where is a community even to start thinking about physical activity? Yet, urban regeneration has, on the whole, been about housing and not activity needs. Indeed Siedentop argues that politicians and policy makers - educators even - have become resigned to the fact that little can be done to reduce social class inequalities and have therefore focused on personalistic solutions i.e. give up smoking and take some exercise.

However, solutions to inactivity problems are more likely to lie outside of an individual and are, instead, embedded in social and economic concerns that can shape and sustain healthy behaviours - such as access, persisting groups and challenge. Access, as mentioned above, is key. Opportunities that are “tangibly local”, safe,  and attractive, mean that exercise opportunities are more likely to be valued. Yet working in persisting groups is also important. The sustained presence of “extra ordinary adults” who lead persisting groups are key to lifelong engagement. Finally a sense of real accomplishment is an aid to lifelong physical activity. Yet to achieve these requires culture that values physical activity.

We need public policy and action. Community-based programmes are traditional underfunded, unstable and focus on fixing problems rather than preventing them. If these projects - many of them which are both local, persistent and provide accomplishments - become part of a wider developmental triangle with schools and families then Siedentop believed that cultural changes could occur. If it was properly funded and didn’t rely on either volunteers or private activity infrastructures then more of the population might come to value the physically active life. But what can you do? Siedentop believed that by developing and replicating small local solutions to these big problems then we could get action local and policy level change in this difficult and yet not insurmountable problem.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the argument that physical education has an established place in society and this could be used to promote and then enact a notion of PE that was firmly centred on health. It explored the links that have been made between inactivity in childhood and inactivity in adulthood and argued that by addressing the first real difference can be made in the health of the nation. The discussion on the blog explored the ideas that lesson time is not enough to teach about lifelong physical activity and that it need physical education needs to be about more than health. It is about physical, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing (to borrow the term Haugra from NZ) and thinking beyond the confines of the physical department and looking instead at it as a holistic and school/community undertaking.

This week’s blog explores the ways in which being good at sport and physical education affords learners physical capital which in turn allows them to develop their social status. However, it also argues that this capital is gendered and that boys gain more from it that girls. Furthermore, it explores the idea that where girls gain capital from being slim, pretty and tanned, boys gain it from being strong, skilful and powerful. These difference are upheld in society and yet kids are not equipped to address them nor challenge them.

Paper 20:

Shillings (1991/2012). Educating the body: Physical capital and the production of social inequalities. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 357-376) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

When we talk about changing the way that we teach (and for some us the way we teach teachers to teach), we are keen to change the opportunities for some of the most disaffected learners. Yet, one of the groups of children who often complain are the most able in our classes. These learners are often those who  are respected in the school, by their peers and teachers, for their athletic ability, where they can subsequently  use this resource’ to their advantage. This resource or commodity is referred to by Shilling as physical capital and it can be converted into a very real sense of social and economic capital.

For some, their physical capital is exchanged for economic capital - a job. For the professional sports star this can be highly lucrative which leads to endorsements beyond their ‘day job’. For others, their physical capital is converted via social capital in economic capital. For example, we only have to look at David Beckham – a Footballer who has subsequently gained economic and social capital as a result of his ‘eliteness’ (physical capital). Indeed, as he announces his retirement his future employment is not a concern, and roles are currently being speculated by the media– a continued ambassador, a manager and even a fashion designer or the new 007.

So what does this mean for physical education? In changing the ‘rules of engagement’ and allowing more kids to increase their physical capital – do we change the rules of physical capital and replace those who can dominate the respect received or given. In this way, even by the changes we make to our lessons – such as ensuring equality, inclusion and cooperation, how are we changing the rules?

That is not to say that I am defending the current activity-focused (specifically competitive team games) culture in physical education - despite being so implicit in it as a younger teacher. I do believe that we need to change the focus of what we do, without limiting the potential of those who are capable of converting their physical capital into social and economic gain. However, perhaps we also need to understand what physical capital is and how an appreciation of it might help us to plan our curricula and develop our pedagogies.

As I drew on David Beckham as one example, Shilling emphasises that physical capital is different for different people and it is ‘gained’ in different ways. Shillings draws on a breadth of research and a number of sociological perspectives when suggesting that physical capital means different things to different people and is changed depending on social location, habitus (i.e. the lifestyle, values, dispositions and expectations of a particular social group - see theMauss blog), and ‘taste’. In other words, where you live both physically and socially, your cultural traditions around movement, and what is deemed as appropriate for someone ‘like you’ to do. Location reflects your material circumstances and the inequity of opportunities. For many people the body is a means to an end. It allows them to work to support their families and that very act leaves them little spare time in which to indulge in physical activity. For others the body is an end in itself and they can concentrate on their health and/or their physique. Habitus dictates what, if any, activities are ‘permissible’ and/or affordable for you to engage in. Football for some and polo for others. In some ways this is also reflected in ‘taste’ but taste is also about lifestyle and the voluntary choices that people are able to make.

However, Shilling argues that when these issues are applied to men and women their ability to gain and convert physical capital is gendered. The ‘weak’ female body is often seen as not being suitable for development. Male-dominate labour markets, a ‘tyranny of slenderness’, and prejudice again muscles in women, PE kit and expectations around marriage through beauty, dieting, make-up, and fashion all lead to different expectations around physical culture. In many sports women cannot get the same ‘conversion rate’ for physical capital into economic or social capital as men. Furthermore, there are fewer ‘old girls’ clubs’ (so to speak) where women can convert their physical capital into social gain. These lead Shilling to suggest that there is a different type of physical capital for girls and women based around male expectations of dress and appearance and the reinforcement that muscle is wrong and fat is wrong.

In writing this I wonder how compliant, as a profession, we have been in reinforcing these expectations. The most able students thrive in our lessons and their achievements are celebrated around the school and in the local community...however I don’t believe that is gendered and I feel that any sporting success is celebrated. Indeed, if we take stereotypical examples, like the Football team or the Netball team if either wins this is often celebrated in the school bulletin and mentioned in staff meetings. However, by having a narrow notion of what physical education is and does, have we denied many children the chance to understand fallacies around health and thinness, and/or physical education and muscle. Have we failed to challenge ideas around thinness and fatness? Have we highlighted these through ‘fat camps’ and body fat measures? With the increasing understanding that boys as well as girls face issues around size and shape do we need to do more to address expectations around physical culture?

The Paper

Shilling, writing twenty years ago, suggested that the body was “a irreducible human resource which assumes value in various spheres of social life”. However, he also suggested that this resource had a gendered construction that disadvantaged women and their ability to convert this resource into cultural gain. Shilling called this resource ‘physical capital’ and defined it as “a social formation of bodies by individuals through sporting, leisure and other activities”. The importance of physical capital is that it can be converted into economic, cultural and social capital or indeed can detract from any of these.

Physical capital can be gained in many ways and, while sport is often played in different ways by different classes, it also has the ability to cross-class and present opportunities to different people. However, physical capital is limited in several respects. A sporting career is short and comes with a degree of risk (in some cases a high degree of risk) that places limits on what people can do with their ability. Furthermore, it is gendered. A footballer’s ability to convert physical into economic capital, regardless of ability, is depended on gender. As is her ability to convert physical into social and cultural capital or indeed the indirect consolidation and accumulation of economic capital in the years after a sporting career ends (i.e. through commentary, punditry or coaching).

Beyond elite sport Shilling argues that society does not help girls make appropriate leisure choices on their own. They are told that muscles are bad, and believe that PE might cause these - so they drop out. They are encouraged to only display their bodies when they are slim, good looking and tanned and yet they feel that PE kit is not an appropriate way to display themselves under these expectations.

Drawing on a number of research areas, Shilling argues that the body has become a focus of modern discourse and that ‘bodies’ and therefore people are increasing constructed through medical, sporting and moral decisions around what is right and what is wrong. Yet he also holds that while “people make their own bodies through labour, sport and play, they do not make them in circumstances of their own choosing.” As an example of this he suggests that the perception that girls are weaker that boys is just that – a perception. Yet social practices surrounding the identity of girls says that they are weaker and therefore girls are told this, are discouraged from activities that would build their strength and are deprived the resources to develop in this way, and are expected to follow society’s ‘rules’ about weakness. When they don’t they lose cultural capital.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the key issue that face us at this time as we seek to understand more about physical education and physical activity. It suggest that social justice and prejudices are still key reasons why students don’t get the physical education experiences that they want, need and deserve. It argues that we are all responsible in the development of teachers (be it ourselves or those who come under our care), and that only together can we ask the hard questions that need asking and then answering. The discussions around the blog focused on ways in which we might involve students in discussions around physical education and what it means to them. In this way we would be better positioned to offer a notion of physical education that was in keeping with their needs and desires

This week’s blog explores this issue from the angle of health. The authors argue that physical education has an established place in society and this could be used to promote and then enact a notion of PE that was firmly centred on health. Drawing on the research in the latter part of the last century the paper makes links between inactivity in childhood and inactivity in adulthood and argues that by addressing the first real difference can be made in the health of the nation.

Paper 19:

Sallis, J.F. & McKenzie, T.L. (1991/2012). Physical education’s role in public health. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 331-356) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

My take home message from this paper is that physical education needs to be educative. The authors are writing at a time when the issue of physical inactivity was being clearly linked to early mortality and associated, and then equally compared, with “population attributed risks” such as cigarette smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. In many respects they do a good job in bringing studies in the field of physical activity and health together for our ‘consumption’ but there seems to be a key educative message missing from the paper - i.e. that we need to radically change what occurs in physical education. Instead, they suggest that physical education” can easily be adapted to meet the current and future health needs of the [US] population”. For example, by ensuring that students engage in the requisite amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity.

Given what we know about pedagogical and curricular change (then and now) this seems like a naive suggestion and one that undermines the efforts of teachers and fails to consider what it actually takes to engender and sustain change. The authors seem to be on the edge of a number of key ideas but they ‘hedge their bets’ on a number of occasions and skirt, in my opinion, around some of the key issues. For example, they talk about research that was undertaken across six lessons and suggest that it had an effect on the dietary behaviour of the participants. While I feel that this is a laudable outcome it makes no mention of long term change. In the same paragraph they talk about a five year study that had a notable and positive impact on cholesterol, dietary intake and health knowledge. Now while no direct change to physical activity or fitness was noted in either study I would not be alone in suggesting that if the five-year model was adopted in school physical education then there would be an increased possibility of sustained lifestyle change at the very least.

This notion of educating rather than schooling runs throughout the paper. The authors overlook the multifaceted nature of change in favour of the expediency of using the existing institutional structures around physical education to develop a form of physical education that favours health-related physical activity goals. That is not to say that they don’t make some important observations but they seemed to have squared the circle in a manner not in keeping with the broad and diverse goals of physical education around physical, social and moral development. Instead health has an endpoint rather than as a way of living that becomes the motivation behind change. I certainly agree with their argument that the major emphasis in physical education on team games is not conducive to lifelong physical activity. I also have a lot of sympathy with their argument that a games agenda in schools has a key impact on our future desire to watch team sports rather than participate.

However, the changes they suggest are not easy and nor are they achievable in the immediate to short term. We need to aspire to the future and face head on the challenges of change. So instead of thinking of next week or next year we need to think in terms of “by the time this student leaves this school in six years time s/he will be able to...” and then fill in the gaps. If the answer to that is have a free throw average of +80% or run 100m in sub 12 seconds then work to that goal, but if it is “value the physically active life” then what learning process do we have to have in place to achieve this six years hence? Is it more than short dietary interventions that may be forgotten by the end of the six years?

The Paper

Sallis and McKenzie’s main argument is that adult physical inactivity is an epidemically-proportioned cause of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases and that this serves as a strong rationale to shift the orientation of physical education squarely towards health. In doing so they hold that childhood inactivity is directly related to adult inactivity and therefore by changing the first you will positively impact on the second. They argue that because “school physical education is the only major institution that can address the health-related activity needs of virtually all children” it should be seen as a major contributor to improvement of the USA’s health crisis. 

In making this case the authors suggest while PE has not historically been viewed as a public health programme they are compelling reasons for such a shift in thinking. With the dangers of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and premature mortality and the strong links to physical activity (or the lack of it) Sallis and McKenzie believed that PE could be redesigned to serve as a preventer to sedentary lifestyle. They even go as far as suggesting that a “reasonable yet untested hypothesis” would be that such a change could influence up to 97% of the population. In this paper they make other “probably”, “speculative” and unsubstantiated claims and assumptions about physical activity and health.

However, they also make a case that any “comprehensive approach to promoting children’s health must go beyond the confines of the school”. This means involving families and the community in the educative process, even if school remains as the centrepiece of any intervention. Sallis and McKenzie also argue that 50% of elementary age children don’t have adequate time for PE, that they are neither active in class nor prepared for lifetime activities, and finally that they are too often taught by non-specialists (see blog on Hoffman). This argument certainly holds true with many others and sits at the crux of the educative arguments made around PE.

The authors focus on elementary schools and hold that teachers trained in physical education are better able to change behaviours around physical activity. However, while I support their implicit argument that elementary school is where we should initially focus our efforts in improving PE by employing specialist teachers, I would argue that this does not take into account current teacher education or expectations around pedagogy and content in PE. To that end we need to find way of achieving teacher and school ‘buy in’ to any form of change. Furthermore, that change needs to be educative and not simply programmatic.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the idea that activities should not be the sun around which physical education revolves. Yet that notion seems to reflect the public and political perception of our field. In advocating for a new approach to physical education the authors suggested that a critical pedagogy of social justice should be positioned in our schools in place of the current agenda of elite performance. The discussions on the blog argued that we need to consider how we educate the whole child and how we continue to advocate for high quality experiences (and following a discussion with @deandudley justify what high quality is and does) with politicians and policy makers. 

This week’s blog explores the key issue that face  at time when we seek to understand more about physical education and physical activity. It suggests that social justice and prejudices are still key reasons why students don’t get the physical education experiences that they want, need and deserve. It argues that we are all responsible in the development of teachers (be it ourselves or those who come under our care), and that only together can we ask the hard questions, for example, that need asking and then answering.

Paper 18:

Rovegno, I. (2008/2012). Learning and instruction in social, cultural environments: Promising research agendas. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 307-330) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

The intended audience for this paper was originally the academic community, and much of what Rovegno writes could be seen as a challenge to researchers to undertake meaningful research, to find out new things, and above all expand our knowledge base. Yet, in reading the paper I was drawn to the importance of these messages and the significance they could have on the practice of others. In particular I felt that those who read this blog, and who are regularly seeking to improve their practice pushing against the real or imagined barriers that stand in the way of innovative practices in physical education, would benefit from reading a synopsis of this paper.

Rovegno charges herself to explore and discuss the challenges and significant research questions for pedagogy over the next ten years. She does this under two broad areas of study; (1) research on curriculum, teaching and learning (RCTL), and (2) research on teacher education (RTE). However, while she positions these areas of study in two contexts  - i.e. RCTL focuses on schools, youth, collegiate, and professional sport; after-school, community or camp programmes; and university physical activity settings, while RTE focuses on university undergraduate programmes and in-service programmes within the context of school, university and other practitioner agencies - I think that both are interrelated enough to talk about them in the single context of physical education.

Drawing on the field of reflective practice, Rovegno argues that the days of trust in teachers as professionals has all but gone and has been replaced with a “crisis of confidence” in their professional knowledge. This is best shown through the repeated interventions that stem from governments and other organisations in an effort to repair what they see as the ‘problems in education’ through quantitative measurable outputs. Rovegno highlights the irony of these top down interventions given the rapidly growing and increasing strong knowledge base about teaching and learning that now exists about how to teach and enhance learning in multiple contexts.

However, that is not to say that change is not desperately needed in some areas. Rovegno argues that the biggest challenge we will face will come under the topic of inequity and social justice. In all of the setting listed above - schools, communities and universities - children and adults continue to learn in inequitable and inadequate situations - and many are deprived the opportunity to engage in “safe, meaningful, health-enhancing physical activity”. While some engage in a rich programme of activity others spend all their time at home inside as their neighbourhoods are unsafe. Social class, disability, race and gender are still key determinants of learning and participation in physical activities. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, don’t.

This creates what Rovegno called “a participation gap” where, for example, boys are more active than girls in and out of school and White children are more active than African American or Hispanic children. For many teachers the reality is that physical education lessons are the only opportunity that children have to “learn and participate in physical activity”. Yet, school is a contested space where subjects are still hierarchically positioned in the timetable and where the opportunity to employ physical education teachers is avoided in favour of Maths and English teachers. Therefore these decreasing periods of time become filled with increasingly large numbers of students, and some teachers turn to ROBbery (Roll of the Ball tactics) as a form of survival as a way to keep the children “busy, happy and good”. Yet, Rovegno argues that until schools are held accountable for the quality and quantity of their provision then time and resources will not be diverted to physical education programmes. Therefore, it is vital that the very best teachers are put in front of our children and that we find ways of improving the quality of teachers and programmes especially for those children who “feel alienated and disengaged from physical education and physical activity”.

So what have you done today (in the words of Heather Small) to make you feel proud? Have you consider why certain people like or dislike your programme and why they don’t fully engage? I remember a boy in the first year I taught who walked into my lessons, sat down and watched and then walked out at the end. I never stopped to consider why and the blame always fell on him. What could I have done differently to engage him? These are the hardest questions to ask and find answers to but these are the questions that need to be asked. So what would your question be to yourself?

The Paper

Delving down into the paper Rovegno sets a number of research challenges. As teacher educators - and by that I mean myself and my colleagues who work in universities and those teachers who act as mentors to aspiring teachers - we need to find ways of teaching pre-service teachers the subject matter they need to make a difference in young people’s lives. It is easy to discredit the knowledge of new teachers and suggest that “this isn’t the way we do things here” but it is important that we work with the next generation of teachers and help them marry the old with the new. We need to challenge and modify the beliefs of those undergraduates who take “a sexist, racist and homophobic stance; are biased against overweight people; and are interested only in working with good athletes in programs that benefit able-bodied students”.

Rovegno argues that in order to respond to these challenges we need to design and research a variety of curriculum programmes that are aimed at different age groups, cultural settings, subject matter and curriculum goals. We need to understand student’s perspectives around what they find motivating and meaningful and also disengaging and alienating. We also need to understand how misconceptions and naive concepts emerge through the media, popular culture and/or peer culture and go on to do harm. Ideas like thin means fit and sit-ups burn off abdominal fat are worrying facets if this misinformation culture. This is more relevant when these cultures continue to be stronger than the lesson learnt in schools.

When we find things that work in schools we also need to find ways of scaling up these studies to allow us to better understand their effect in multiple contexts and where different enablers and constraints exist. We need to move beyond our own pre-conceptions and try and get to the bottom of why different populations respond to physical education in different ways and help them find ways of articulating this. We need to challenge antifat attitudes and the very idea that “normal-weight children have better physical skills, reasoning abilities, and social interaction skills”  This means working alongside our students and not just advocating for them. It is beyond the scope of this blog to explore all of Rovegno’s arguments but I would recommend it as a starting point for anyone looking to start some research into physical education and/or physical activity.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored what it means to be a physical education teacher in a ‘world’ that seems to want to continual diversify its knowledge base. It asked if it was still OK to have an idea of what physical education ‘is’ and ‘does’ when it’s teachers are coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds, understandings and experiences. The discussions on the blog resonated with this concern and people were advocating for passion around teaching and learning to future proof our practices and make us proud of what we do. Different knowledge is not a bad thing. However, we need to embrace these ideas and spread our own good practices, while being receptive to the ideas of others. Above all, the respondents advocated for a joy of movement and a pedagogical focus on the child.  

This week’s blog builds on last week’s discussions and explores the idea that activities should not be the sun around which physical education revolves. Yet that notion seems to reflect the public and political perception of our field. In advocating for a new approach to physical education the authors suggested that a critical pedagogy of social justice should be positioned in our schools in place of the current agenda of elite performance. By replacing traditional activities (through which young people learn to be performers) with a thematic curriculum (where students learn through movement) the blog argues that children will, in the words of John Dewey, be the sun around which [physical] education revolves.

Paper 17:

Penney, D. & Chandler, T. (2000/2012). Physical education: what future(s). In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 285-306) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

The very fact that this paper was written thirteen years ago, and yet still seems aspirational and forward thinking, goes a long way to reinforce the sense of inertia that seems to exist in the wider policy and curriculum fields around physical education. It would be fair to say that this is not the first time I have felt this when reading papers older than this one for this blog and have seen the lack of change that appears to have occurred. That is not to say that the people I talk to at conferences, on social media and those who respond to this blog don’t inspire me. They do and yet I still wonder at the majority. When I approached one delegate at the AAPHERD conference I attending this week, and asked him if he wanted to attend our session on Cooperative Learning, his response was “my kids don’t cooperate” as if that was that and it was nothing to do with him. I wanted to shout at him and ask “whose fault is that! Theirs I guess, because you couldn’t possible have taught it wrong.” I didn’t, and I now wonder if I must take some responsibility for his lack of willingness to change.

It is this entrenched idea of what physical education ‘is’ and ‘is about’ that, it seems to me, is responsible for this inertia and it is what Penney and Chandler are writing against. The more examples we get of good and outstanding practice and the more these spread and proliferate our planning processes and appear in our classrooms, and the more we put the child and not the activity at the heart of everything we do then the momentum will start. But it will not happen of it own accord. I meant a lot of great people in North Carolina but they were talking of walking out of sessions and being frustrated by some of the messages emerging from different sessions. These were equally passionate people who are advocating for ideas that place in-class physical activity at the heart of everything they do in the hope that they can make a difference. It comes back to the idea of teaching someone to fish rather than handing them one.

Reading this paper it is clear that change hasn’t been very evident in the last thirteen years. Well not in the wider world at least. Yet in that time I have made radical changes to my approach to physical education and I am sure others have as well. Social media has given our community a voice, and while we are still a discordant voice in small communities, we are having an impact. The longest journeys start with a single step and while we might not be even remotely close to being ‘there yet’ we are under way and we need to remember that in times of exasperation.

The Paper

At the dawn of the 21^st century Penney and Chandler asked what the contribution of physical education will be, indeed should be, in the education of children in the new millennium. They asked this question, it seems to me, from a position of scepticism as to the adequacy and appropriateness of current practices and structures, and in both “public and political perceptions of what physical education ‘is’ and ‘is about’”. Furthermore, they challenged us to consider how we might inspire and enable change that could improve the quality and quantity of the learning opportunities that are available to young people.

The argument they make around change is one that has been heard before, since, and will, unfortunately, be heard again. They argue that changing leisure activities, changing relationships between work and leisure, and changing interpersonal relationships (among other things) have all contributed to a feeling that physical education is falling behind. The consequence of being stuck in the past is that we are faced with a society that we continually want to change rather than one of which we can endorse. This brings us to consider the type of learner that we want to help develop and shape? Penney and Chandler are not alone, I feel, in advocating for an idea of physical education that is connected “within the subject, with other aspects of the curriculum, and with lives and societies beyond schools” and which has “a ‘lifetime approach’ to education”.

This paper is more than just rhetoric but it is certainly aspirational in its intentions. Having laid out the need for change the authors firstly argue for radical change “in and off physical education” and specifically in lesson contexts, curriculum design and in policy. They then move on to discuss a vision for a future curriculum that puts “a critical pedagogy for social justice” at its heart and argues for a very different voice in physical education and the development of a different message.

In calling for a new message Penney and Chandler argue that political and public perspectives of physical education position it as a ‘doing’ subject that can be equated to ‘sport’. One of the critical failures in curriculum design, teaching and learning is that we have allowed (or have adopted) a firm belief that there is only one possible structure and orientation for the subject to develop alone. So much so that what physical education does is now ‘obvious’ to policy makers and communities.

Their core message is that this obviousness has come to be represented by activities or areas of activity, and yet this is not what physical education is only, or primarily about. It is about proving opportunities for ALL children to experience enjoyment and achievement in physical contexts. These experiences, and the associated knowledge, understanding and skills they gain, serve as a basis for them to lead an active and healthy life. Furthermore, as teachers we are positioned to establish children as creators rather than just receivers of knowledge. In comparison, under activity-based structures the focus is on performance. This, in turn, seems to inevitably come back to elite performance in specific activities where control, accuracy and precision become narrow interpretations of activities.

Penney and Chandler's response to this is to suggest a thematically orientated, rather than activity-based curriculum, that can play a key role in “enabling, encouraging and extending participation and performance”. Themes such as movement and physical literacy, physical activity, health and fitness, competition and cooperation, and challenge form the heart of this proposed thematic approach, where a weaker framework allows learning to be more student and individually centred, and creates partnerships between teachers and students, involves parents and local representatives, and creates a new expectation around what physical education ‘is’ and ‘is about’.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the idea that sports and games are not things we do to ‘escape’ life or something we do just after work in our social time. Instead play should be seen as a central focus in both adults’ and students’ lives. Flipping the metaphor of ‘work to live’, the last paper considered that instead we should ‘work to play’ and that everything we do allows us the time and resources to play.  In his response to the blog Andy Vasily focused on the importance of intrinsic motivation but the difficulty in ‘finding it’ for every child. He suggested that that every educative journey should be empowering and should aid this search for internal motivation.

In this week’s blog we explore what it means to be a physical education teacher in a ‘world’ that seems focused on the continued diversification of our knowledge base. It asks if it is still OK to have one idea of what physical education ‘is’ and ‘does’ when its teachers are coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds and with widening experiences and understandings.

Paper 16:

Newell, K.M. (1990/2012). Physical education in higher education: Chaos out of order. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 267-284) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice 

What is ‘physical education’? If you asked a hundred PE students/teachers that question you might get a set of answers where the similarities and differences are equally distributed. If you asked a teacher who graduated from a sport and exercise science degree her answers would be different, you would expect, from someone who graduated from a sport education course or a physical education course. Given the number of different faculties, departments and degrees that students can now graduate from, how do we know that what we say is “physical education” is the same as what our colleague, employer, neighbour, or student would call ‘physical education”?  Consequently, have we lost our way a little? Has our enthusiasm to explore different paths as a means to be a physical education teacher served to highlight the differences, and bury or silence the commonalities? Have we splintered apart and in doing so risked our very existence?

Imagine you are a prospective PE teacher and you are just finishing up in a school and want to go to university. Now imagine you are trying to make a choice where you are going to go to study and start on the university application site (UCAS in the UK) and search for all PE courses. You are faced with 50 results and none of them appear to be the same: Sport and Physical Education; Sport, Physical Activity and Health; Sports Science and Physical Education; Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy; Physical Education with QTS; Children’s Physical Education; Physical Education and Sports Coaching Science (to name a few). How do you choose? When I choose my degree route into teaching I didn’t do PE (even though had the offers) and did sports studies - just in case I decided in the end that I didn’t want to teach: which I did.

Let’s look three or four years ahead. A graduate from each of the courses names above applied for a position in your school. How do you know what they know? Does the split that occurred at undergraduate level simply repair itself or are the notions of what physical education ‘is’ and ‘does’ so strong that we paper over the cracks that exist in our shared knowledge base?

To me, these gaps are the very reason why teachers can no longer be considered ‘trained’ when they leave higher education. The disparity of knowledge is such that we need to keep learning just to catch up with the field. If a teacher has linked sports science with their physical education degree then they need to learn about sport pedagogy, and visa versa. The issues above are ones that need to be addressed by universities (as I will discuss when I explore the paper below) but they need to be considered by practitioners. What do you know? Believe? Ignore? How can you be happy that you know enough? Does a rose by any other names smell as sweet? You need to keep learning to find out.

The Paper

“There was a time when PE was PE”. It was recognised globally in higher education, the school system and in society as a subject, influenced by education, medicine and the military, that had an educative focus. Teachers were trained in courses designed specifically for them and with one intention in mind - to work in gymnasia.  They learnt about pedagogy (although they wouldn’t have called it that) and they were in a career for life. However, as Newell argues, these halcyon days are gone and physical education has been swallowed in a vast field of disciplines and subdisciplines that stretch as far as the eye can see.

Whilst the field of physical education has both split and expanded into a patchwork of alternatives the subject itself has declined. The need for PE teachers has shrunk. Its importance on the timetable has diminished and the number of kids in schools has also reduced. The combined effect of this is that PE is smaller than it once was. Simultaneously, there has been growth in areas that were once seen as the children of PE - physiology, psychology, biomechanics to name but a few. This has been fuelled by the rapid growth in alternative careers for graduates, and supported by a move away from a professional emphasis on teaching and into a disciplinary focus around the components of physical activity (PA). Yet at a time when societies focus on PA was an all-time high, Newell argues that the disciplines of PA were increasingly diversifying, which in turn was plunging the area into chaos.

The question “who are we” has become increasingly prevalent and this was reflected, in the USA in 1990, in the names of departments that offered course in PA. Seventy or more different connotations at Newell’s count. Seventy different ways of saying what was once ‘physical education’. Would any other subject tolerate (even survive) the splintering of its core knowledge domain in this way?

In this ‘diversification’ - Newell argues - subject areas have been keener to justify their position by stating the differences rather than celebrating their commonalities. While this has afforded some a place in higher education, it is at the expense of the consumer. How do students know the difference between exercise physiology, biodynamics, and movement learning if we don’t? We need to find the common ground and give up these artificial boundaries. We need to respond to the marketplace and make the decisions of potential students simple. We need to respond to what the marketplace is telling us and meet the needs of society and not just our own silos. As subjects we need to throw off the shackles of independence and come together to play the long game. We need to identify what our common core of study is and celebrate our similarities rather than continuing to fragment the field. 

So I ask you to consider – what was your route into physical education? Look around in your department do you hold the same beliefs and values to your colleagues whose route differed? Does this impact what you and your department do? How can you learn from one another and pool the different things that you know? How can you operate together rather than recognising the differences?

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored how, in the summer Olympics of 1968, one man changed the sport of high jumping and turn a flop into a revolution. Before Dick Fosbury dared to try something different others had employed the western roll, eastern cut-off or scissor jump to win Olympic medals. Yet, forty-five years later and these other jumps are now only taught to kids as novelties. However, the blog also argued that before Fosbury there were idiosyncratic ways of jumping and yet after him, and for nearly half a century, the sport of high jump has stopped innovating. The discussions revolved around giving students control over what they learn but trying to do this using the Goldilocks principle i.e. not too much, not too little but just the right amount. In this way we would stop dictating to them and instead act as guides.

In this week’s blog we explore the idea that sports and games are not things we do to ‘escape’ life or something we do just after work in our social time. Instead play should be seen as a central focus in both adults’ and students’ lives. Flipping the metaphor of ‘work to live’, this paper considers that instead we should ‘work to play’ and that everything we do allows us the time and resources to play ..This blog asks us to consider “what is play?” and then suggests that play is not solely competition focussed on winning and losing. Instead the blog argues that there is a moral imperative for play to be seen as means and not an end. In other words, that it is the action of playing rather than the result of having played that is important. It is this is that motivates us to play. Winning is not as gratifying unless there is a chance of losing; nor is it worthwhile if you cheat.

Paper 15:

Morgan, W.J. (2006/2012). Philosophy and physical education. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 245-266) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

We need to flip our understanding of sports and games - and therefore physical education - if we are realistically make a case for it. Currently, we suggest that games and sports are a break from the daily grind of having to work in order to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. Yet in this discussion, the food and the clothes are the important things and sports and games are not. However, if we were to make the argument that we work only to allow us the time and space to play then we have a different type of relationship with sports and games, and physical education. If playing games and sports were given increasing intrinsic value, and we acknowledge that work for the opportunity to play rather than playing when work allows, then we could make a stronger argument for sports, games and physical education.

Looking at it from the current perspective, when ‘we’ are asked to justify the place of physical education (or as it is increasingly called ‘games’ and ‘school sport’) the argument is often based on developing young people’s health and fitness, it significantly contributes to their motor learning and it encourages social cooperation. In this way PE is seen as being important within our everyday lives and yet the most important things we do in our everyday lives is secure our survival and well-being by going to work to earn money and limiting the time when we leave school to engage in physical activity. In this way sport, games and PE are seen as being a derivative of our wider aims which are to enhance our daily lives. For example, health and fitness means that we are better workers who have longer working lives and take less sick days. Social cooperative means that we are a ‘team player’ in the workplace and we contribute to the collective good. These are all laudable reasons why physical education plays an important role in society and our cultures, but they are second rate reasons that focus on how we function as human beings that suggest sport and games allow us to work and be better citizens, even to live longer.

Yet, let's flip this argument and let’s say, we do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do i.e. we go to work in order to play. Indeed, work for example provides the resources (i.e. time, money, equipment etc) for us to pursue our goals. For this argument to be possible however, sport, games and PE need to have intrinsic value and be intrinsically satisfying and this is where we often fall down. In this paper Morgan argues that there is a difference between playing and Playing  For example playing, with a small P, is about performing or operating i.e. to play a musical instrument, while Playing with a capital P is about valuing the ends in themselves and opposed to the means of getting there. Morgan uses golf as an example to explain this idea. He suggests that the end point in golf is getting the ball in the hole in the least number of shots possible. This could be achieved by hand-carrying the ball to the hole and stuffing it in but the means of getting the ball there is where the intrinsic motivation or satisfaction lies. So I guess the question is where is the same intrinsic satisfaction in a passing drill? When passing is decontextualized, and the game and the defender is removed, then it the Pass (to use the same analogy) is the end that we seek and it ceases to be the means of getting there. I have spent many hours of my life in passing drills and the only reason I did it was because I saw it as ‘something to get through’ so I could Play the game. Others had no interest (or intrinsic motivation or satisfaction) even in playing the game and yet they had to ‘get through’ the passing drills and the games. So it seems reasonable to suggest, and using Morgan’s argument, that drills have not intrinsic value – are they playing?

So when you consider you next practice or lesson think about which way your argument goes. Do you work so you can do what you really want to do? Or do you use sport, games and PE as a break from work? After all, that is what many kids say that they do...

The Paper

In his discussions around the philosophy of physical education Morgan examines the argument as to “why physical education should be included in the curriculum.” In other words he questions what is its educational value? He argues that for physical education to be valued it needs to be the end and not the means to the end. In arguing for PE, as a health and fitness class that helps people develop their motor skills and be cooperative, we make PE compliant to the greater goal of being a competent worker. In contrast, Morgan argues that sport, games and PE are among the most important and serious of human activities then we reposition physical education as a meaningful and different type of subject.

Working is about doing things as efficiently as possible. Sport, games and PE are actually the complete opposite. Take the golf example above. Carrying the ball to the hole would be an instrumentally better way of achieving the best score, but to do so takes away the intrinsic value of the sport. It takes away the value of the activity and this is where the field of philosophy in physical education has lost out to the philosophy of sport. Morgan argues that where the philosophy of sport has focused on ethical issues and moral issues, philosophy of physical education has focused on the idea that educated person should not be reduced “to a capacity to wield propositional knowledge, but [should also have] the ability [to] suffuse one’s intentions and actions with aesthetic, moral, and practical know-how, and to provide pleasurable experiences that people regard as intrinsically worthwhile”.

In some ways, Morgan is arguing that philosophy of physical education has tried to fit into philosophy of education and justify itself and its subject. In comparison philosophy of sport has deliberately engaged in a “warts-and-all” exposé of the moral debauchery that is rife in sport.  In this paper Morgan holds that philosophy of physical education needs to follow this lead and focused on ethical issues and moral issues. To do so would be to view physical education as an ethical undertaking where consideration of how participants (teachers and students) treat each other is important. It would therefore be about moral virtue and its place in schools.

A number of curriculum theorists in PE have already explored this idea. Siedentop (the ‘inventor’ of Sport Education) has argued that for moral virtues like self-discipline, humility and sensitivity to become a part of youth sport it would have to change or completely transform its practices. Yet we also need to rethink our approach. Competition is seen often seen as a negative, “winner-takes-all” mentality where the winning is more important than the cost. It is egotistical and self interested where the win is the exclusive possession of the player(s) who won. But if we consider it as a mutual quest for excellence, where competitors must cooperate if there is to be a contest at all and where my opponents, in the words of Morgan, “provide the challenge against which my athletic ability is tested” then we get a different conception of competition.

If we hold that educationally children should be taught, through sport, the moral virtues of fairness, honesty and a sense of justice then practitioners and philosophers alike need to engage in a “no holds barred critical depiction” of sport, games and PE and use these debates to find new ways of redesigning these activities or school subjects.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored a twenty-year old argument that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to programming in physical education. It is a call that takes little account of the thousands of kids who leave school every year with no intention of going near a gymnasium ever again in their lives. Drawing on the ten ‘rules’ of changing practice in schools and applying them to Physical Education Larry Locke investigates the enablers and constraints of change and, in an argument that holds as true today, asks physical educators to consider what their kids are telling them: maybe not with their voices but certainly with their feet. The discussion around the blog and twitter explored the idea of the macro or the micro. Which are the big ideas that we can change or is the devil in the detail so to speak? Whatever level you decided the think, act or change all believed that the input of the students was vital in any meaningful change.

In this week’s blog we explore the concept of ‘habitus’ and the idea that we human movement is not an individual concern but is instead developed through societies, cultures, and traditions. These ‘techniques of the body’ - as Mauss (pronounced Mouse) describes them - mean that an Egyptian ‘walked like an Egyptian” because that is how s/he learnt to walk from the day he or she could walk. The expression “when in Rome...” has new meaning when seen through the ideas that Mauss presents in this paper. He argues that, in fact, a spade isn’t a spade; at least a French spade isn’t an English spade and both require different techniques of the body to wield them effectively. A technique that needs to be learnt.    

Paper 14:

Mauss, M. (1935/1973/2012). Techniques of the body. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 224-244) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

In the summer Olympics of 1968 one man changed the sport of high jumping and turn a flop into a revolution. Before Dick Fosbury dared to try something different others had employed the western roll, eastern cut-off or scissor jump to win Olympic medals. Even during the high jump final in Mexico, Fosbury’s new way of jumping was seen only as a novelty; until he won gold. Forty-five years later and the other jumps are now only taught to kids as novelties themselves; as antiquated ways that people ‘used’ to use the high jump before Fosbury’s name and jump became synonymous with the sport and was seen as THE only way of doing it. Yet, it could argued that before Fosbury there were idiosyncratic ways of jumping and yet after him, and for nearly half a century, the sport of high jump has stopped innovating. I taught the Fosbury Flop for fifteen years and I remember being taught it myself at school in the 1980s (indeed I still have the scar on my knee where I landed on the triangular metal bar and cut myself open).

However, High Jump’s master’s inventor seems to be the exception and not the rule. Mauss (pronounced Mouse) argues that when natural science make advances it only ever does so in the direction of the concrete and of the unknown. In other words, Mauss held that the unknown is found on the frontiers of science where the science of certain facts have not yet been reduced into concepts and are still labelled as ‘miscellaneous’. This frontier of current ignorance is where “there are things to be discovered” because we know that we are ignorant and more importantly because we trust in the quality of the facts that we have at our disposal. This is the space that Fosbury occupied and yet, perhaps, as a consequence of his efforts no one has since sought to change high jump as he once did? To me this seems like position where we all stand now as physical educators and as coaches. At least it is the position where we should stand at the end of every lesson, unit, season or year when we prepare for the next. What do we know that we didn’t know before? What are the hard facts of practice that we have experienced but are yet to sort in our own mind? Do we trust the quality of the facts that we have gathered over time - since we left school or university or our last job, last unit, last lesson? Do we have the confidence to make a significant change? Have we let a ‘Fosbury’ come into our school - into our subject area even - and lay down one irrefutable fact that says that THIS is the best way to teach? Or you will only get the results you seek by teaching this way? Dick Fosbury was an innovator who transformed his sport and he has THE jump named after him. Perhaps Dilshan’s name will go down in history as the man who found a way to exploit the significant space on a cricket pitch behind the wicket-keeper. These are people who changed the rules by working on the frontier of knowledge and science and making the unsorted facts work for them. Can we do the same with our teaching? Coaching? Our students learning? Indeed is this how we learn to be better at what we do?

The Paper

Mauss’s main contribution to the field of education was his modern reconceptualisation of Aristotle’s notion of ‘habitus’ to represent ‘techniques of the body’ that varied not just between individuals but between societies. What he argued was that different cultures - and the societies they harbour - had different ways of doing things. As these ‘techniques of the body’ are bigger concepts of movement than can be contained within an individual, Mauss argued that they were bigger than the habits or customs of an individual. In other words, having a bad habit i.e. using too much “bottom hand” in cricket or sticking your elbow out when you shoot in basketball, was a personal habit while habitus was something you were trained to do. It’s like telling someone where to go. In England we give two fingers to them but that is a cultural thing that may have spread through the commonwealth but not beyond. Yet, it’s origins are centuries old and most people have no idea where it comes from they just know that it is rude and dismissive. However, it is only effective against someone else who knows what it means and therefore it is a traditional insult.

Mauss suggested that children in a society go through the same education (not to be mistaken with schooling although this does form part of their education). The child is taught the art of using the human body. S/he imitates the actions of adults that have succeeded and which s/he has seen successfully performed by adults who have authority over them. The individual, in the words of Mauss “borrows the series of movements which constitute it from the action executed in front of him or with him by others”. S/he sees the successful action as being a) ordered, b) authorised and 3) as a tested action. Such techniques of the body are therefore both effective and traditional.

While this is an abstract idea, Mauss explores it in great detail by looking into an array of different techniques of the body. He explores the cultural traditions around movement that, while seeming alien to outsiders, are as natural as natural can be to those educated by and within the culture. He starts by exploring a personal experience in the First World War - digging. Mauss suggested that English soldiers couldn’t dig with French spades and that the French couldn’t dig with English spades. The consequence was that 8,000 spades had to be replaced any time a French brigade replaced an English brigade, and vice versa. He goes on to explore techniques of the body like jumping, climbing, decent, swimming, forceful pursuits (like pushing, pulling, lifting), eating, drinking, reproduction, massage etc.

Looking at his idea from a physical education or coaching perspective, and exploring an activity like swimming or running, it is clear to see how things have developed over the years. Mauss was taught to run with his fists held tightly closed and close to his chest and was taught to swim breaststroke by swallowing and spitting water. Neither of these ideas survived into his adulthood let alone to the modern day. If this idea is taken to another level then we can consider running. Those who learn to run barefoot and to run for a purpose other than personal fitness run differently to those taught to run in cushioned shoes. Those who live in the mountains, and who are required to ascend or descend hilly terrain every day do so in ways that city dwellers couldn’t imagine - unless they practice parkour (although Mauss wouldn't know what this was).

Mauss also held that techniques of the body were dependant on age and sex. Boys, he said, threw differently to girls. Men punch differently to women. All of these occurred as a result of training. Birthing occurs differently in different countries (standing up or lying down), as does weaning which in turn affects how long a child is carried for and when they learn to walk. How we sleep (on a bed, the floor, in a hammock, on a horse, with or without a pillow, standing up, on the end of abyss. When we dance. Is it to court. Is it before war like the Maori and other polynesians? Is it close together? In hold?

All of these movement are ‘techniques of the body’ and it is thanks to society and not the individual that they exist in such diversity. Yet the ‘westernisation’ of many societies means that technique is becoming homogenised or is experiencing McDonaldization. Just like high jump has been ‘flopped’ so other movement run the risk of being standardised. Is this the same with teaching and coaching? THE way doing is the only way. So next time you look to coach ‘out’ those cultural movements give a thought to what you are doing.

So when you next come teach for example, the High Jump, will you tell and teach the students the technique for the Fosbury Flop – following the habitus of physical education i.e. teaching the same technique and the same skill – or will you encourage your students to be the innovators and create movements that allow them to move over the bar. Is the technique important? Indeed, for every student is the technique of the fosbury flop their best way of doing it? Is Dick Fosbury’s legacy that everyone will do it his way and no one will innovate?

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the idea that we need to look forwards at what physical education, indeed education, ought to be. In other words, how can we envision a future for physical education that surpasses the norm and places it at the heart of the lives of young people, their families and their communities. It challenges us to think of the networks in which we engage and to acknowledge the values that such ‘communities’ hold and champion. In doing we are asked to consider how we might be catalyst for change.In the discussions around the blog a new way of teaching physical education was championed. A blurring of the subject boundaries to include transdisciplinary skills, a change in the learning environment and students views of sport and physical activity, an acknowledgement that there is not one possible future but thousands, and a focus on basic motor skills were all suggested focuses for a ‘new’ physical education.

In this week’s blog we explore a twenty-year old argument that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to programming in physical education. It is a call that takes little account of the thousands of kids who leave school every year with no intention of going near a gymnasium ever again in their lives. Drawing on the ten ‘rules’ of changing practice in schools and applying them to Physical Education Larry Locke investigates the enablers and constraints of change and, in an argument that holds as true today, asks physical educators to consider what their kids are telling them: maybe not with their voices but certainly with their feet.

Paper 13:

Locke, L.F. (1992/2012). Changing secondary school physical education. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 211-224) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

The biggest, strongest, scariest and most personal message to emerge from this paper was the notion that the blame for programme ineffectiveness in physical education is often laid at other people’s feet. “I have no support”, “my colleagues prefer to roll out the ball”, “the administrators and school leaders are happy with the status quo” are familiar responses when asked about change. Yet, little headline space is given to the meaning and value that students assign to the subject. I have, as recently as yesterday, had the pleasure - and regret - to read through the transcripts from a number of interviews that I did with my former students two years after I left secondary school teaching. I would suggest that I had a positive impact and was able to change some people’s opinions of PE and yet some of their descriptions of “games lessons” in particular leave me wishing I could have my time again, whilst knowing what I know now.

The ignorance I had in regards to the consequences of my actions and my skewed belief that what I was doing was right, are scuppered by comments that “games was something to get through”. Ouch. And yet I know that there were many obstacles that I encountered in the way to change. I tried to think and act outside of the box but there are expectations around what happens in school (as I write about in depth here). I also know that it took me seven years of battling for change that allowed me to achieve a unit of work so far out of left field that it would see the kids investing their own games. Finally, as the interviews tell me, my efforts were wasted. My replacement was a “roll out the baller” (ROBer) of the first order and I left no lasting legacy in the school or made any change to the department’s approach to teaching physical education. Does that mean that I was wrong to try? In last week’s blog I suggested that we needed to ask some ‘ought’ questions i.e. what ought physical education be and do? A difficult idea but I guess that by asking our students what it ought not to be would be as good a step forwards as our own imaginings. Would it be such a bad thing if students got to choose the activity they engaged in and the teacher who taught them? Do we have to have a PE kit that determines the doers and non-doers? Do we have to have units that run only for half a term or for a semester? If you have a strong reaction to these suggests can you identify why? I once suggested that kids who had PE before break could come to school in their kit and change into their uniform at break, those who had it after break could change at break and lunchtime respectively, and those who had it in the afternoon could change at lunch and go home in their kit. This would stop the huge amounts of time lost in the changing rooms before and after lessons. However, no one would endorse this. Why? “Because we’ve never done that before...” What would PE be like if we did things we’ve never done before?

The Paper

Locke (1992), in his consideration of secondary school physical education and the possibility of change, suggests that there was increasing evidence that many programmes fail to achieve their objectives. He subsequently asked if the dominant model of PE was broken, and if it was broken did it need fixing or rebuilding from the ground up? Yet, “broken” is not an easy analogy to use in any school programme because some bits work in some schools and for some students but this is not consistent across multiple contexts. In other cases some teachers ‘work” while others are “broken”. Furthermore, “broken” is subjective and while to one parent it might be the antithesis of what PE should be, for another it might be “bang on the money”. Indeed to you, as a physical educator or a coach, it might look fine and it is just the actions of others that make it less than what it might be. Locke suggested that any notion of “broken” had to be held up against thousands upon thousands of school programmes. Some of these are valued by everyone and achieve all their aims, while others do more harm than good and are not well regarded even by those who are required to staff them.

In parallel to some of the arguments already made in this major themes blog (see Hoffman for example), Locke suggests that change is inevitable. However, he asks if teachers, students, teacher educators and/or parents will play any part (active or otherwise) in the direction of nature of these changes. Currently (and this seems the same to me now in 2013 as it did to Locke in 1992), physical education is a site that endures (a) high levels of student alienation, (b) programme marginalisation in school curriculum and (b) deep and destructive role conflicts within those who teach. These are “brokes” that Locke felt were not easily repaired and therefore perhaps it is better to start from scratch?

One of the most telling suggestions made by Locke in his paper is that “in an intolerable number of instances, and in intolerable ways, physical education classes do not achieve their objectives. In the most profound sense of what we mean by the word education, they do not work.” Locke argued that students are learning to: dislike physical activity play; to disrespect physical education teachers; and devalue their own capacity to learn movement skills. However, he also suggests that some of the blame must lie with the “programmatic lemon” that many schools have inherited or been sold. The dominant model of PE simply isn’t capable of achieving its objectives. So what does he suggest instead? How can change be wrought? He suggests ten ways of looking at differently at change:

1. Top down doesn’t work - Mandates from on high (be it school boards or education departments) can be avoided, delayed, blunted and undercut as it is the local conditions that determine outcomes.

2. Teachers do change - many teachers devise new ways to teach, create new units and new assessment tools but with the lemon that they have it is hard to be address the fundamental problems as alienation, for example, still occurs.

3. Groups of teachers can engender change - by working in groups credible and practical outcomes can be achieved.

4. Just remove barriers - Is everything sacrosanct? If some things cannot be changed then it is harder to take meaningful steps forwards.

5. Plan before acting - assessment of the current situation is important but big changes take time and influenced as much by what can be changed as what cannot. Coming with possible solutions is better than being faced with obdurate problems.

6. Get commitment first - getting people to believe in an idea if the first step but this means that ‘we’ need to know that really work - change is after all a process and not an event.

7. Throw money at it - if something is poorly resourced then it is unlikely to succeed. As “time is money” then other investment besides hard cash is also need.

8. Keep it tight in focus and small in scope - change comes down to a narrow focus at the level of practice but it needs to be embedded in the organisational structure of the school and become immune to changes in other areas such as personnel, facilities, class composition etc.

9. Do it yourself - insiders are more effective than outsiders who are often just visitors who are gone before the difficulties emerge.

10. Success breeds success - On seeing success stakeholders what more of it. However, changes are often abandoned after two or three years and the process of change is ongoing.

I leave you to consider if these would be your top ten things of how to change? Or does one stand out as being a way forward? Indeed is something missing?

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored the idea that school is more about civilizing students to be ‘good members of society’ than it is about education. In his paper written at the end of the last century, Kirk argued that mass schooling has played a significant role in the taming of the working class through the use of elite sports that were once the preserve of the elite. In the discussions around the blog we heard from David Kirk himself, who asked what was it that we could learn from the history of the subject? What don’t we do now that we did a century ago? But equally what do we still do now that we did a century ago? We can learn from history if we can acknowledge the patterns and repetitions that guide our presents and possible futures. Brendan Jones also warned at the messages we give out - or perhaps throw out - to kids in the convenient epithets that persist in sport i.e. “failing to prepare is preparing to fail” etc.

In this week’s blog we explore the idea that we need to look forwards at what physical education, indeed education, ought to be. In other words, how can we envision a future for physical education that supases the norm and places it at the heart of the lives of young people, their families and their communities. It challenges us to think of the networks in which we engage and to acknowledge the values that such ‘communities’ hold and champion. In doing we are asked to consider how we might be catalyst for change.

Paper 12:

Lawson, H.A. (2009/2012). Paradigms, Exemplars and Social Change. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 186-210) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

At first sight - well my first sight at least - this paper looked like it was going to be about research and I wasn’t sure how I could work it to fit the aims of this blog. However, when reading it from cover to cover and considering the messages that Lawson is putting across I am now convinced that it carries a poignant message. In fact, I am positive that the underlying message is one that relates to all of us as practitioners - whether than be in physical education, coaching, sports science, health etc. We are guilty (me, probably you) of living in our own silos. I did it as a games teacher (I use this term deliberately as that was certainly what I aspired to be in my early career), and I guess I do it now as a physical educator. I am not a scientist, a coach but I ‘do’ physical education. When I set out to be a physical educator I wanted to teach rugby and cricket. When I set out to be a PhD I wanted to learn to teach through pedagogical models. When I set out to be an academic I chose my specialisms - I would be a teacher educator but I would not sit in an ivory tower. In all of these cases I set out to learn more and more about the ideas and concepts that were important to me and from this position of expertise I have sort to inspire people to my cause. I have followed the work of great people in my field, but have I looked forwards or backwards?

Research (being a researcher) teaches you to build your ideas on what has come before. To “stand on the shoulders of giants” and to justify your claims through the findings of others. As a teacher I did this with my lessons (what has so and so done? Is there a book on that?). The only time I looked forward was in my PhD research. I wanted to do what had never been done before. Use a models-based approach to teaching secondary physical education. I wanted to be the first person to use a multi-models approach (Cooperative Learning (CL), Sport Education (SE) and Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU)) and I think I managed it. But since then I have been trying to establish myself as an academic and have been looking backwards again, to find out what others have said. I have done this to broaden my research and to better understand why people have said what they have said about physical education. I have explored the professional learning and the occupational socialization of teachers, the use of visual methodologies, and the use of CL, TGfU, and Health-based Physical Education by real teachers in real schools in multiple contexts. But why? Because I am interested in how to build school-university partnerships around research and wish to use my practice-informed knowledge to create theory-informed practice and practice-informed theory. Yet, a lot of this involves looking backwards in order to learn from it (not a bad thing if you take David Kirk’s response to the last blog) but at some stage we all need to look forwards to where we are going and make choices about our journey. What Lawson’s paper suggests (and I now see that the programme we are building at work around research is already doing this) is that we need to look forwards and we need to envision a unique future and then work to find ways of making that happen.

But it won’t happen by chance. Teachers need to take responsibility for blue skies thinking and actively seek collaborations with universities and other agencies. Equally academics need to leave their ivory towers and really engage with teachers and other agencies. In the words of Joey Feith we need to build bridges (what Dean Dudley would prefer to call pathways) between different establishments. Personally, I have been concerned with my own practice, is it too narrowly focussed on pedagogical models? Are these only one possible future or one aspect that needs changing? How can I influence cross disciplinary change?

 One way to begin to think of this is to engage in cross disciplinary thinking. I need to better understand that the fields and segments I work in have been created around certain expectations and examples of what counts as physical education, teacher education, teaching etc. I need to look outside of these. I need to work with schools, agencies and other universities to do some blue skies thinking and then some blue skies doing. I need to reconsider my vision of physical education. Where does it come from? Who are the main players in its conceptualisation? What ideas underpin it? What can a break be made that might make it stronger? What am I prepared to break? What is so steadfastly fixed that I cannot break it or wouldn’t be allowed to break it? Physical education, for me, is a silo. It is one I understand (I’ve worked in it for half my life now) but it needs to be challenged. How can you challenge what physical education is? Can you work with other agencies to reconsider what physical education is and does? Can you see and then be the blue skies?

The Paper

Much of Lawson paper explores the development of fields (or paradigms) of research in physical education. He argues that there are a number of key aspects (exemplars, segments, networks and gatekeeper) are needed that make any field or paradigm successful (and by that I mean enduring). He warns that we need to be more aware of the social context in which research exists and that, when we read and internalise research we need to be aware of the wider context in which is written and be more discerning in our judgements of what is good research capable of social change and what isn’t.

The first of the aspect Lawson explores are exemplars i.e. examples of how research can and should be done. Physical Education research (in contrast to Sport Science research) relies predominantly on qualitative methodologies and this ‘type’ of research has come to define the exemplar. Within this there are expectations about how the research will be conducted, how rigour will be judged and what counts as valid and useful knowledge. The second aspect forms around segments of the wider field. So within physical education this might be around health, or games, and within some of the bigger fields or paradigms around Sport Education (SE) or Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). Those who write and work in these segments promote their vision for the segment within the wider field. Research serves as a vehicle for winning an audience, and potential converts, to certain vision of physical education. The third aspect, networks, are those social groups that are formed around different segments. These groups are invisible to everyone but their members and there is an expectation from those outside looking in that these networks share a sense of unity and a consensus of opinion i(for example, in fields such as SE and TGfU). The final aspect is the presence of a gatekeeper or gatekeepers. These “paradigmatic leaders” are advocates of the paradigm through their visible research productivity, recognition in terms of awards and keynotes, the development of influential doctoral programmes and therefore future researchers and network members. The leaders are opinion shapers and are instrumental in the formation of networks.

All four of these aspects shape the research environment and, Lawson believes, constrains innovation and limits the development of both cross-network, even cross-paradigm, collaboration and eventually ‘sees off’ innovative researchers who don’t conform to the expectations of the field. All of these ideas are explored through the autobiographical experiences of Lawson as a researcher but I won’t explore these further here at it would take too long and I don’t think it is relevant to the core purpose of this blog. However, Lawson’s key message in this paper is that we need to be asking new research questions and to do this we need to create a new paradigm or field aimed at developing innovative physical education programme prototypes that are aimed specifically at being capable of ‘working’ within the social, cultural, economic, political, and demographic “realities-as-challenges” of the 21st century. To do this we need to be asking “ought questions”

Ought questions are those challenges that look not at what works but at the future. In looking forwards and not backwards these types of questions force us, as a community, to consider the values and ideologies around physical education that best serve its capacity to create a good and just society in a sustainable world. Core to this message is Lawson’s belief that PE has suffered by being modeled on other schools subjects and squeezed into the timetable. Indeed he firmly holds that “efforts to make it [PE] conform to them [other subjects] has been counter-productive and ill-advised”. The future of PE lies not in conformity but in uniqueness and the special contributions it can make to the life quality and well being of young people, their families and their communities. Physical Education is currently disadvantage in the competition for the hearts, minds, identities, bodies, behaviour choices and “lifestyles” of young people (See my Kirk and Houlihan blogs for a fuller consideration of these ideas). However, it is also uniquely positioned to have an impact. If it could be designed and configured using lifespan framework that works for young and old alike (and those in between). If it could stand alone from other subjects and work within a social context to educate the community, the family and the individual through school-agency-university partnership then it could serve a much fuller role in our societies. But to do this, Physical Education needs to create a new paradigm: one that works with colleagues from the wider field of kinesiology (sports science for example), from nursing, nutrition, social work, juvenile justice and public health). If it can do this and we can ask the ought questions then perhaps there is a future for the unique subject that is physical education.

What’s next?As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

Kirk, D. (1999/2012). Embodying the school/schooling bodies: physical education as disciplinary technology. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 172-185) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

How accepting are we (and I certainly included myself in that ‘we’, for example see my research about the expectations that exist around teaching PE) of people’s notions of physical education i.e. what it should be, what we should be, how it should be taught, what it should ‘contain, and how kids should behave in it and towards it? In Kirk’s paper he argues that physical education began in the late 19th Century as a place to ‘school’ children to be “bodies for an orderly society”. Drawing specifically on a 1903 training manual (what we now call a curriculum) from one of the Australian States, he shows how ‘drill’ played a significant role in the social regulation of young people at the time. He argues that, while there has been a loosening of these military undertones over the last century, traditional gender-based games and competitive sports now undertake a central role in physical education, and subsequently in the “schooling of bodies” (i.e. our children) to be civilised through sanctioned forms of rough (violent at times) physical contact sports that were once only available to the privileged classes.

I have previously discussed the commonly held view that team sports are well positioned to teach young people how to conduct themselves appropriately in the world beyond the games themselves. However, Kirk doesn’t hold with the idea that firstly drill and team games can be used to morally development young people. He argues, drawing on the work of others such as Foucault, that schools are explicitly designed to manage the space and time that children have while within their “four walls”. Classroom - laid out in rows - and timetables - partitions of the school day - are used to manage the pupils and ensure that they are always purposefully occupied. In the same way drills and practices manage the spaces in which pupils can work, and games manage the time that pupils have in physical education. Kirk suggests that while this appears to be divorced from the idea that schools develop young people’s minds, its intent becomes more obvious when you consider its purpose. It is a commonly held belief that before learning can occur, order must be established. Therefore school can be seen as a place that seeks to manage and monitor behaviour through its teachers so that pupils behave in ways that are acceptable in sites other than school. In other words, the use of drills and games are used as a signpost for how kids should behave in the wider community.

However these same kids also have to look right - by being an acceptable body shape and with the appropriate BMI (as Gard and Wright argued in these major themes) - in the wider community. With the rise of health and fitness and the explosion of mass media children are faced with these body expectations that they feel they should (through peer and media pressure) conform to. They need to look a certain way and physical education is becoming increasingly responsibility for the development of “Men’s Health” Men and “Vogue” Women who fit the magazine editors idea of the norm i.e. a six-pack or a size zero looks good and is healthy. Yet, schools need to be careful that they don’t maintain their charge of schooling bodies in this way, and instead that they focus on education, as an aspect that accompanies the physical in PE. With the apparent need to civilise young people we need to consider the educative value of school, of physical education, of team games and health and ensure that we do what is best for the kids. So, in planning for the next unit, or the next year what are the underlying concerns that we need to address and consider? Are you a drill sergeant?
 
The Paper

For over 100 years Australian schools, alongside those from other western countries, have engaged in the “social regulation of young people’s behaviours by working on their bodies”. Writing during his time as an academic in Australia, and drawing on his work as a philosopher and a historian, Kirk argued that early schools were charged with imposing order before the intellectual work of school could begin. They did this - with the wider aim of maintain an orderly society - through the organisation of space in the classroom and time on the timetable. Yet these two facets of mass education has been a constituent feature of schooling and little in the way of ‘improvement’ or ‘compromise’ has been evident in schools for well over century or two.

When this idea of ‘schooling bodies’ is applied to physical education, Kirk holds that the rise to prominence (in the mid to late 19th Century) and the enduring legacy of competing school teams in traditional games - once the preserve of English public schools - has served as a form of regulated discipline (what Kirk calls disciplinary technology). He explains that by playing team games participants agree to abide by a set of rules that define space and purpose, become bound in time, form particular social relationships (which typically reinforce hetrosexual masculinty) and wear and use equipment that dictates how they are meant to move. He suggests that team games are used to school children in being civilised through “socially sanctioned forms of rough, sometimes violent, physical contact”. In its sanctioned form this ‘play’ strengths the position of some and forces others into feelings of terror, fear and bodily turmoil. Such is the accepted nature of this rough and tumble that anyone ‘telling tales’ risks further chastisement and ridicule - “it’s just not cricket - old boy” to tell tales after all.

While the days of drill might be behind us, team games and competition are still prominent in public debate around physical education. However, another form of schooling bodies has risen to similar prominence - exercise. Through the commercialisation of exercise and the increase in leisure time and dispensable income young people are increasingly faces with images and ideals around body shape. The “bronzed Aussie” is a typical example, used by Kirk, to represent the hype around being “trim, taut and terrific”. So where previously schools were charged with producing politically compliant and economically productive citizens - now they need to produce them in a particular type of body.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

Houlihan, B. (2000/2012). Sporting excellence, schools and sports development: Politics of crowded policy spaces. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 148-171) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

Using poetic license I am going to suggest that school sport is the ‘wild west’ of physical activity settings and that in the rush for gold (Olympic for my purpose) it is the resilient and innovative who survive and prosper. In this ‘wild west’ many prospectors have gone looking for ‘gold’ - be these politicians looking for votes, National Governing Bodies (NGBs) looking for elite athletes, Unions and Associations looking for members, supermarket chains, television companies (Sky-Sports-Living-For-Sport with Jessica Ennis) and even food manufacturers (I can think of Kelloggs and Sunny Delight in the UK and their sponsorship of swimming and basketball awards) working to offer ‘freebies’ schemes to schools in the return for some advertising space. Yet it is in this frontier that the physical education teacher has to work and develop a programme that offers the best possible experience for the children in every class. Returning to the idea of the ‘wild west’, enter the sheriff who has to, in some way, manage this frontier. I now ask that you keep this idea in mind (I will return to it at the end) as I explore the take home message further.

We see arguments and counter arguments for the importance of school sport in developing talent for the next Olympics or the next world cup, or, for the purpose of school sport, for it be inclusive and to promote lifelong activity. Yet at the same time as this discussion occurs the very idea of physical education, as being distinct from school sport, is getting increasing obscured. Houlihan argues that competition, through traditional gender-based team games, has become the default position for many in positions of power. Yet, the reality of what actually occurs appears to much different. For while school sport is increasing described as the seedbed of elite performance, talented players (even when these players were identified from school sport) are often ‘discouraged’ from representing their schools as they rise in stature within their sport. Indeed outside of school, sports teams often suggest that their players priority should be with them and not their school’s team, as the potentially for the player to get on to the pathway of elite performance is better through a club. The key question therefore seems to be why are schools being told to invest in players (as opposed to students), that subsequently have playing embargoes placed in them, at the expense of a more holistic view of physical activity that might included the greater majority of young people?

Houlihan argued that there is a significant disparity between idea that a school is a site for talent identification and the reality that schools are increasing becoming locations for community sport. This idea, he held, seems have been lost of policy makers and is something, I would suggest, that has changing in the last decade or more. Indeed, post Olympics, the call continues to go out that schools must foster competition as only in this way will the next Jessica Ennis or Bradley Wiggins be found. So strong was the call from policy makers, national governing bodies (NGBs), and curriculum developers that even a decade the Government advisors (OfSTED) in the UK were asked to inspect the quality and range of games taught in schools. I recall an inspector in the late 1990s calling into question the quality of the grass cricket pitch at my school, and suggesting scarification in the official of OfSTED report (in other words the quality of the wicket for inter-school matches took on greater importance than the quality of provision).

The drive for gold seems to increasing dominate our discussions about school sport. In busy places with increasing burdens of accountability and assessment the offer of help from NGS or schemes of work from officially sanctioned bodies seems like a blessing in disguise. But I wonder at the role of the sheriff or sheriffs in every school. In accepting this help are we making our lives easier or harder? Who devises these schemes? What is their vision of physical education? What motivates them? If we are accepting of the idea of elite sport and the need for talent identification, are we also happy for NGBs to develop the top 1% and ignore the rest? In identifying sports leaders, are we also identifying sport’s losers? Should we as sheriffs be more discerning in the ‘deputies’ we appoint? In the words of Will Smith ‘welcome to the wild wild west and as such we need to protect and serve all our citizens.


The Paper

The increasing importance placed on elite sport - its public profile, income generating potential, and the weight of national expectation - has increasing dragged schools into the debate around talent identification and the creation of enhanced opportunities for the gifted few to discover their ‘gold medal event’. Indeed, Houlihan suggested that school is now “an arena where a complex range of interests attempt to assert control over policy”. Some of the interested parties are internal to education (teaching unions and professional associations), while others are external (political parties, national governing bodies, and quangos - in the UK this would be the Youth Sport Trust or Sport Scotland for example). However, regardless of their positioning, many of these interested parties have a vested interest in physical education, or to be precise in school sport, and its ‘ability’ to unearth the next superstar. Houlihan argues that the tensions of this ‘crowded space’ have emerged because of the difference between the muddled, if well meaning, intentions of physical education to help everyone and the clearly defined notion that sport promotes personal and social values and learning (see the Arnold blog for a discussion on this idea).

In England and Wales, Houlihan argued, the strength of opinion around sports ability to achieve what physical education cannot on its own - i.e. international sporting success - has been clearly displayed in the development of the national curriculum. Throughout its different incarnations (in 1991, 1995, and 2000 - and I would add 2007) the National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) has endorsed a “long established practices which prioritised gender-based team games”. Indeed, successive governments have been nothing if not consistent in their pledge to put sport back at the heart of schools.

This idea was at the heart of the development of SSC (Specialist Sports Colleges). In applying to be a SSC schools had to have obtained Sportsmark, have a track record of attainment in sport, have good sports facilities, and be in a sound financial position. In mid-1999 (when this paper was written) there were 34 SSCs in operation and all of them could choose to accept up to 10% of their pupils based on them having an aptitude for sport. One of the key benefits for SSCs was an increase of £100,000 in government support and an additional £100 pounds per student for the first two years of designation (which for a school of 1000 pupils was a substantial figure. These schools were designed by the government to “provide enhanced opportunities to fulfill the potential of talented performers”, while the Youth Sports Trust hoped they would, in time, “serve as feeder institutions to the governments proposed British Academy of Sport”.

The reality however, as Houlihan reported, was much different. Studying four of the first SSC he suggested that partnership with local government, other schools and community groups, and NGBs was the key outcomes of the first three years of designation. However, each of these connections had different outcomes. Schools became premier coaching centres for traditional curriculum activities (e.g. soccer, athletics, swimming, cricket, rugby, netball and gymnastics) and designation as an SSC didn’t not greatly change the extra-curricular provision at the schools. It seems that schools stuck to what they were good at and this seemed to resonate with the NGBs. Some schools saw an increase in the prestige in the school, which was reflected in the quality of applicants for both PE and non-PE jobs that they advertised. One school reported some pressure from Sport England to adopt a particular programme of sports, while another saw a difference of opinion between senior leaders and PE specialist over a participation or a performance agenda.

Fundamentally, however, NGBs lacked the funding and resources to sponsor programmes across schools. Instead, some set up national training centres and encouraged students to attend specific schools. Others set up successful talent identification programmes of their own and came to see schools as safety nets while they resourced a smaller group of potentially elite athletes. Other NGBs and academy programmes for bigger clubs (particularly in soccer and rugby union) became increasingly reluctant for junior elite squad members to play for their schools. SSCs were successful in regenerating individual schools and local communities but their contribution to elite sports development is far less significant. The question that remains, therefore, is “should school sport really be the site for talent identification or should it have a wider, social agenda around health, participation and enjoyment?”

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored Gard and Wright’s 2001 paper which challenges the wholesale acceptance of “obesity” as an epidemic. They were concerned with what they see as physical education’s uncritical acceptance of ‘expert’ testimony as to the existence of obesity - testimony they believe to be based on scientific evidence that was both “unstable and contestable”. The resulting conversation on the blog, but more particularly on twitter, was unsupportive of this position, although the idea of being more critical was accepted. The paper, written more than a decade ago, might be considered dated with regards to such a fast paced debate but it does raise wider concerns around our frequently uncontested acceptance of news stories

In this week’s blog we explore a paper written more than 25 years ago but which predicted the death of physical education as a curriculum subject. In his ‘retrospective’ piece Shirl Hoffman (1987) reports on the death note of physical education in Florida in the year 2020. Using educational debates from the 70s and 80s as his evidence base, Hoffman joins the dots together in unexpected ways. However, many of his arguments are still reflected in the debates that run through physical education at present. The learning of our children is too frequently set upon by ROBers (Roll out the ball specialists who do little in the way of teaching). Furthermore, as concerns mount over lost Olympic legacies and increasingly sedentary lifestyles the words of Hoffman increasingly serve as a warning of what might be if we do nothing.

Paper 9:

Hoffman, S.J. (1987/2012). Dreaming the impossible dream: the decline and fall of physical education. In D. Kirk (ed) Physical Education. (pp. 133-147), London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

Hoffman, it seems to me, had a gift for prophecy. He predicted - with a depth of description that cannot arguably stand the test of time - the future demise of physical education. While we are far from this position he has picked out a number of key events that may well been on the not too distant horizon (or indeed some may believe these are already upon us). During a long recession Hoffman predicted that, in an effort to save money and bring in expertise, schools would hire outside providers to run their extra-curricular and intramural programs. Initially this would be funded by parents but in the end it would be provided by youth sport providers. I would argue that this is increasingly prevalent in the UK (and would love to hear about other contexts), especially in primary schools where outsiders are being brought in to run these out of school programmes (a matter that features strongly in the work of Ben Williams in Australia). Indeed, even a decade ago when I was a much younger teacher, the idea of paid coaches was broached in my school. Yet Hoffman argued that, from this commercialisation of elite ‘high school’ programmes (sponsored by business and run by coaches), would emerge the less desirable aspects of elite sport i.e. free agency, bribes etc. Indeed, all notions of education and sportsmanship would soon be removed from these programmes.

To many of us this is the heart and soul of physical education. It is not about school sport and winning at all costs. School sport has become a catchall phrase for what happens in schools but is the educative value of these activities that people love and support. Yet, with the commercialisation of these activities do we run a significant risk of losing these ideas. However, Hoffman predicts that this will be just the tip of the iceberg. With the media portrayal of physical education as unstrenuous and of physical educators as bullies how long before the PE teacher is replaced with a cheaper alternative? How long before the ‘health of the nation’ becomes the default position in all schools and PE teachers are replaced with fitness instructors - even doctors as one study suggested? If we cannot agree ourselves on the purposes of physical education and we tolerate the ROBers who plague far too many of our classrooms (and by far too many I mean any), then what is the future of physical education? Can you predict what PE might look like in 2040?

The Paper

The year is 2020 and the last school district in Florida finally throws in the towel and closes its physical programme; joining every other country in the world. The writing has been on the wall for a decade or more, and only the die hards supporters of PE (some would say the romantics) have managed to keep this programme running to date. Physical education has been replaced across the world by Self-Directed Play (SDP), a simple and cheap programme with four rules: no fighting, no injuries, no destruction of school property, and no sitting down. Many have argued that this is in fact no different from some of the PE taught in the 80s and 90s and commissioned research suggests that teaching assistant (or SDP managers) are achieving as much as fully trained PE teachers with PhDs. Research in itself remains ineffective as it is inaccessible and, as one administrator said, “we would have to modify our operations every year if we were to seriously consider what researchers tell us” (Hoffman, 1987/2012, p. 135). Even when teachers tried to argue against this they had no evidence of their own as to the effectiveness of their programmes - not over ten years, 5 years or even 2 years.

Much of the decline, and the eventual fall of physical education, was foreshadowed by the commercialisation and “for profit” of school sport. While there was a pedagogic link between physical education and school sport - which included a sense of inclusion, fair play and sportsmanship - the two coexisted in schools and were overseen by a teacher or “coach”. Yet once this was privatised and the emphasis was placed on “profit” and “success” then the writing was on the wall. Overtime, multiple providers of youth sport became one and the need to hire coaches with a pedagogic background was removed in favour of those who could win...and at any costs. Sleazy practices would emerge over the next few years to shock even the most ardent of supporters but by then sport and physical education had parted ways. Yet, since youth sport was no longer educational such matters were of no concern to school boards or local education authorities these matters went unchallenged.

The opening of this door prompted the youth sport provider to venture into physical instruction. Hoffman argues that this process was aided by PE’s inability to agree on what should be taught or what, in fact, PE was. The lack of sequential structure (in other words the fact that curricular provision in primary schools was mirrored in secondary schools) in PE was blamed for the ease in which PE became commercialised. Many in administration, in the community, even in PE itself, saw PE as glorified recess or a chance for kids to take a breather. Furthermore, the key skills of the teacher (as defined by their professional development profiles) seems to be a) 1st aid provision b) a knowledge of health and safety c) understanding of how to organise large groups and d) knowledge of the wide range of basic skills and practices.

Parents, administrators, principals and headteachers found that journeymen and women often had more knowledge and experience in specific sports than the PE teacher and they were cheaper to train and employ. Four weeks rather than four years were required for the basic first aid training etc and where PE teachers were seen as “specialists in generalism” these individuals had more expertise. Businesses sold packages of physical instruction to schools with liability insurance, legal representation, equipment and field maintenance, and locker room supervision with a towel service included. Furthermore, promises of “performance improvement or your money back” became commonplace and teachers increasingly lost their jobs. Academia was not exempt from this; for as the demand for programmes reduced, professors lost their jobs. The focus in kinesiology departments became sports science and in the end the physiologies and biomechanics that remained were moved to health or engineering departments and physical education programmes disappeared. In his closing comments Hoffman suggested that physical education was suffering from “Organisational Alzheimer’s”, which left it confused, disoriented and unable to put together a strategy for accomplishing reasonable goals.

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the comment box below to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog we explored Dodds’ idea that teachers (at any level) need to plan for more than one curriculum. Trying to understand and mediate for these different curricula - which privilege certain learning around such things as ability, gender, race and disability – is difficult and it seems that many of these curricula are either invisible or very hard to see. From our discussions it appears that the “power” kid may have an undue influence on what happens in physical education, and that perhaps we need to be more aware of others in our lesson. This paper builds upon the previous blog suggesting that while many politicians would have us believe that we live in a “classless” society there are significant inequalities that impact on our students’ experiences of school and of physical education.  

Paper 5:

Evans, J. & Davies, B. (2012). The Poverty of Theory: Class configurations in the discourse of Physical Education and Health (PEH). In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 65-81) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

We have dedicated a huge amount of effort to identifying cases of discrimination in our societies, schools and classrooms and yet one seems to have become a taboo: Class. We contend inequality in all aspects of our lives and yet despite these honourable intentions society is guilty of ignoring the construction of class. Many would argue that we live in a classless society where anyone has the potential to be upwardly mobile and can thrive on ability alone without the constraints of birth or class to hold them back. If ‘we’ do well at school and obtain the symbols of intelligence (i.e. qualifications and a higher form of education) then you are seen to have the ‘ability’ to succeed. Yet, as Evans and Davies discuss, class is not just something to be entered on a survey as a category, it is a reality that we experience and which influences social and economic relationships to such a degree that it goes a long way to determine, if not dominate, people’s lives.

Class is value orientated. In a number of societies (Indian and Japanese for example) class or caste has significant influence on people’s views of ‘others’ as more or less valuable. Equally, in a society where it’s about “the cha-ching cha-ching and the ba-bling ba-bling” what we wear and carry is significant. This is equally important in physical education and coaching where the latest football boots mark you out not only as being of potentially high ability but also being advantaged. There is a significant relationship between gender, class, and ethnicity, and health, longevity, opportunity and wealth and these are reinforced through the saturation of messages that appear in government agencies and the media (TV, websites, magazines, books).

Evans and Davies believe that PE is guilty of making promises it just can’t keep; promises that different governments are quick to endorse. In the UK the role model for sporting success is private education. Why? Because more London 2012 Olympic champions were educated privately than those educated in state schools. Furthermore, according to the UK’s current Education Minister, competition should be at the centre of physical education. Through these agendas physical education will continue to “flatter to deceive”, as while some are suited to a model of competition and elitism, many kids cannot succeed under these conditions and consequently will never receive the education they need and deserve.

Such a blinkered view of physical education, and the antiquated notion that it is better on the playing fields of Eton than Etone, move beyond the idea that good practice not class needs be to recognised. It also assumes that the messages of elitism and excellence are appropriate for everyone. Instead, we should be considering that changing attitudes towards food and exercise gender and race which are major influences in the lives of many children. Furthermore, it suggests that opportunity, resource, obligation and responsibility need to be afforded to more people and that matters of access (the sort bought with a disposable income) also need to be considered. We are told that class is no longer an issue and that we have made progress and yet why with so much progress have we made so little change?

The Paper

Evans and Davies are convinced that class still matters and that it is inscribed in formal education. Yet class has been sanitised. It has been obscured. It has been replaced with a language of ‘lifestyle’, ‘partnerships’, ‘disadvantage’ and ‘social exclusion’ and as a consequence inequality in education is rarely named as ‘class’. It has become “an add-on with other critical social categories [like] race, gender and age” but, as Evans and Davies argue, it is much more than that. “To look at gender, age, or ethnicity, among others, without mention of class is like talking of football without mention pitch dimensions, size of the goal mouth, or the weight of the ball.” Being classed is the reality for many people, one that affects their prospects, impacts on their social and economic relationships and in all likelihood will have a “strong influence, if not determine, people’s lives”. Ability (to earn, to contribute) through the lens of class “guide our views of ‘others’ as of more or less value; and led us to pass judgement on their food, drink, clothes, houses, shapes, the way they threat their children, and even their pets”.

However, despite the idea that class is no longer important there are some hard to dispute facts around health, longevity, opportunity and wealth that “have a powerful bearing on people’s lives”. For example, the one ‘fact’ that sticks out from obesity research is that the “poverty, class and income over and over again emerged as key determinants of obesity and weight related disease”. Indeed, Evans and Davies went on further to suggest that class is the most “important determinant of opportunity and identity, both in and outside school”.

Evans and Davies argue that we have moved away from educating the children in front of us and have instead tried to educate their future selves. “Participation rates” and “lifestyle choices” have become the measure of success rather than giving our attention to the ability of our practices to produce the desired or intended result. The notion that high quality PE could be measured in terms of the number of hours rather than the quality of provision and learning seems to be in keeping with this argument. In this way people are faced with the fact that “we (he or she) are what we are (fat, thin, rich, poor, etc) because that’s what we have chosen to be”. Therefore we need to make different choices.

Evans and Davies strongly advocate the need to understand the complexity of “class reproduction”.  The problems that we need to identify with are that, for many groups, it is not just a case of gaining recognition (as we see from the success of women’s sport), it is a case of redistributing opportunities, resources, obligations and responsibility to these groups so that they can take real advantage of this recognition. It is the power of the message that we see on our televisions and in our magazines that strongly influence – and in some cases rule – the lives we lead.

So what is the place of schools? Education and not weight control should “be the driving concern of a culturally enlightened physical education”. We do not judge religious education teachers on the number of people who go to church or the mosque but ask children instead to known the different ideas that exist in and about both. Physical education should therefore be about educating children rather than their projected identities and should be about leaving as many children as possible “with a lasting desire to be fit, stay healthy, develop and learn.”

I ask you to consider how the messages from TV, magazines and even social media influence your practice and your students understanding of what physical education or health is. For example, what images dominate your display boards and why did you choose to put these one’s up? Which values do you reject from the media and why? – do you agree we should have more competition? But ultimately, does inequality or class exist in your school, practice and lessons?

What’s next? As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the associated discussion board (same title) on PEPRN to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

In the previous blog I explored the idea that science had become the operating centre for Physical Education and that the subject has become more about understanding and testing movement that moving itself. The discussion around the blog focused on the increased ‘privileging’ of assessment of movement against fixed criteria and the suggestion that kids were forgetting how to play. This paper builds upon the previous blog suggesting that teachers are responsible for the moral education of students and that sport doesn’t automatically teach fair play, but that it – like skills and strategies - needs to be taught and modelled by teachers and coaches.  

Paper 3:

Arnold, P.J. (2012). Sport and Moral Education. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. (pp. 39-54) London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

Cheating is a learnt behaviour; as is sportsmanship. Children are not born moral but they learn morality through the ways in which they are taught by families, communities, schools and clubs (sports clubs etc). In the case of physical education children, and the adults they become, are initiated into different sports and then, through their own freedom of choice, make the decision to play a particular sport (or not). In doing so they agree to abide by the games rules and not to take an unfair advantage over another participant. Through play and practice, individuals come to understand the nuances of the rules, as well as the spirit of the game and they continue to agree to abide by both of these parameters, without seeking to gain an unfair advantage.

Consequently, teachers (and I would argue coaches and would ask you to read teacher as teacher and coach) are moral educators who should have both a direct and indirect moral influence on their pupils. In this way moral education should be seen as the responsibility of the teacher, and should therefore be an explicit as well as an implicit part of lessons. The popular view (some would say urban myth) that there is a clear connection between playing sports and the development of social and moral character owes its origins to English public schools. It was believed that playing sport, particularly team games, was educationally useful as it had social and moral outcomes. The ability to co-operate with others on the basis of understanding and respect, and the ability to “put the cause first” without resentment and bitterness were all thought to be worthwhile outcomes of sports. However, the belief that these moral outcomes were transferable from the playing field to the real world and that they could be called upon in time of war, and in service of the Empire, was what has made them popular and enduring. This is the position that the UK government has adopted in its post-Olympic games rhetoric i.e. competition is good because it develops character.

However, this position is founded on the belief that participants would act within the rules and that they would be taught to do so. Some people believe that sport has no influence over society and that what happens on the pitch or field stays there and is therefore inconsequential. Others believe that this argument doesn’t take into account ‘the spoilsports’ that see winning as the only outcome. Some believe, especially within high-level sport, that winning has become critically important and that cheating and foul play are common as a result. Furthermore, in order to be successful you need to be dominant, assertive, non-sociable, and in the case of elite performers, disregard sportsmanship. This immoral behaviour is further reflected in the wider participating population i.e. those who spectate and bring the ‘game’ firmly into their everyday lives. I have seen this behaviour too many times. In school matches, and local games between children or young people. I have been forced to stop inter school matches due to dangerous play or officiating that never allowed the result to be anything but a loss for my team – despite their best efforts. As educators I believe that we are responsible for providing a moral sporting education for those who are in our care. In this way, playing games in a physical education lesson should teach respect and moral behaviour. But are they taught? Do students learn respect in this way? This paper suggests teachers should model moral behaviour but is this a personal issue for each teacher to address? Or should it be a departmental or even a school strategy? Who decides on matters of morals? 

The Paper

Arnold sees sport in schools as a vehicle for moral education but only when the teacher lives out the values to which he or she has committed and publically commends. In his view, sport is a valued human practice but not by default. It requires participants to have the moral character to survive external social, economic and political pressures and act in accordance with the notions of impartiality. He begins the paper by positioning the place of sport in contemporary society as having either a positive, neutral or negative impact on moral development (see above) going as far as saying that some believe that competitive sport is the “antithesis of moral education and that it detracts from moral development”.

Morality, in Arnold’s eyes, is concerned with interpersonal relations and our concern and consideration for others. It is a case of knowing right from wrong. From this position, Arnold’s holds that players come together knowing that the rules apply to themselves as well as others. They also come in the understanding that everyone has agreed to play by these rules and not to take an advantage of them to the detriment of others. To do otherwise is not an accident but a deliberate act that compromises the safety of others and takes the player out of the sport they agreed to play fairly and away from the spirit of the game.

Unless children are carefully brought to an understanding of the “nature of the practice of sport”, and its rules and principles they cannot be said to have been properly initiated into the game. The skills, standards and exchanges are important but so are the traditions, customs and conventions. To achieve this, teachers need to combat the view that winning is the only thing that matters and engender right reasoning and caring through their own attributes, beliefs and disposition to educate morally while seeking “the good contest”. The teaching (and learning) of professional fouls should be condemned as offending not only the spirit of the game but also the moral agreement of any participant to abide by the rules of the sport they choose to play. In this way, Arnold believes that teachers are key initiators and should be seen as guardians of the practices and views of sport and that the condoning of unacceptable play is...unacceptable. Attention should be given to the rules and ethics as much as the skills, techniques, strategies and tactics of participation. Sport is a valued human practice but children’s initiation into sport doesn’t always support this. A person decides to be moral but the actions of others are “picked up” and become the model of normality and acceptability. Therefore, Arnold believed that teachers “must live out the values to which he or she is committed and publically extols”.

What’s next???

As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).??

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the associated discussion board (same title) on PEPRN to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?

Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is this your responsibility or just something else to be put on your place? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be.

Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? Please let the community know about it.?

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

What’s next???

As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research - Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).??

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the associated discussion board (same title) on PEPRN to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.?
Act on what you’ve read. Maybe talk to your students about their perceptions or raise the issue at a department meeting or on the walk back to the changing rooms.?
Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions and then let the community know about it.? ?

I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

Paper 1: 

Agergaard, S. (2012). Sport as social formation and specialist education: discursive and ritualistic aspects of physical education. In D. Kirk (ed.) Physical Education. London: Routledge.

My ‘take home’ message – the implications of the research on practice

I believe that Agergaard’s paper shows that assumptions are a dangerous thing to make. At the most recent national conference of physical education in the UK I was disappointed to hear the minister whose portfolio included physical education talk almost exclusively about school sport at the expense of physical education. Indeed, such was his faux pas that his assistant (who stayed to answer questions) had to apologise to the delegates and stress that the minister actually meant physical education. Yet was the minister to blame? The discourse around sport instead of physical education has been evident in the ways in which we, as a community, talk about our subject. It is not defined only within the formal statements made but also in the conversations and interactions that occur between various communities who have an interest in physical education. If we are oblivious to the discourses that we create or favour then we’re in danger of developing an idea of physical education that we no longer like.

For example, despite the clear differences between the two schools in this study, Agergaard uncovered a merging of key terms, ideas and even traditions. If we allow such a convergence to prosper unopposed then what idea of physical education will remain to us? Denmark, unlike the UK for example, has maintained parallel notions for sport and gymnastics, and yet the ideas have still moved closer together. In societies where sport is increasingly being seen as physical education what conception of our subject are we moving towards?

The Paper

Agergaard examines the ways in which different traditions of physical education are handed down, negotiated, or ignored by both schools and students of sports and gymnastics in Demark. She argues that while there are different ‘traditions’ of physical education (two in the case of Danish schools) members of younger generations do not instinctively follow these and instead begin to develop their own by accepting, ignoring or rejecting the ‘bits’ they like or dislike.

In her work Agergaard explores the things that are said about physical education – both formally (in school documents and policies) and informal (in conversations, practices and interactions between students, and staff and students) - in two different schools with two different drives i.e. either the general qualification of students through teaching and social interaction or coach education in specific sports.

Agergaard found, that while formally each school said it had different aims these had become muddled on an informal level. She argues that this was inevitable due to the changing landscape in Denmark. This could be taken to an international level where schools are increasingly encroaching on one another and seeking to compete for the same pots of money and the same students, while simultaneously trying to keep their separate identities. In this way what is ‘popular’ become central to the formal and informal conversations that occur in and around schools and physical education.

However, this research shows that the most powerful way in which physical education is defined is through the daily, yet informal activities that occur through the school year (e.g. conversations and informal meetings between students in the corridors and classrooms). It was in these interactions that students developed a sense of their own community of physical education. In this way students were able to mediate rather than actively oppose the traditions of PE.

In concluding Agergaard suggests that the Danish traditions of sport and physical education are not that clearly distinguished in the formal and informal practices of schools. Furthermore she suggested that students take a central role in producing future traditions and expectations, not least in the education of themselves.



What’s next?

As part of this series of blogs I propose the following as a way of considering the implications of this research- Think, Act, Change (or TAC for short).

Think about findings of the paper – do they resonate? Use the associated discussion board (same title) on PEPRN to ask question, seek clarification, may be challenge the findings.
Act on what you’ve read. Maybe talk to your students about their perceptions or raise the issue at a department meeting or on the walk back to the changing rooms.
Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions and then let the community know about it.
 
I wouldn’t expect every paper to get beyond the T or even the A of TAC but if one paper resonates enough to get to C then hopefully all this is worthwhile. Good luck.

As for me, well I broke down in my last rugby match, but I still have enough credit in the bank to survive as a rugby player (well in the bar at least) but my last blog? I quite liked it but the fact that I had to stop writing this blog to go and see when I wrote the last one [6th October 2012] shows that the blog would have exhausted even the good will of Dave viewers (for those who don't know this is a channel in the UK that plays nothing but comedy repeats). Had it been followed by another one in the intervening time then I think that it would have been strong enough to suffer another one soon after...but it didn't. This leaves me frustrated. I feel that this is a medium through which I want to communicate. I also feel that it is important - vital even - not to sit in an ivory tower and throw wisdom around and yet I have singularly failed and my last game wouldn't even buy me a run in the most minor of blogging leagues. So what to do...?

"A Case in Point"

When I started my Master's degree, Larry Locke, a highly regarded American professor has running a website he had created called "Unlocke research"  in which he took the time to explore the research of the day and make it accessible to a wider audience. This really helped me as a young researcher and as a teacher but Larry was unable to sustained the site and after a year or so it closed, leaving a hole that has yet to be filled. I have been wondering for a while how this gap might be filled, whilst also seeking ways to expand my own reading and write a blog that I could be proud of. After much consideration I have come to the conclusion that blogging, reading and writing (high quality that is) do not (in my case at least) occur by chance. Good intentions are not enough. Like my reflections (which I make time for every day) my reading, blogging and writing need to be given opportunities to develop. I was reading only today in Pat Thompson's blog (Patter) how she has found reading the most difficult thing to do. Therefore, I have decided to do something about it. 

In 2012, Routledge published a new series aimed at libraries. The "Major Themes in Education" series is (in the case of Physical Education) a four volume edition, spanning 1960 pages and costing in excess of £760. Such a book was conceptualised and marketed as a work that "is destined to be valued by specialists in physical education and scholars working in related areas—as well as by educational policy-makers and professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool." However, given the price tag I don't see how it can be more than a library reference book and yet it seems like the sort of thing that a) I should read and b) I should summaries for my own benefit. Yet in doing that, I also wondered if I a) will without making it part of my routine, and therefore b) should take the time to develop my blog and resurrect Larry's brainchild. 

As you can guess that is exactly what I aim to do. The books, edited by my colleague David Kirk, contains a "collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions that cover all of the major themes in physical education". 98 papers/chapters in all. Each of them had to be nominated by members of the academic community at the invitation of the editor. Therefore, the publisher's claim that this is "a vital one-stop research tool" is certainly defendable but when I fist saw the four-books I wasn't thinking that I must get the books but that they ran the risk of going unread. Yet, that is the opposite of what I am intending to do here. My aim is to read and write a blog summary of one paper/chapter a week; starting at 1 and reading through to 98. It is my hope that this will greatly enhance my knowledge, improve my work as an academic and open up this work to my peers. I would welcome your thoughts on this...but I have already started to read the first paper and hope to write blog one by the end of the week. In this way I hope that I can be judged as a blogger based on my weekly efforts not through the occasional flash in the pan.

Here's to a blogging 2013...a year like no other.    

If we consider our leisure time and social lives many of us will spend time reading books or watching films.  But why do we watch films and/or read books? Alternatively, why do we like particular types of films and/or books? I would venture that we like them…because their enjoyable and they challenge us? Yet, if we acknowledge that books and films are in different genre, why is it that we like some and not others? Isn’t this question that has baffled authors and filmmakers for...well forever? So, what is it that we like and dislike about these things? Or to put another way why do some things captivate us while others leave us indifferent or ‘put us off’?

I wonder if it’s to do with the way we ‘are drawn’ as the audience? How many books or films still start at the beginning with “once upon a time”? I can’t think of the last film I watched or book I read that started this way. Instead they start with a question, conundrum, or a cliffhanger. As one of the audience I am immediately placed into the heart of dilemma and left to consider and problematize the possible solutions. Yet we don’t do the same in education or physical education. Instead we start with “once upon a time”. How many lessons have you taught that started at the very beginning? I would say I have taught hundreds. Yet, as I explore and examine the traditional approach to teaching physical education, with its three-part lesson, then I begin to wonder where the story is.

In my early career “once upon a time” meant the skill. Perhaps not even the skill because the word ‘skill’ suggests something that is used in a live or real situation. So I’ll started with the technique. My lessons were technically-based. End of story. I didn’t take into account my audience. I didn’t consider the students I taught and their responses to my teaching beyond the lesson. No, like my predecessors (my teachers and my teachers’ teachers) I started with the core techniques and they were lucky if they ever got the full story let alone ‘happily ever after’. What I didn’t do was place these learners at the heart of the conundrum, and I am now left to wonder what they remembered about these lessons.

In the models-based practices that I now extol, the leaner is placed at centre. As the teacher I try to consider the bigger picture and then position the student at it’s heart. In this way, I hope to challenge them, to question their expectations and asked them to think ‘outside the box’. Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) and Sport Education at two examples of pedagogical models that seek to do just that. TGfU is a prime example of a model that starts by placing the student at the centre of the problem. The plotlines that follow i.e. the modified games, the tactical problems and the question and answer sessions, are designed to entice the audience and ensure that the ‘story’ of the game is at the heart of the learning experience. Sport Education strives for authenticity and seeks to place students’ experiences of sports, rather than the ‘techniques of play’, at the centre of its units. Similarly, Cooperative Learning seeks not to tell students what they have learned but to explore it with them and to ascertain the nature and quality of their learning through the questions that the students are asked and the contribution that each one of them makes to the group’s success.

So when next you watch a film or read a book see how quickly you are presented with a conundrum or challenge that the author or filmmaker sets you. Then consider your next lesson, presentation or paper. Do you seek to draw in your audience (as an individual learner) and place them at the centre of the problem? Do you begin, like most fairytales, with it “once upon a time” or have you moved to acknowledge the art of the filmmaker? I’m not suggesting that every lesson of a unit or every lecture in a series should start with a conundrum but I am suggested that not every lesson should start with ‘once upon a time’. Techniques and skills are valuable, of course they are, but there is a time and place for their introduction. How many times in a film is the heroine and her nemesis introduced in the opening scene, with no effort made to tell the backstory of their enmity? If we take the same approach in our teaching, presenting and writing then the interplay between, for example, two teams is left to fill the opening scenes before the deeper technical, tactical and strategic understanding is introduced as a means to improve this selfsame interplay.

So the challenge to you, and to me, is to tell the story but not always in the traditional way. Instead we should consider our audience and strive to enthrall them. Have I enthralled you? What do you think?

I am pleased to report that there are five teachers who are actively looking at ways of engaging learners in physical education with the intention of fostering physical literacy.

Claire Bannon has conducted a very useful investigation into motivating those who are less interested in physical activity. Her school physical education department has a predominantly ‘Fitness’ focus and she was able to work within this constraint to increase participation and application. Next year she hopes to introduce additional extra-curricular opportunities to support those who are finding aspects of movement competence challenging.

Judith Piggins and her department were initially sceptical about the school edict that all subjects should have homework. However they created a reflective diary for some of their classes and this has proved a very useful tool to chart individuals’ progress in respect of physical literacy. She is considering finding ways to gather information about the range of Movement Forms in which learners are engaged.

Elizabeth Myers who has used the opportunity of partial redundancy to study two Masters courses alongside her teaching has carried out a range of investigations. In one study into Motivating disengaged pupils within core physical education lessons she found that a combination of teaching approaches incorporating scaffolding, co-construction, collaborative learning and appropriate grouping of learners was effective in improving motivation, effort and achievement. Elizabeth has also worked with the school physical education department to embed physical literacy as a goal in all their work. The Department has used national and local schemes and worked to foster physical literacy within these contexts. The next challenge is to create an instrument to chart individuals’ progress in respect of their physical literacy.

Amy Seagrave and Erin McCarthy are also involved and I will share their work after we meet later in August.

Read More: Casey, A. (2012). A self-study using action research: changing site expectations and practice stereotypes. Educational Action Research. Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 219–232.

In their introcution to this volume the editors suggest that "Ashley Casey...deals with an ongoing educational concern; that of social justice and the persistence of toxic stereotypes. Casey presents a self-study which works against the normative representations of male physical education teachers, and  speak[s] of the time/space required to effect change that works against deeply embedded practices.

Read More: Casey, A. (2012). A self-study using action research: changing site expectations and practice stereotypes. Educational Action Research. Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 219–232.

In their introcution to this volume the editors suggest that "Ashley Casey...deals with an ongoing educational concern; that of social justice and the persistence of toxic stereotypes. Casey presents a self-study which works against the normative representations of male physical education teachers, and  speak[s] of the time/space required to effect change that works against deeply embedded practices.

Ash

Physical Literacy by Margaret Whitehead

I have recently been alerted to an article in a Canadian Journal (‘Teacher’ August 2010) proposing the value of the concept of ‘Sport Literacy’. This identifies four distinct aspects, being to do with a) sport as an applied, practised and situated set of skills, b) sport as a body of knowledge with meaning that can be interpreted, understood and used creatively c) sport as a socially and culturally constructed ‘text’ which can be communicated and read in various forms, and d) sport as a learning process.

While I can see broadly where the writer is coming from, Sport Literacy does not sit well beside Physical literacy. Sport Literacy would seem to encompass embodied aspects of movement, elements of propositional knowledge, aspects of cultural understanding and the promotion of learning. Each is valuable in its own right but do not necessarily form a coherent whole. In fact the presentation suggests that they are distinct aspects. Physical literacy is seen to be an essentially intra-related concept, being centred on motivation, confidence and physical competence which on account of our embodied nature resonate with many aspects of our appreciation of the ourselves and the world.

Similarly, the way we connect with our colleagues to share ideas and collaborate on modern pedagogical action shouldn’t be a example of by gone practice either. The days of waiting for a conference where you listen to keynotes, meet a few friends, maybe make a few new ones, go home feeling inspired then overwhelmed and ultimately pessimistic that real change will take place, are over.

The notion that my words are being read by PE professionals across the world via this blog post shows that modern  professional development has moved on from didactic, date stamped set pieces to agile, on call experiences in places that never sleep.

If I were to give tips on leveraging the massive pool of knowledge that the connected world is, I can only really reflect on what my journey has been. My journey will have common points with others, and also divergent paths too. That’s the beauty of individual professional learning - it fits you, not what a conference organiser thinks is good for you.

 Ten tips for developing a virtual presence:

1. Get online
2. Choose your online spaces strategically – once you turn on the tap, the flow of information can be immense. Learn how to use the online tool “properly” to wring out its goodness for you. Twitter has a thriving PE community that uses the tags #pegeeks #pegeek #HPE #PE for example. When PE teachers share their thoughts here, using the tag makes the idea searchable.
3. You shouldn’t just be a consumer – strong communities are built on the willingness of its members to help each other
4. Fill in your personal profile as best you can to give the community as much information about yourself as your comfortable giving. No one wants to follow (or be followed) by a random.
5. Adopt an avatar to represent you across the online world. Personally, I find multiple avatars can be confusing. Everyone knows Jonesy is a pale skinned bald dude with a blue shirt on a green background J
6. Start a Blog – teachers need to blog. Reflection has, is and always will be a powerful professional learning tool.
7. Learn how to collaborate online – if you don’t use something like the Google suite of tools, start to. Collaboration on ideas can start in Twitter and then move to a Google doc where the whole team can shape an idea into reality.
8. Curate and collect information to help you with your work. Check out places like Scoop.it for collections of ideas. Use Google Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds from blogs and websites so you don’t miss out on updates. Create Google Alerts to filter the Web to your own advantage.
9. Play nice online. That’s not to say that robust discussion won’t take place, but remember that humans communicate using cues that may be missing online. This can lead to misunderstandings.

“Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you”. Guy Kawasaki, alltop.com

1. Build a PLN (Professional Learning Network) both in the real world and online. Mix them together for their mutual benefit.

As people read this, I’m sure there will be more ideas and suggestions.

Which brings me to number 11 (I can never stop at 10!).  A healthy online community is fuelled by feedback and conversation. If the opportunity is offered to comment on a blog post (like this), or a resource that is shared, or a conversation that has started – take it. The author appreciates positive feedback (see point 9) and the benefits flow for everyone.

See you online!

Jonesytheteacher.wordpress.com

A guy is away on business and he goes to the hotel bar for a drink. An attractive fellow guest buys him a drink and they start talking….

…next thing he finds himself waking up in a bath filled with ice. As his eyes focus he sees a note on the mirror in front of him that reads, “ring 999 immediately.” Looking around he sees a phone on the floor and he rings for an ambulance. When he talks to the operator and explains the situation she seems surprisingly calm and asks him to reach behind him and tell her if there is a tube protruding from his lower back. He reaches around and confirms that there is.

“There is a gang of organ thieves operating in the area and I am afraid to say that you have had one of your kidney’s harvested. Stay calm and don’t worry because an ambulance is three minutes away.” 

Now this is a sticky idea. In an hour, a day, or a week (or in my case a year) after hearing it you are likely to remember the three key ideas: a stranger, an ice bath, a stolen kidney. But what makes it stick? The Heath Brothers talk about “six principles of Sticky Ideas”: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories. So let’s look at the Kidney Heist story.

Firstly it’s a) Simple and is told as a b) story (you can make anything up based around the key facts: in the story I first heard the guy had to ring 911). It was certainly c) unexpected (I didn’t predict that the guy would turn up in an ice bath minus one of lose his kidneys) which in turn sparked d) an emotion (mild revulsion and horror I suppose in my case), it has e) credibility (after all I’m telling it, it happens in a familiar setting and the ambulance operator is involved). Finally it has concreteness (a guy bought drugged drink wakes up in an ice bath without a kidney). Now while the entire story is a fabrication it has longevity. Also, will you be accepting a drink from a handsome/beautiful stranger? I bet you would think twice now!

I will leave you to discover the rest of the book…which you can buy from here (and other good bookshops both in the high street and on the internet). 

(Blog 5 in my 30-day blogging challenge)

However, what is done in the name of physical education has changed considerably. The military drill of the late 19^th century has been replaced in turn by gymnastics and then games. Yet the focus on games hasn’t notably changed for 50 years or more. So perhaps we are closer the 19^th century that the 21^st century? If so where did all the good teachers go? Well they are still here. When I talk to my students about their school physical education experiences they wax lyrical about the wonderful jobs that their teachers did and how they inspired them to be involved in sport for the foreseeable future. Yet the voices we don’t hear are perhaps the ones we need t hear. What about those who don’t follow a career in sport or aspire to be physical education teachers or coaches? We need to hear from them. So what does/did physical education mean to them? A quick search on twitter for “physical education” will bring up a lot of advocacy (from teachers) and lot of advertising (of books and jobs) and a lot of unhappy people (it makes sober reading).

This means, for me, that we need to take back the gyms and the play fields for the kids and ensure, above all, that we help create in them a love of moving. This means giving them a choice and ripping up the ‘rulebook’ when it comes to physical education. We need to recapture the term and make it mean something special to everyone (or a close to everyone as we can manage).

Let me know your thoughts.

(Blog 4 in my 30-day blogging challenge)

In the summer I went to the association for Physical Education’s (afPE) national conference and many of the faces were familiar ones from higher education. Otherwise the delegates were from industry or local education authorities but very few appeared to be teachers. I was there to lead a session on “games-making” but only had three delegates interested in the work I was doing and had prepared – it just didn’t fit into their agendas. Now that is my fault (I guess I didn’t judge the audience - as what excited me didn’t excite them) but I am still left perplexed. Ben Jones (@benpaddlejones) and I recently had a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal in Australia but I wonder how many teachers have read it. What’s its impact factor? Less than one teacher in 100,000? Or is that being too optimistic? 

So my question is what forum exists that teachers (Physical Education preferably from my perspective) can talk through? Twitter does seem popular but 140 characters and the continual time stream make the sense of conversation difficult to follow. Facebook? Is this the right medium given that it was original set up as a ‘friends reunited’ platform? Can PEPRN be a place even for a handful of international conversations?

Therefore my two calls to action for this blog are as follows: 

1)   Please comment on this blog or one of the others blogs or discussions on PEPRN and help me to understand where I might have the conversations that I crave.

2)   Tweet me, DM me (@DrAshCasey) or email me (Ashley.Casey@beds.ac.uk) the address of your blog and I pledge to start to comment on your blog posts as we need to create a community that support one another.

(Blog 3 in my 30-day blogging challenge)

1. Do it for your audience and not for yourself: whenever you are writing or presenting an idea think about your audience. They are the people who will potentially 'do' something with your idea so try and prepare it so it is easy for them to digest and then reuse.
2. Think about the 'err what?!' moment as much as the 'ah I see moment' : when writing or presenting I am trying to look for a knowledge gap and then I'm looking to fill it. This means finding the moment of confusion or ignorance and then providing an answer. By creating the '?????' moment first then '!!!!!' moment gains more significance and, hopeful, longevity.
3.  Reader's block: This one has come back time and time again to help me. When I am writing or preparing a lecture and I can think of nothing to say then I have come to realise that I don't have writer's block but instead have reader's block. This is the moment when I acknowledge that I simply don't know enough and need to put down the pen or set aside the computer and pick up a book and try to fill my own knowledge gap.
4. Sinatra moment: This is the moment where you sell your own credibility. It is the "if I can make it there (i.e. your example) I can make it anywhere (i.e. the place you are trying to get to)" moment. I try and tell my students to use examples when they apply for things (jobs places on PGCE courses etc) as it shows what it is you have done in a similar situation and gives an outsider a real sense of what you could achieve...so remember the "New York, New York" song and show your audience what you can offer "here and there.
5. "Keep it simple: Simplicity is a key idea in life. Try and pair everything back to the "it" of your argument. It is like the super car where everything (including the stereo, the heated seats, and the air con) is stripped back to eck the last bit of performance out of the car. Think about your message and strip it back...this will make it perform better and as in the case of the car make it faster than its competitors. 
6. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" Is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant and the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms" - Colin Powell: To me this is a major problem with tradition and traditional practice in Physical Education. We think that it works and therefore we lack the drive or motivation to make it better. We need to think about what it is we really want to do as teachers and then fix what is clearly broken rather than burying our heads in the sands of inaction. 
7. Don't waste a crisis!: This is a time when signifiant changes can be made and when the drive and motivation to change has enough momentum to carry through such change. We need to see how we can take advantage of a crisis and be the real winners rather than those who wait for a chance. We need to be change leaders rather than change followers (which leads me to my next point)
8. If you see the bandwagon you're too late: Following a bandwagon probably means that you are too late to do anything but sit on it. You can't lead it and its ideas are already too firmly entrenched to fit your situation. If you want meaningful change then you need to take your own opportunities rather than just follows other peoples. 
9. What's your 3%?: Working at 110% has become a popular expression for working really hard but we all work hard so how can we do that little bit extra? The difference in water content between a watermelon (94%) and a cloud (97%) is an extra 3% but what a difference! So how can you find an extra 3% and be that difference?
10. Nick Vujicic: If you haven't seen or heard from this guy then you are missing a truly inspirational public speaker - check him out at:  http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/

(Blog 2 in my 30-day blogging challenge)

 While these years of what Nick Gibb (the school minister) called “chronic under-performance” are deeply worrying I am drawn back to some recent and ongoing research about children’s fundamental movement skills (FMS) and the subsequently knock on effect that poor FMS have on their basic literacy and numeracy skills. Professor Jackie Goodway from Ohio State University visited the University recently to talk through some of the work she had been engaged in in the USA and it was frightening to see the connections that were being made between FMS and other fundamental skills such as reading and writing. With this in mind I wonder how many schools – and not by choice but by a complete lack of funding and development in this area – are failing in terms of FMS development?

The findings of Jackie’s research were stark. A sedentary life for many of the poorest families was not a choice but a necessity given the dangers inherent in their neighbourhoods and the need to put food rather than physical activity in front of their children.  A lack of physical activity was summed up by one mother who said “I don’t have two cents to spit on! I can’t afford no damn ballet tutu program for Shequia! We can barely afford to eat!” If we are looking for advocacy in our schools  to halt those who are failing then we need to start treating FMS more seriously. We need specialist physical education teachers in every pre-school and every primary school to ensure that the “activity deserts” found by Jackie and her team (in places where gangs rules the streets and drug users prowl the playgrounds discarding their detritus where the kids would normally play) do not become prevalent in the UK.

While Physical Education in secondary schools remains important we need to put resources into foundation and early childhood education as it is increasing difficult to ‘turn around’ a child’s physical activity habits as they get older. It is clear from Jackie’s work that FMS serve as a ‘base camp’ (to use a climbing metaphor) from which to access the different mountains of motor development. This means tennis as well as writing – as the finite movement skills required in writing are formed at the same time that other movement skills are developed. 

We need to take FMS more seriously and ensure that the numbers of ‘failing schools’ don’t keep rising while all the time slipping under the self-same radar that highlights falling standards in maths and English. 

[Blog 1 in my 30 day blogging challenge]

I guess when planning any unit I like to think about the learning outcomes. What do I want the students to get out of it? When working with Cooperative Learning I guess I’m thinking about both the social or the affective domain as one of the key learning domains alongside the academic or cognitive learning I also aspire to. How can the rest of the unit I plan have an impact on my student learning both in terms of physical education and socially when they are asked to work with and for each other?

The act of using Cooperative Learning (by ensuring that the non-negotiable elements of individual accountability, positive interdependence, group process, Promotive face-to-face interaction and group goal are central to learning) goes a long way to ensuring that the students are leaning in the affective domain. However, learning outcomes in schools relate to bodies of knowledge or concepts and we need to think how those will be addressed. If we take examination Physical Education and look at a subject like physiology and a topic like the heart then we start to focus on a learning outcome. “By the end of this unit, week, lesson the students will understand the workings of the heart in line with the exam boards specifications.” But how do we achieve it?

Traditionally, as teachers, we would provide all the information for the students in the lesson. Cooperative Learning is no different. The difference is in the delivery. I can talk at them and tell them the answers and the facts or I can work with them to facilitate their learning. For example, “describe and explain the workings of the heart and its four chambers.” Now, imagine I used a jigsaw classroom and split the class into groups of four. Each member of these individual home groups would now be allocated to one of four expert groups “left atria, right atria, left ventricle and right ventricle.” Now the task would be for the expert groups to find out about their quarter of the heart, explain its job, what it received from the body and where it subsequently sends this. Each group would work hard to understand their bit of the heart in detail. The teacher could have pre-prepared resources or suggested Internet links, or references that the expert groups could use to learn about their chamber. After a set period of time (minutes, hours, days) the experts would then return to their original ‘home’ group with a specific knowledge about their chamber of the heart. They would have to put the four chambers together to make the complete heart and then perhaps each could answer a mock exam question at the end of the unit to explain the workings of the heart. The success of the team could be judged, for example, on the mean score achieved by the home group for the question. 

So let’s think about group processing. This was identified in our forthcoming book as the key process in cooperative learning in physical education so what will that look like?

After each lesson or section of the lesson I want the home or expert groups to consider three questions:

So what? What now? Then what?

These are taken from adventure education but they serve as a great focal point for student learning. The “so what?” relates to the significance of the lesson (i.e. was there any and if there was something can they put there figure on it?) The “what now?” tries to position this learning in the moment and then envision how it might be carried forwards in the immediate future i.e. what do we now know about the left ventricle? The “then what?” ask them to try and see the next learning that they need to develop their ideas and their practice beyond the current lesson i.e. what do we still need to know. It is a great way of helping them to plan the learning that they need rather than relying on us, as their teachers, to tell them what they need to know.

The whole idea of group process as the key to understanding through Cooperative Learning is a new one. It makes planning a unit of work a little more difficult inasmuch as we don’t get the chance to spell everything out in full and have to be adaptable and base each lesson on the prior learning of the students. I guess that this is why planning the outcomes first is the most important thing. You will have noticed that I have yet mentioned the content of the lesson. Why? Because I believe that we have things back to front. We let the cart push the horse in physical education and make our initial decisions based on content. Activity is the key and then learning is positioned around it rather than learning being the focus.

So the outcomes of this lesson are knowledge of the heart but also leadership, cooperation and responsibility. I hope you will agree that these are all robust learning outcomes. In order for them to be achieved the class is going to have to achieve a group goal (highest average score in the end of unit test) to which they all contribute both through their accountability for their individual actions (i.e. knowing about their chamber and helping the other to understand this) and their group efforts (how well they were all able to answer the question). They will have to depend on each other and will need to develop the skills to interact.

Therefore, as a teacher, I need to think of ways to keep them accountable to their peers. This means that their actions and efforts need to be assessed some how (the exam). I could use formative assessment, summative assessment, registers, tick lists, tasks that only one person can perform but however I do it I need to ensure that no one gets a free ride. Kids don’t like it when they have to carry someone else and while they are happy to support their hard working peers they don’t want others getting credit for their actions. As they work together they will constantly be working in Promotive face-to-face situations that require a willingness to contribute to the classes learning and help one another.

Many people claim that leadership is a direct outcome of physical education and yet there is no evidence to suggest that this is actually the case. If it is an outcome then it is not deliberately planned for but is a lucky consequence of working in teams. Cooperative Learning positions collaborative work and leadership as key learning outcomes and also allows pupils to be active participants in their own learning. Confucius said “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” I firmly believe that by positioning students as doers and as experts then they do really begin to understand. 

My PhD was a self study of my attempts to change theposition I occupied in the classroom but more recently I come to view thischange, not as one that impacted only on my teaching but as one that altered myvery awareness of what learning means. Previously I had seen myself as theteacher, as the imparter of knowledge and consequently had seen my students asthe receivers of this knowledge. In my exploration of the self-study literatureI found a chapter of a yearbook written in 1957 where the author considered theplace of ‘the researcher himself’ in the research process. In scientificwriting many pieces are ‘authorless’ and the writer consciously and deliberatelywrites themselves and their opinions out of the piece. I wonder now if, as ayoung teacher, I did the same with regards to my learning in (and for) mylessons.

Let me explain. My teaching of Javelin has been a ‘place’that I have returned to again and again in my reflections because itpersonifies the limit of both my knowledge and my practice with regards toteaching this topic. I removed the need for me to learn more about the topic ofmy lesson and instead found a fixed body of ‘knowledge’ that I felt I needed toimpart to the students – regardless of their age and prior experience. Now I amnot alone in this means of teaching, as I have seen and heard many anecdotesabout Javelin and athletics since, but I was alone in my lesson as I was theonly person not required to learn as a consequence of my teaching. I repeatedlywonder if I did not do my students a disservice by focusing on the knowledgethat they needed rather than also positioning me as a learner. I feel that I nowneed to account for me ‘myself’ and should therefore have therefore striven to continuallyrefine and enhance my knowledge and understanding - not only of javelin butalso of pedagogy.

I feel, in preparing to teach and in teaching, that I now tryto be a learner. I believe that I am increasing happy to consider myself whenconsidering the needs of my students. As teachers we need to work hard to repositionourselves not only as skilled and passionate practitioners but also as lifelonglearners who strive to learn – in the words of Mahatma Gandhi – like they’lllive forever.  I want to be a commarather than a full stop (cf. Coldplay) when it comes to my engagement inlifelong learning and feel that this is better way of helping my studentsengage with their learning. However, I am a work very much in progress but I amlearning...

I acknowledge, appreciate and thank all those who have takentime to engage me in a conversation on twitter about this and I hope that they,and others, are willing to engage in a discussion around this idea here…ideasthat I discussed initially on this blog in August. I guess the starting pointshould be me trying to articulate what it is I am aspiring to.

In simple terms I want the learning experiences I engenderin my work to be recalled as a significant to those I am working with. That isnot to say I want balloons and party poppers and rounds of applause at the endof every session. In fact I would be happy if they walked out talking heatedlyto each other as they had a debate of ideas. I don’t want it to be an irrelevance.Instead, I want them to ‘enjoy themselves.’ I acknowledge that I am strugglingfor the words but I am not looking for instant gratification just a sense thatsomething positive has happened as a result of my work.I feel that that is an appropriate andmeaningful goal for an educator to have.

I look back on my master’s degree and my PhD, and on myrugby and cricket playing days with fondness and I acknowledge them as highlysignificant in my life. I enjoyed them and would do them all again. Not everyaspect, in fact there were several that were hard, unpleasant even, butgenerally and over a long term. My limited vocabulary leaves me with the contestedterms ‘enjoyment’ and ‘fun’ but I am looking for a deeper and long term outcomealong the terms of ‘impact’ perhaps even naively as ‘nostalgia’ but definitely morefirm as lifelong learning’. Yet how do I achieve that? I like the idea of enjoymentwhile acknowledging that the term is linked to fun and it sits on the shadowline between what is good about education and bad about schooling. I don’t meanto swear but am struggling to find a more acceptable term. What do I mean?Answers on a postcard please.

The fundamentalconcern was the lack of research-evidence to show the positive impact thatphysical education has in young peoples’ lives and the significance it has inpeoples’ lifelong physical activity habits. This lack of evidence makes itdifficult to advocate the continued or enhanced role of physical education inschools. This concern comes at a time when provision for elementary-agedstudents was either threatened or under-resourced and when the poverty/wealth gapis ever widening. This growing “money divide” further highlights the starkdifferences between the affluent and the impoverished and their experiences ofphysical education. Greater national leadership is required. However, this supportneeds to be properly informed and must take account of increasingly diverse worldwidepopulations (and their cultures and languages). Finally there is a dividebetween the ideas of teachers and coaches when the learning of young athletesis considered. The destination is often similar but there is a lack of synergyin our approaches.  All of these themeshave emerged at a time when sports programmes remain the dominant context forthe teaching of physical education: a situation unlikely to changed unlessphysical education teacher education institutes take great steps to modernizeand reconsider their programmes. 

The predominant message was one of engagement. Everybody has the inherent right and a need for opportunities to play. Some create these for themselves while others are either discouraged (both intentionally or unintentionally) from enjoying these same opportunities due to a physical or a learning disability or because they simply do not know how to create or take advantage of them. For some they are put off by the rigid practices they encounter in their lessons, while others lack the necessary support structures or the innate desire to play. The physically disabled, the learning disabled and the play disabled (those who make little or no connection to the potential joys of movement and play) all need our support. Therefore, as educators, we must model excessive happiness and enjoyment in our work so that the learners in our care become apprentices of master playmakers rather than the recipients of a 'physical' education. To do this we need to engage in new ways of knowing and acting that prepares them from an ever decreasing world where technology has created new opportunities for collaborative play. This requires realistic and sustained teacher professional learning opportunities where teachers can engage in the practice of engagement.

We’re living in a technological revolution. However, it is awave of progress that is moving away from us with each passing day. In theirsong ‘time’ Pink Floyd wrote “we run and we run to catch up with the sun butit’s sinking” – which in my mind is a good analogy for the distance that isbeing created between what we could do with ICT in our teaching and therealities of what little is actually achieved. To address this Ben chose to usevideo analysis to engage low ability and disaffected kids in physical education.It could be argued that video analysis has occurred in physical education formany years using suitcase size video cameras and bulky players but despite theavailability of this technology it hasn’t caught on in the subject’s teaching.Ben’s project was to see what worked ‘best’ for his students and he tried sevendifferent video analysis techniques only to find that simply recording andreplaying footage  on digital cameras andfreezing the frame using pause was the most useful for his students. In thisway immediate feedback was possible which helped students engage with theirlearning while simultaneously wanting to help their peers. 

I wonder if reading as an academic is worthwhile if the audience for most of my learning is me? I have spent enough time saying 'I'll blog next when I have time and when I have something to say" but I don't think that that is the point. I have just co-authored a chapter on 'writing' and we use blogging as an informal way of sharing ideas and structuring thoughts and ideas into a clear and concise message. To do this we have suggested an exact word count (200 words) as this reinforces the need for clarity. So here goes...

I have been reading in three main areas over the last few months: 1) professional development 2) ICT in Physical Education, and 3) the site of the social (i.e. the places -both physically and metaphorically - we work and interact which in turn forms our meta-practices. These themes have been the focus of three main academic papers yet they appear to overlap in so many ways: ways I will now make a first attempt to articulate. 

The bottom line is practices in physical education are somewhat staid. Furthermore the ways in which we seek to continually educate and empower teachers are also staid and predominately use a model of "one size fits all" rather than creating individual learning outcomes for each participant (much like our teaching itself). Additionally we live in a technological revolution where innovation is measured in months not years. So how do we use technology in our teaching when, as a body, we lack the drive to change the status quo, the tools to re-educate ourselves and the time to keep up with every innovation? 

Yet professionally do we have the time not to find ways? 

Solution? We could form our own professional learning communities...

Two hundred works later and I could have stopped but I am not sure that serves my purpose...for those who read a blog on Physical Education and Practitioner Research perhaps they already know this and probably have created networked learning opportunities of their own. As a result they are probably already ahead of the game as my reading of research in this area suggests that these are the best ways that educators can engage in professional learning. For those who might be new to online, unstructured, informal, friendly and meaningful collaboration then you are on the right lines. 

Why?

Because we learn best when rank and file isn't an issue i.e. When all participants have an equal say and can make the contribution that they want. We learn when obedience and compliance are not expected and when we can ask questions and answer questions without fear of rebut or ridicule. When we can share ideas that have been tempered in the 'heat' of the classroom - ours or someone else's it doesn't matter. 

You could argue that these conversations do occur in the 'gaps' between the formalised learning that is supposed to occur on official professional development courses. But these are impromptu meetings that occur by chance. It seems more obvious to me to deliberately and purposefully seek your colleagues. It therefore seems obvious that the best professional development occurs in physical education when we use ICT to create our own sites of the social with colleagues from around the world. 

Once this is done then we have the opportunity to influence how we develop each of these components in the maelstrom of our own institutions and our own classroom.

Your thoughts?

The question

It hung like a bad smell

Their discomfort: palpable

I explored.

They hadn’t got it

Maybe it was just a bit too clever

Or maybe they weren’t cleverenough

Wait on! I’m the teacher. It’s notabout learning it wrong

No!

It’s about my teaching it right.

So it’s my fault?

Well, our fault.

They tried to explain the concepts andideas but they simply couldn’t

I tried to help, to explain, but Iwasn’t far ahead of them.

A couple of steps maybe

Truth be told I found it a challengetoo but could re-consider it in light of my prior experiences

We moved the ideas forwards, but itwasn’t easy as they had their own misunderstandings to overcome.

To repair

Then she spoke about her fundamentalconcerns. But...No. Wait a second. She was sorry for thinkingdifferently. For not agreeing

When was it decided that she couldn’t have an opinion?

Who was it decided that I was rightand she wrong?

Was I really the infallible expert?

No! You should challenge things Isaid. Find fault. Question everything

You should accept nothing at facevalue.

Try before you buy. Look at thingsthrough your lenses

OK.

She responded...fundamentallyit...hadn’t...couldn’t...No. Not couldn’t... didn’t work for her

She saw some obvious flaws.

This doesn’t work.

Not for her.

Not in physical education.

But why? I tried to explain but theflaw was there and it wasn’t to be shifted.

Should I shift it? No. I should let herfind meaning for herself

But the fault lies not with her.

The theory? The practice? Praxis?

Well, I’m the teacher. I must striveto find the solution

The fault is mine!

My pedagogy? My knowledge?

Who does understand and can explain?

Me? She? They

Want to be practitioners

So?

Find a teacher solution

Put it into teacher talk

Take smaller steps

Explain

At the crux of the paper was O’Flynn’s investigation of twovery different schools and how they take up and negotiate the meaning of healthand physical education that their students adopt. She argued that schools have apredisposition towards the type of students that they educate. In other wordsthey have ‘classed subjectivities’ that implicitly effect the shape of the ‘somebodies’that the school invites its pupils to become. Looking deeper O’Flynn draws onthe notion of self as being constructed through the interplay of people and thepower/knowledge relations in which they are involved. In terms of schooling shesuggested that schools are able to constrain and enable certain discourses thattheir students can subsequently ‘take up, reject, resist and negotiate’ astheir idea of ‘self’ develops. As a result of the school’s predisposition towardscertain discourses, and its rejection of others, “students are conceptualisedas being ‘invited’ by their schooling to take up particular subject-positionsand ways of thinking, being, and governing themselves and others” (O’Flynn,2010, p. 432).

In her exploration of the wider literature O’Flynn suggeststhat schools have become sites of (re)production, where classed and genderedsubjectivities are maintained and enhanced. In the two schools – one a privategirls’ school and the other a co-educational government-run school in the same Australiancity – different perceptions existed around the nature of the students, and inmany ways the ‘somebodies’ they are allowed to become were predefined. Middle-classexpectations that students would be ‘high achieving’ and ‘motivated’ werecompared to working class expectations that students would fail in both theirlives and their studies seemed to be embedded in the subjectivities of thetwo schools.

The language of the two schools in describing their pupilswas markedly different. The ‘exemplary students’ and ‘future leaders of thecommunity’ of the private school were expected to achieve ‘high academicsuccess” and be ‘independent’ ‘leaders’ ‘team players’ and ‘adaptive individuals.’In comparison the ‘vocational learning’ in the co-educational school wasachieved through ‘basic skills’ and ‘student welfare’ in an environment that ‘promotednumeracy and literacy’ for all with the provision of ‘remedial assistance’ andwith a focus on ‘well-disciplined students.’ The discourse, O’Flynn argues, ofsuccess and failure are located in the individual schools and in many ways thewords used remind me of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The construction of the ‘somebodies’of each schools meant that they were almost (pre)ordained to construct theirfutures as being either privileged and following the traditional trajectoriesof educational and professional success or deviant and disadvantaged and endingup in low-skilled employment or unemployment.

The ‘truths’ of each school meant that students wereencouraged to construct themselves as being ‘normal’ when they shared thediscourse of their school. Consequently it is important that we look not onlyat the simplistic discourse of education but at the “similar and different wayspopulist notions (in this case of health and physical activity) are drawn on byschools” (O’Flynn, 2010, 443). Such an examination would explore why dominantdiscourses are classed, gendered, raced and hetronormative and afford a greaterunderstanding of the ways in which schools shape “the ‘somebodies’ young womenand young men are invited to ‘become’” (O’Flynn, 2010, p. 444).

References

O’Flynn, G. (2010). The business of ‘bettering’ students’lives: Physical and health education and the construction of social classsubjectivities. Sport, Education andSociety, 15 (4): 431-445.

 However, and withregards to teaching and specifically the teaching of physical education, theseclose similarities are concerning. For many years I have read about the enduringteacher-led pedagogy that dominants teaching around the world and while I haveaccepted this, a little if me has wondered if  it’s really true. Now while I will not claim thetotal dominance of this approach I can say that the people I have talked toconfirm that this is not a regional issue and nor is it likely to simply ‘goaway’ unless we engage in some consolidated, meaningful and radical reform. Itis no longer enough to allow ‘more of the same’ to dominate the teaching andlearning that occurs under the name of physical education. Instead we mustbravely go where no one has gone before and change physical education before itis irrevocably changed for us.

This was the greeting I received from Garr Reynolds as I arriveda little late to his Presentation Zen seminarin Paris. I quickly fired out some lame retort and a humble apology, settled my80 litre rusksack down and found a seat with some great European colleagues. Whatfollowed was an afternoon of eye-opening simplicity that set me thinking (evenmore) about my presentation skills. Using four hour-long slots with thinking, networkingand coffee drinking time slotted in between Garr helped us to think aboutpresenting as being ‘to an audience’ and ‘not for ourselves.’ What follows hereis a summary blog that attempts to pick out my top ten take-home messages frommy time in Paris and my subsequent reading of Garr’s fourth book ‘the naked presenter.’

1.     Audience: You are presenting to somebody (wellhopefully many somebodies) and not just about something. So work out who theyare, where they come from and what you want them to take home from yourpresentation. By starting at point A (where they are) and planning to take themto point B (the changed them at the end of your presentation) then you have thebasis for your presentation.
2.     Audience: You are presenting to real people sopresent to them. Don’t read from copious notes, don’t simply read your slides(these guys and girls can read faster than you can talk and they will readahead and then make conclusions that you don’t necessarily want them to makeand without the punch line that you have intended) and don’t present to yourslides. Get out in front, place a lap top in front of you so you can see whatis coming next and know your stuff. Present to them, go off script, answer theirquestions and engage with them like you having a conversation not giving alecture.
3.      Audience: You have 9 minutes and 59 seconds,according to Dr John Medina in his book ‘BrainRules’, to talk to your audience in the first instance before you need to changethings up and get them doing something new. Therefore don’t use this time ‘warmingthem up’ as they are most receptive in minute one. Hit them with your message,shock them even and get them engaged from the start. After ten minutes findsomething new – tell them a story, show them some video footage, do a straw poll(i.e. “who has ever...” and count yourself amongst their number). The audience areat their most receptive in the first and last few minutes so hit them with yourbest stuff. If you shocked them at the start then show them how your talk hasoffered a solution in the final message. However, don’t waste your impact by thankingthem and asking for questions, this will happen any way and you want to leavethem with a take-away idea.
4.      Present your message: the phrase ‘death by powerpoint’ didn’t spring outof the ether but has grown up because the full capabilities of powerpoint havebeen exploited to produce ‘all singing and all dancing’ presentations that areall ‘skirt and no knickers.’ In other words they look fancy but achieve verylittle except bamboozling their audience. So think big. One of the take homemessages I took from Garr was not to put up any text on my slides smaller thanpoint 30. If you can’t say what you want to say in point 30 or greater then youare overburdening the two key senses of the audience: their eyes and their ears.The audience see your message from the image and the small amount of text youpresent and then they hear it as you talk. However, overburden them with textand the eyes start to see, rather than hear your voice and the message – your takehome message – is at best jumbled and at worst lost in your deluge ofinformation.
5.      Let them take your message home: Don’t try andtell them everything. Give them the key points and then allow them take homethe ‘paper’ that supports your presentation and contains the ‘hard facts.’ Don’tdo this as powerpoint slides as they won’t contain enough content for your audience(given your aim to go big) so write something. The audience can take this awayand explore your ideas at their own pace and in their own time. They can readaround the subject if they wish and make their own decisions. Your aim is toget them thinking at point B rather than point A.
6.      Take your time to link your text message to yourimage: A picture, as Garr used, of a woman in a tracksuit drinking water from aplastic bottle could have many meanings: a) Hydrate b) recycle being just two. Sochoose your image carefully for the message that you want to give across and makesure it works by trying it out on friends before you hit an audience with it.
7.      Link your image to your text: In reverse ofpoint 6 the slogan “Britons drink 5 million bottles of wine a week” (a made-upstatistic) is poorly represented by a glass of wine on a table by the pool, orwine drunk on a picnic, or three bottles of wine held by a waiter. Youraudience needs to understand the sheer volume of liquid this equates to. So animage of Niagara Falls and the aside “equivalent volume of Niagara Falls over aten minute period” sends a much more powerful, and meaningful, take-homemessage.
8.      Brainstorm: There are different stages inplanning a presentation and while the first are knowing your audience andplanning the route your want to take them on from point A to point B there areothers. The second (or third in this case) is brainstorming. Garr would haveyou turn off the computer and use post-it notes and a pen, or a whiteboard andpen. He quoted John Cleese who said “we don’t know where we get our ideas frombut it certainly isn’t the computer.” So turn off the computer and write outthe ideas that immediately come into your head. Write snippets on post-it notesor the whiteboard and then move on to the next idea. Keep going. You willdiscard much of this but it will allow you to really think through the plannedmessage and the route from A to B.
9.     Sort and storyboard your ideas: The next stageis to take your ideas and group them and then storyboard them. Using a wall,whiteboard or a notebook put the ideas into a sequence that creates the storythat you want to tell. Remember the 10 minute rule, and the need to keep ideasshort and the time you have for your presentation and flesh out the story. Youwill need to link your ideas, pool your ideas (if some are the same) anddiscard some ideas if they don’t aid in the story you are trying to tell.
10.   Prepare and practice: The final message was thatit takes time – a lot more time than simply cutting ideas from a paper andpasting it into a slide – to prepare an effective presentation and rehearse ittakes a lot of time. I read somewhere (not from Garr) that an hour presentationtakes 30 hours to prepare. Time well spent? I would say yes. I feel that theeffectiveness of my presentations has vastly increased and the impact they haveis far more significant but I am still learning and it takes time. I havesupportive colleagues who will listen to me speak and a real desire to makethis work but solid, usable and effective ideas such as Garr’s have been key inmoving forwards and it takes preparation time and practice time.

This may seem like a lot ofeffort but I feel that it is certainly worth it. However, don’t just take myword for it; read Garr Reynolds, read John Medina, check out TED, look onslideshare and talk to people. Presentation doesn’t have to be about bulletpoints just because that is the way everyone else does it. Find your messageand tell it through powerful images, meaningful text and a take home messagethat your audience can read and question in their own time.

Happy Christmas and great newyear,

Ash

The cold weather gripping the country hasmade me very glad of the log burner in my lounge.  Whilst sawing and chopping new supplies ofwood, I was wondering why this is one of my favourite jobs. Perhaps it is thephysicality keeping me warm whilst outside on such a freezing day, or the sheersatisfaction of striking the log to see it split cleanly.  Maybe it is just the pure simplicity of thetask in a modern and often very complicated world.

 Buddhist stories often suggest studentsshould concentrate on doing mundane tasks well. Morgan Freeman playing ‘God’ in the film ‘Bruce Almighty’ requires Bruce to help him with mopping the floor, asdoes Socrates in Millman’s   ‘Way of thePeaceful Warrior’.  These examples may beabout developing humility and self-discipline, undoubtedly valuable qualitiesto practice.  However with the firewood,I think there is something deeper, linking to a connection with fire that ispart of something innate in us as human beings. Gathering firewood and making fire seems to link to an ancient innerpast which we often loose touch with in our modern lives.

Or maybe it isjust great to be sitting by the roaring fire!

[Nalda is a PhD student at the University and this reflective blog really made me think. I thought you would enjoy reading it]

As physical educators’ we are well versed in thedesirability of ‘warming up’ appropriately. On contemplating our researchendeavours it may be apt to consider ‘blogging’ in such light. Pondering overfragments of ideas, will as Ashley demonstrates, allow us to ‘run’ with ourmusings and ‘choreograph’ them into something ‘communicable’. In his seminaltome, ‘the sociological imagination’, C. Wright Mills (1959) explicates asimilar working process and I’ve found him to be a useful research companion.

Going for a ‘blog’

Despite the raison detre of physical education being‘movement’, I believe (our collective work stands as testament) we can standaccused of being ‘static’. To free ourselves from this impasse, we all, in ourown ways, argue the need for critically ‘reflexive’ practitioners. I think theword ‘critical’ is important here. As socialisation research attests, most PEteachers are reflective in so far as they ‘mirror’ the practices of their past.This ‘apprenticeship’ for many is positive and our task is to develop a‘curiosity’ around what ‘positive’ means. Namely, who is privileged and/oroppressed by such practice(s).

Back in the changing rooms

Mr rigid the inflexible is berating me to hurry up and getchanged – oh the irony!

With this in mind I decided to start, under the sameconstraints, to blog about how I blog. These words (or at least similar words)initially came from my pen and were written, unedited, straight on to today’spage of my reflective diary. In other words they were shot from the hip. Thesecond process was to transfer my paper and pen ‘blog’ to the computer. This transferwas critical and considered and led to the first edits and rewritings of mywords. The finals stage was to adjust the text to fit the 200 word target exactlywith no wasted words or overly cut corners.

In the last few weeks, as part of my own explorations andresearch into MBP, I have been trawling through the many academic,peer-reviewed journals in which empirical studies of MBPs have been published. SpecificallyI have been reviewing the published literature around MBP that directlyexamines a) teachers use of and b) teaching and learning as a result of MBP.The overwhelming outcome of this extensive review (of 37 papers and counting) isthat MBP works and that it is exciting and vibrant approach to teaching in physicaleducation. The vast majority of the many hundreds of teachers involved in thesestudies agree that MBP was a good alternative approach to teaching in physicaleducation and many preferred it to the tradition multi-activity curriculum thatcurrently operated in their schools.

On a cautionary note the review also suggests that MBP is nota straightforward alternative to traditional teacher-led approaches and that ittakes time to learn to teach in a new way. There are risks involved inpedagogical change but the rewards, it seems from listening to these teachers,are centred on enhanced student learning and are worth the extra effort. Thestrongest changes occurred when teachers worked in collaboration withUniversities and their learning communities. Such unions, one of thecornerstones of the development of the PEPRN site, helped teachers not only toadopt these models but also to modify them so they were effective at anindividual classroom level.

If you would like to be involved in some up and comingcollaborations that we are proposing then please contact me through thewebsite.

Challenges of Game-Centered approaches

Given that the time is right for sport pedagogy, I feel that it is pertinent to highlight that the most fundamental challenge is in supporting teachers and coaches while they develop their understanding and embodiment of game-centered approaches AND constructivist theories of learning (Harvey et al., 2010, Light & Evans, 2010; Light, 2008).  Certainly, planning to prevent a ‘roll out the ball’ teaching approach is critical (Harvey et al., 2010; Howarth, 2005) and more specifically, modifying the training environment (Harvey et al., 2010) in order to ‘get the game right’ (Thorpe & Bunker, 2008) using the ‘goldilocks principle’ (i.e. not too hot, and not too sweet but ...) (Rovegno et al., 2001).  In addition, planning pertinent higher order questions to stimulate critical thinking and dialogue among players is a key pedagogical technique to foster players learning. 

Secondly, the repositioning of teacher/coach (Harvey et al., 2010; Light, 2004) so they can ‘step back’ and facilitate player learning by using the aforementioned strategies of game modifications and questioning.  What is more, this stepping back allows for the reduction of power relations between the players and the teacher/coach so they are positioned as a partner in learning (Light, 2004).

Finally, and importantly, Light (2004) had found that the aesthetics of training and the expectations of the club committee or school management may actually deter teachers and coaches from using these approaches. As one of Light’s study participants mentioned, “I do drills when the committee come round, but I use Game Sense at all other times.”

In sum, all of these factors, pedagogy, the repositioning of the teacher/coach, and the aesthetics of training are all important challenges that teachers and coaches must address when implementing game-centred approaches.

Opportunities of Game-Centered approaches

Given that in most games, especially team games, only a small percentage of time is spent on-the-ball, the biggest opportunity for game-centered approaches is that it can look to develop players skills for working off-the-ball (Harrison et al., 2004, Harvey, 2006, Light, 2004, Turner & Martinek, 1999).  Indeed, my assertion, along with that of the researchers cited above, is that teaching the tactical aspects of games can only occur when players are taught within the game context.  Playing in game-type situations in practice enables players to develop decision-making and aspects of a ‘sense of the game’ through implicit learning that cannot be directly taught to players (Light & Evans, 2010). This emphasis was also one of the major reasons for the initial development of the Teaching Games for Understanding model in the 1980’s which followed on from the approaches in France of Mahlo (1974) and Deleplace (1966, 1979) where they investigated the modelling of practice in team games. From the work of Mahlo and Deleplace, a school of thought emerged that recognized cognitive processes to be necessary for the correct execution of motor skills within game situations (see Gréhaigne, Richard, and Griffin 2005 for a review).

Secondly, and linked to the first opportunity I highlighted, teaching ‘through and in the game’ (Launder, 2001, p. 55) not only enables positive transfer from practice sessions to match situations (Harvey, 2009, Harvey et al., 2010, Light, 2004) but also positive transfer from game within the same category of games (Jones & Farrow 1999, Memmert & Harvey, 2010, Mitchell & Oslin 1999).

The final opportunity of game-centered approaches are their ability for the development of independent players (Light, 2004) and player motivation (Evans & Light, 2008, Light, 2004). It has also been shown that skillful questioning can promote engagement of players (Harvey, 2009, Harvey et al., 2010).

As with the challenges, these three factors are interdependent and all influence the teacher or coaches ability to utilise game-centered approaches to teaching, coaching and learning. Nonetheless I would like to stimulate some discussion on the Practitioner Research Network by concluding with some questions:

 1.      How prevalent is the use of game-centered approaches to teaching and/or coaching?

 2.      How did you learn/not learn about game-centered approaches?

 3.      What do you feel are some of the solutions to the challenges highlighted above?

 4.      What are some of the additional benefits of game-centered approaches to teaching and/or coaching? (e.g. learning in the affective domain, ethical development, etc.)

 5.      What are some of the factors which may influence the incorporation of game-centered approaches into your teaching and/or coaching?

[From Ash: I have added these questions to a new discussion board on Game-Centered approaches to teaching, coaching and learning ]

References

Armour, K. M. (2010). Teachers, coaches and advanced pedagogies for lifelong engagement on physical education and sport. Symposium at the Congress of the International Association of Physical Education in Higher Education, La Coruna, Spain, October 26-29, 2010.

 Deleplace, R. (1969).  Le rugby [Rugby Union].  Paris: Armand Colin Bourrelier.

 Deleplace, R. (1974).  Rugby de movement – Rugby total [Rugby in movement – Total rugby].  Paris: Education Physique et Sport.

 Evans, J, R., & Light, R, L. (2008).  Coach development through Collaborative Action Research: A rugby coach’s implementation of Game Sense pedagogy.  Asian Journal of Exercise & Sport Science, 5(1), 31-37.

 Gréhaigne, J. F., Richard, J. F., & Griffin, L. L. (2005). Teaching and learning team sports and games. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

 Harrison, J. M., Blakemore, C. L., Richards, R. P., Oliver, J., Wilkinson, C., & Fellingham, G. (2004).  The effects of two instructional models – Tactical and Skill Teaching – on skill development and game play, knowledge, self-efficacy, and student perceptions in volleyball.  The Physical Educator, 61, 186-199.

 Harvey, S., Cushion, C, J., & Massa-Gonzalez, A. (2010). Learning a new method: Teaching Games for Understanding in the coaches’ eyes. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy,15(4), 361-382.

 Harvey, S. (2009). A study of interscholastic soccer players’ perceptions of learning with Game Sense. Asian Journal of Sport & Exercise Science.  6(1), 29-38.

 Harvey, S. (2006). Effects of teaching games for understanding on game performance and understanding in middle school physical education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. Retrieved May 10, 2010, from http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/dspace/handle/1957/3010.

 Howarth, K. (2005). Introducing the teaching games for understanding model in teacher education programs. In L. Griffin, L. & J. Butler, I. (Eds.), Teaching Games for Understanding.  Theory, Research and Practice. (pp. 91 - 106). Champaign.  IL: Human Kinetics.

 Jones, C., & Farrow, D. (1999). The transfer of strategic knowledge: A test of the games classification curriculum model. The Bulletin of Physical Education, 25(2), 103–124.

 Launder, A. G. (2001).  Play practice:  The games approach to teaching and coaching sports.  Champaign, IL:  Human Kinetics.

 Light, R. L. & Evans, J, R. (2010).  The impact of Game Sense on Australian rugby coaches’ practice: A question of pedagogy.  Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy. 15(2), 103-115.

 Light, R.  (2008). Complex Learning Theory - Its epistemology and its assumptions about learning:  Implications for physical education.  Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 27, 21 – 37.

 Light, R.  (2004). Coaches’ experiences of games sense: Opportunities and challenges. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 9(2), 115 - 131.

 Mahlo, F. (1974). Acte tactique en jeu [Tactical action in play].  Paris: Vigot.  (Originally published in German in 1969).

 Memmert, D., & Harvey, S. (2010).  Identification of Non-Specific Tactical Tasks in Invasion Games.  Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 15(3), 287-305.

 Mitchell, S. A., & Oslin, J. L. (1999). An investigation of tactical transfer in net games. European Journal for Cognitive Psychology, 4, 162–172.

 Rovegno, I., Nevett, M., Brock, S., & Babiarz, M.  (2001). Teaching and learning basic invasion-game tactics in 4th grade: A descriptive study from situated and constraints theoretical perspectives. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 20(4), 370-388.

 Thorpe R. & Bunker D (2008). Teaching Games for Understanding – Do current developments reflect original intentions? Presentation at the fourth Teaching Games for Understanding Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 14th – 17th May 2008.

Turner, A.P., and Martinek. T.J. (1999). An investigation into teaching games for understanding: Effects on skill, knowledge, and game play. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 70(3), 286–96.

In a recent exposition Kirk (2010) examinedthe critical, yet unrealised, importance of research in affecting practice andpolicy in physical education. Despite the warning that half all publishedresearch is only read by the author(s) Kirk argued that models-based practice(MBP) (as a derivative of Metzler’s (2005) instructional models) was astrategic approach to physical education that sought to align  curriculum knowledge, teaching strategy andlearning outcomes.

In his book InstructionalModels for Physical Education, Metzler (2005) claimed that content isusually practitioners’ first concern when thinking about teaching. Furthermore,the teaching of physical education mainstays such as games remains relativelyunchanged across the grade levels and experience of students; with the gameitself being broken down into the same components and tasks follow the same orsimilar sequences. This method of instruction matches the exasperated claim bySiedentop (2002) that physical educationalist persistently teach the sameintroductory units of work regardless of the age and past experiences of thestudents. Consequently, content is very much the organising centre for physical education teaching. As analternative Metzler urged teachers to considering instructional models as abetter organising centre. Indeed, the call “there is no one best way to teachphysical education” has been widely propounded yet nonetheless content-basedpedagogies continue to dominate in the gymnasium.

In arguing against the near-identical practices of teachersMetzler posited that physical education, with its broad-ranging and diversecontent, presents complex challenges. This complexity suggests there is a needfor multiple models of practice. He argues (2005, pp. 24-28) that by taking amodels-based approach, a number of benefits ensue. For example, programmeplanning and coherence can be improved, learning domain priorities (cognitive,physical, affective) can be more clearly identified, and an instructional themeidentified for each model. These benefits in turn assist the organization ofteacher and student outcomes from a unit of work and because outcomes areprimary considerations in planning permit the valid assessment and verificationof learning.

In defining separate instructional models  Metzler, highlighted two types 1) those whichalready exist in other fields and which have been adapted for physicaleducation (including Personalised System for Learning and CooperativeLearning), and 2) those developed specifically for physical education,(including Sport Education, Teaching Games for Understanding and Personal andSocial Responsibility). Metzler (2005) held that models such as Sport Educationand Teaching Games For Understanding had been architecturally designed toincorporate robust theory garnered through strong theoretically-informed practice(or praxis in the words of Habermas, 1973) that had been sharpened throughrigorously field-tested research in schools and other appropriateestablishments. Furthermore, he argued that this research knowledge wasaugmented by the combined craft knowledge about ‘what works’ accumulated fromthe innumerable teachers who had contributed to the field testing of thesemodels. The strong support for these models from research; there is in otherwords evidence of what works, something that is, according to Lawson (2009)desperately needed in physical education.

The apparent need for MBP originated from Metzler’s beliefthat the teaching of physical education was rooted in the past. This pastfocused on the attainment of content goals (i.e. gymnastics and sport-basedgoals) through a programmatic approach to teaching that covered a large breadthof activities in ‘pocket-sized’ experiences all delivered through a commonplacedirect and formal instructional approach. Similar arguments have been made bymany in physical education research and this paper lacks the room to adequatelysummaries the abundant research in this area (see Kirk 2010 for a up-to-dateexamination of these concerns). It is suffice to say that the“one-size-fits-all” pedagogy of physical education is based upon the use ofprescribed actions by the teacher to personally control the learningenvironment. Contrary to this subject-wide “way” of teaching (Casey, 2010)Metzler conceived that the field-tested praxis of MBP allowed teachers todevelop a flexible, multiple models approach to their teaching. His notion ofpedagogical change was founded on his belief that the unique blueprintsdeveloped by the architects of each model would allow teachers to buildapproaches to teaching that aligned subject matter and outcomes. FinallyMetzler believed that this degree of ‘preparation’ allowed teachers to safelyadopt the models in their classroom as being suitable ways of acting and thinkingabout teaching.

 References

Casey, A. (2010). Practitioner research in physicaleducation: Teacher transformation through pedagogical and curricular change.Unpublished doctoral thesis, Leeds Metropolitan University. 

Habermas, J. (1973). Theoryand Practice. Boston: Beacon Press.

Kirk, D. (2010). Current status and future trends inresearch on physical education in Europe: Some critical issues for why researchmatters. Keynote address to the 5^th International Congress andXXVI National Conference of the INEFC, University of Barcelona, 4-6 February2010.

Lawson, H.A. (2009). Paradigms, exemplars and social change.Sport, Education and Society, 14,77-100.

Metzler, M.W. (2005). Instructionalmodels for physical education. Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb Hathway.

Siedentop, D. (2002). Content knowledge for physicaleducation. Journal of Teaching inPhysical Education, 21, 368-377.

If we take the same notion of the id2 of professional development then, I believe, we can start to see to the root problem of the genre and perhaps we can start to reconstruct what professional development means and does for teachers. A quick Google search ‘define: professional development’ highlights the current idea of professional development (my parenthesis to show the id2)–

• Professional development refers to skills and knowledge attained for both personal development and career advancement. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_development
• as part of the structured training and depending on the route to membership, the candidate must do a minimum of between 48 and 96 hours of professional development, eg formal training courses, distance learning programmes, informal structured reading and secondments. www.joinricsineurope.eu/en/articles/view/apc-terminology-explained-15
• is the application of planned learning activities designed to maintain and enhance one's competence in health education following a previously attained level of professional preparation (adapted from "Report of the 2000 Joint Committee on Health Education and Promotion Terminology"). www.nchec.org/ce/definitions/
• Increase of knowledge or skill through study, travel, research, workshops or courses, sabbaticals, internships, apprenticeships, residencies or work with a mentor or master. See mentor or master. www.canadacouncil.ca/help/lj127228791697343750.hhtm
• Opportunities for professional education faculty to develop new knowledge and skills through inservice education, conference attendance, sabbatical leave, summer leave, intra- and inter-institutional visitations, fellowships, work in P-12 schools, etc. www.sfasu.edu/education/about/accreditations/ncate/about/glossary.asp
• The process of increasing the professional capabilities of staff by providing (or providing access to) training, and educational opportunities. This can include on-the-job training and educational opportunities. This can include , outside training, or observation of the work of others. ... erc.msh.org/mainpage.cfm

These statements can be viewed as the social construction of the idea of professional development. However, despite the attractiveness of some of these statements, when these ideas are explored in reality, in other words when the idea of the idea of professional development is laid bare, then the following terms emerge to define professional development: Skills, knowledge, career advancement, structure training, formal training courses, planned learning activities, maintain and enhance one’s competence, professional preparation, knowledge, skill, study, workshops or courses, new knowledge and skills, inservice education, the process of increasing professional capabilities of staff by providing (or providing access to) training, on the-the-job training, outside training.

Professional development in education could therefore be seen as training teachers with set knowledge and skill. Furthermore, I would argue that professional development has three desired outcomes and measures: the competence to teach, ensuring child safety, and defining a teacher’s suitability for promotion (in physical education you might add extra-curricular competence). Currently professional development is not perceived favourably in schools and by teachers but, as Donald Schön stated, it has become the yardstick again which competency is measured. Vicky Goodyear (a recently practicing teacher and a new PhD student) summarised:

Whilst I was a physical education teacher I felt the CPD I was offered was not relevant to me nor was it  based around my professional development needs. Compulsory INSET sessions ran on different dates throughout the year and topics (plenaries, starters, questioning, lesson planning, AFL) were repeated year after year. Certainly this structure did not ‘inspire and sustain teachers’ curiosity’, it had the opposite effect with teachers beginning to refuse to attend certain sessions. Moreover, I felt this was the only form of CPD teachers were aware of.

This summaries the id2 of professional development and sadly this manifestation of professional development is all too easily recognisable to teachers and teacher educators. The response of teachers in refusing to attend certain sessions is telling and if we don’t find a way of providing professional development that inspires and sustains teachers curiosity then how can we hope to employ teachers who do the same for children? Vicky, in her curiosity, went to look elsewhere for meaningful development:

In my second year of teaching I engaged with practitioner research and made a pedagogical change to my teaching. I reflected lesson by lesson on my practice and listened to the thoughts and opinions of my students to understand how my teaching and learning environment could be improved. This I felt was the best form of CPD I engaged with. I began to understand in more detail my learners’ needs and wants. Moreover, I learnt things about myself and how I behave as a teacher that I was not aware of. Extending on from this I agree with Kathy Armour that CPD should be a lesson-lesson process and support Ashley’s thoughts that action research is a tool for this.

Similarly curious Joey Feith (a young Canadian physical education teacher) frequently takes the opportunity to create a more engaging experience for himself:

Being such a young teacher, I often try to think of ways to help other young teachers get into the habit of attending and participating in CPD events and using CPD resources. I think the social media boom has created forums for discussion and collaboration in ways that never existed before. I watch what other Physical Educators are saying on Twitter or writing on their Blogs. I "like" the Facebook pages of professional organizations in hopes of getting updates/ideas from them or finding opportunities for sharing. I watch the YouTube videos and leave comments or questions if they inspire me to do so. The thing with social media, as opposed to traditional media, is that instead of simply broadcasting information to its audience, it allows for an open, collective discussion in which new ideas are formed by its community. I know that, from my own experience, that type of discussion has been a much more engaging experience for me and has prompted me to want to continue having that type of discussion outside of the set days that traditional CPD events offer.

Importantly, I think that Joey’s concluding statement gives us great insight into a possible future for professional development in physical education and mainstream education:

I think that once we realize that instead of just focusing on broadcasting ideas and resources to teachers ("telling" them) and move towards engaging teachers ("asking"/"inviting" them), we'll find that many new teachers might start seeing the real value of CPD and start taking their own professional development in their own hands.

If we return to the google definitions above and extract a different set of terms then we also begin to develop the idea of professional development rather than its id2: Personal development, informal structured reading and secondments, travel, research, sabbaticals, internships, apprenticeships, residences or work with a mentor or master, conference attendance, sabbatical leave, summer leave, intra- and inter-institutional visitations, fellowships, work in schools, educational opportunities, observation of the work of others. This gives a notion of professional development as social and personal where knowledge and skills are there to be discovered. It is unfortunate that professional development is currently defined by its ID2 rather than the ideas above which would make it more about learning than box ticking. John Dewey argued that "the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth and that students develop skills and habits of mind that will enhance their creativity and problem-solving abilities with respect to the issues they are likely to meet."

I certainly won’t be the first or the last person to suggest that we follow one of Dewey’s idea. However, say we did and say we stated that learning is a continued capacity for growth then we would begin to transform and rebrand continued professional development as CPG or continued professional growth. In this way I believe (and in slightly misquoting Catriona) we support meaningful CPD which has teachers' professional learning at its heart and which really can help build teacher capacity (Catriona Oates, A CPD expert from Scotland).

When professional development becomes about growth and when we help teachers to develop habits of the mind that will enhance their creativity and problem-solving abilities then we start to foreground a new idea of CPG and have the chance to make right the sins of our fathers. On a final note I would like to offer up Catriona Oates’ example from Scotland as a example of great practice in professional growth communities that others might consider following and developing:

In Scotland, the national CPD team is committed to building teacher capacity and working towards system-wide change through innovative CPD. Just to give you a taste of the work going on, which chimes with your question above on teacher ownership of CPD, here are a few links which may be of interest. Learning Rounds http://ltsblogs.org.uk/cpdteam/tag/learning-rounds/ is a very empowering form of teacher-owned , learning focussed(virtually free)CPD which can effect system -wide change within schools - keep watching the blog for more news , information and testimonies. In Scotland we are very fortunate to have a national intranet for schools, teachers, learners and parents ( and more) called Glow. As it is a closed secure system you can't get in to see without guest access. The national CPD team is making very innovative use of Glow through building on-line communities of practice, encouraging teachers to share, discuss challenge and exchange with each other in on line professional conversations. These CoPs are also supported by regular CPDmeets: video conferences which take place within Glow by practitioners , leaders , managers, guests - anyone who has something interesting or useful to share. They are recorded and made available online for folks who couldn’t attend live. All of this is free CPD which can be planned, recorded and reflected upon in the online PRD tool CPDReflect: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdreflect/ and it can hopefully provide evidence for discussion around the Professional Review and Development process. We have a national directory called CPDfind http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdfind/index.asp where all these free opportunities are listed, along with many others (including paying ones) which can be entered by approved providers.

In a couple of weeks AIESEP (Association Internationale des Ecoles Supérieures d'Education Physique - International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education) will meet in Spain for its annual conference. One of the conference sessions will explore professional development through an interactive approach (i.e. AIESEP’s website) and will be chaired by Mary O’Sullivan with the help to two panel members: Tom Templin and Ruiz Ruan. What follows is an extract from Mary’s recent email:

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“The session is an attempt to use the internet (using AIESEP Website) to stimulate discussion with folks before the conference posing questions, opinions/commentary on the topic in the next several weeks.  I with the panel should summarise these points into some coherent fashion and put it back out of the AIESEP website and invite further commentary.

Let me start by suggesting that there is a new model of professional development required.  Governments in most countries have neither the priority for nor the money to invest in CPD in ways we might wish…and thus we need to develop a more coherent and sustainable model of CPD with teachers at the centre of this enterprise….

Teachers have both a right and a responsibility to engage in professional development…..”

Mary went on to offer a brief summary of AIESEP beliefs on and around CPD:

• PE teachers have a right and responsibility to be engaged in effective CPD throughout their careers;
• A key rationale for CPD is enhancing teacher and pupil learning
• CPD is, fundamentally, about inspiring and sustaining teachers’ professional curiosity.
• Meaningful CPD relies on shared commitment and collaboration between education stakeholders
• Appropriate CPD can reduce teacher burn-out and attrition.

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The reason for this blog is to ask teachers how they feel about these beliefs about and around CPD. While I would be delighted to hear from physical education teachers I would equally wish to hear from other colleagues in primary, secondary and higher education. Any comments are welcomed and would ask you to pass the link to the blog on and encourage your colleagues and PLN to respond to the question:

How do we create a notion of professional development suited to our modern teaching profession?

Here area selection  of the comments from those involved in a recent discussion:

What forum might be most appropriate for engaging teachers in shared conversations about policy and practices of CPD? – Connie Collier

 What are the repercussions/consequences to physical education and ultimately children if this does not happen? - Melissa Parker

Who facilitates or who gets to facilitate CPD?  Is it solely a position (professor, government hired person) or a disposition (do these people have certain dispositions/beliefs about CPD and if so what are they)? - Melissa Parker

What professional development practices are powerful and sustainable enough to address the issues the confronted by teachers and also impact student learning? – Phillip Ward

Are teachers who engage in meaningful CPD in the minority? – Phillip Ward

Professional learning is no longer centrally about attending courses occasionally throughout a career - although traditional courses can, of course, be useful. Instead, professional learning starts with the day-to-day and continuous diagnosis of children's learning needs, and the professional learning required to meet those needs. In other words, CPD becomes driven from the pedagogical encounter at the centre of teaching/coaching; a day-by-day, lesson-by-lesson process. – Kathy Armour

I think it is crucial  that we recognise the varied school contexts in which physical education is taught. As part of our considerations we need to ensure that those classroom teachers responsible for teaching PE are provided with professional learning opportunities. I feel this is a complex issue to deal with as the learning needs of this group a unique given they are likely to have experienced less PE curriculum/pedagogy learning in their ITE programme, and once they are in schools they are responsible for remaining current across multiple curriculum areas, and also broader PD initiatives. - Kirsten Petrie 

When Ashley presented his work at BERA this autumn I found his notion of action research as a form of professional development both challenging and worth investigating. If we accept Ashley’s premise that action research might be a viable alternative for the more traditional CPD, then I believe we need to determine how to assist pre-service and practicing teachers to experience and value action research in ways that will encourage and assist them in becoming lifelong learners of their own professional development To achieve this we need to develop pedagogy of teacher education that is inclusive of this pursuit and systematically addresses it. – Deborah Tannehill

There likely is a need to place greater emphasis on educating prospective teachers what CPD is, why it is important, what forms it might take. If they don't know what it really is they won't know what to look for. I know that attending one's annual state conference is but a small example, but how important it is to get future teachers going on that front to the point that it becomes habit to take time to attend, participate, and present at that level. - Hans van der Mars

Advocacy: What do we really know about how we might get school administrators to pay more/better attention to what's going on on gym? Yes, in the US they are pressured to direct all resources to Reading and Math because of federal legislation. But there is a substantial body of evidence now on the link between PA/PE and academic achievement that should help us in the fight for weekly curricular time. But how do we get that message out? Someone has to go and connect with these folks.  . - Hans van der Mars

Policy: Perhaps in European countries more headway has been made in terms of influencing policy at the government levels, because of the greater involvement/influence that national governments have in those countries). In the US, PE as a field, is only now slowly recognizing the importance of the role of policy development/change. Slowly there are now mandates being passed for recess, number of minutes of PA and number of minutes of PE in various states. It likely is no different for bringing about increased opportunities for subject matter-specific CPD. . - Hans van der Mars

Teaching has suffered from similar ‘quackery’ and yet these innovations have never, it seems, been more than flashes in the pan. At least that is how you might be led to believe it.  In physical education some innovative approaches have been consider ‘new’ for twenty or thirty years and yet the chatter about them doesn’t die down and those who have seen them work sing loudly (well at least as loud as academic paper, presentations and books allow) about their abilities to finally develop students’ and their learning rather than replicate the ‘cures’ of our forefathers. In this series of blogs I will explore a number of innovative practices in turn: Sport Education; Cooperative Learning; and Teaching Games for Understanding (as a starting point). But before I do that I would direct you to one book that might help you understand a little more about these pedagogies.

In 2000 and 2005 Michael Metzler published the first two editions of his book “Instructional Models for Physical Education” published by Holcomb Hathaway. In these books Mike brings seven pedagogical models to our attention and devotes a chapter to explaining and exampling each of these approaches. This book has become a bit of a seminal text for academic writers referring to instructional models in physical education.

Some debate has also occurred around Mike’s choice of title with some leading academics suggesting that the term ‘instruction’ maintains the status quo by putting the emphasis on the teacher to teach rather than seeing the teacher as a facilitator of learning (which is the objective of a number of these approaches). They offer models-based practice (MBP) and pedagogical models as alternatives. With this in mind, and in the firm personally belief that MBP is a more student-centred term, I will from now on (i.e. in my future blogs) refer to these innovations as MBP’s.

In the next Blog I will write about Sport Education and the most prolific of the MBP’s in physical education. 

The second study explored why Swedish children continue to be involved in sports clubs as they enter and progress through their teenage years. The author felt that by exploring the reasons for involvement, rather than the reasons for non-involvement allowed her to understand three facets of involvement. In drawing on the work of Antonovsky the author felt that this suggested that children need to find the activity: Comprehensible i.e. they understand the benefits of participation, Manageable i.e. they could fit it into their daily lives and Meaningful i.e. it had a degree of importance/motivating in their daily or weekly lives. In comprehending and managing these facets the student needed to maintain a balance in terms of regular involvement, travel, family support, friendship and relationship with clubs and coaches. Meaningful was uncovered in terms of lifestyle. Life without sport was not desirable and they identify with sport and exercise and enjoy the mutual experiences and mutual goals shared with friends, family and coaches.

The third group explored Swiss youth, migration and the myth of integrative sports. In exploring immigration and the diverse opinions held about immigrants the presentation explored the use of sport as an integrative medium. However, the social sciences suggest that sport is not effective (or at least as effect) as society believes it is. The interviewees (52 children and adolescence) felt that sport isn't a means of integration because people play their traditional sports, or use it "let off steam" rather than integrating as a member of society (eg speaking the language).

The fourth paper, in which I was cajoled into playing a cameo role, explored physical educations future; most specifically a future that saw the extinction of Phys Ed. This paper built upon the book and was written in response to a review of the same book. The paper presented an idea of life in 20 years where physical education was extinct and children learnt about healthy lifestyles from a ten-minute ‘pocket’ work out with their computer/game station. This is just one of the futures envisioned in the future but it was a telling reminder of the fragility of physical education as it now stands.

The next SIG session explored the role that school plays as a key setting for promoting health among children and adolescents. The first paper explored the role of playtime (or break/recess) in enhancing children’s physical activity. Using objective measures (such as motion sensors and heart rate monitors), self-reported measures, qualitative measures and biological outcomes the paper examined the ways in which children were involved in physical activity when using a Nike play zone playground.  The first finding was that boys were more active than girls but included in this was the perception by pupils that the boys desire to play football (soccer) dominated the playground and marginalised the play of the girls and other pupils. However, it also showed that the children who benefitted from a new playground increase their activity levels but those who didn't (i.e. in a comparison group) levelled out or declined in their activity levels. The conclusion was that playtime is a valuable place/location to raise the PA levels if students and should be protected for the benefit of children.

The second paper investigated the role that Phys Ed and Phys Ed teachers can be sensibly involved in addressing childhood obesity. The implications for health are well reported (and as the presenter suggested may be over reported and over emphasised) and I won't report those here. However, it is important that we don't concentrate on overweight and obese children by adopting an uncritical attitude towards those children. Measuring the obvious and wasting resources, examining lunch boxes, fat clubs etc. rather than helping the child. Instead, the presenter offered the following guidance: School priorities, staff training, interventions, engagement with parents/carers to help a child and their family as an individual unit to value healthy living. Further practical recommendations included a critical approach to diet, weight, Physical Activity, kit/clothing, groupings, tasks, etc. By taking the focus away from obesity and promoting inclusive, physical activity promoting, activities there is more of a chance of successful intervention.

The final paper explored the development of a pedagogical model for health-based physical activity. Examining previous research the presenters argued that mixed health goals of sport-based, multiple activity Phys Ed programmes are not successful in developing health. Furthermore, MVPA is not an effective focus for health development as this is based on current lifestyle choices. The conclusion was that a pedagogical model should be developed to align teaching, learning and content. The major theme of the model will be valuing a physically active life with students as independent learners. Such a model would occur with new measures of successful Phys Ed programmes, the types of curriculums planned and changes in spaces and equipment used in Phys Ed.

There was a discussion around these three papers which I will deposit in the resources section. If you have read this far then thank you for taking the time to read. I am happy to try and answer any questions  you might have and welcome your responses.

As I was presenting today on aspects of my professional development through practitioner research I thought I would take the chance to listen to the practitioner research special interest group. I have spoken to practitioners on Twitter about professional development and the need (or demand) for teachers to 'do' PD. I am an advocate of practitioner research (as you will see from my presentation later) and hoped that this strand of the conference might appeal to teachers and not just my Phys Ed colleagues.

The first paper asked whether teacher education placements should be about creating managerial or pedagogical partnerships between schools and universities. Consideration was given the one-way relationship between universities and schools (i.e. universities need schools for qualified teaching status (QTS) students but school don't need universities) and how this relationship of need created by the requirements of the QTS process for student teachers to gain experience at the point of implementation i.e. classrooms. The study explored the developing relationships, from the perspective of the school teachers, as they worked with students at beginning their profession. The assumptions that these experienced teachers made about their teaching were 'challenged' and they felt that they began to rethink their own pedagogies as they tried to help the student teachers under their care. The teachers began to consider themselves as "sharers" in a process of engagement in pedagogy - both as a student teacher mentor and an experienced teacher - and saw the university-based tutor become a colleague and a critical friend rather than being seen as a dislocated expert. This relationship helped university 'ivory tower' occupants to be seen not as modelers of practice but as exponents of pedagogy who come to be seen as peers were a shared object - teacher knowledge - as a mutual language.

The second paper explored the medium term impact of action research on teachers adoption of an action research methodology. Exploring the new action researchers engagement with action research - all of these individuals were experienced teachers - the investigator felt that his relationship with these teachers played a strong role in their use of action research yet the teachers were more interested in their hobbies rather than their action research roles. Unfortunately it was not a great presentation and I found it difficult to identify my own learning as a result. What I learnt as ideas were not enough and the quality of the presentation and the pedagogical aspirations of the researcher  need to coincide. [It is important to position ourselves as learner so that we can understand the frailty of the learning process and what we need to do to make it better.]

The third paper took the audiences thoughts towards the 'values' teachers hold as people and when they are involved in action research rather than just the epistemological and pedagogical development of teachers. The enthusiasm was evident and they freely used terms like impact of empathetic residence and empathetic validity. They suggested that as teachers we develop creative compliance in schools and institutions where we find our own ways of dealing with personal needs and values which balancing the need to comply with the demands of the workplace. However, while referring to their paper this ‘object’ never became apparent as a body of knowledge and fixed ideas were never used. I left feeling that the substance was lacking and it became a celebration of the presenters’ ideologies rather than a sharing of ideas. It was almost, albeit soft and sympathetic, a hard sell of their ideas and a marketing opportunity for their online action research network. I felt that I gained little from their talk and while the hint of learning was there it was never, even, remotely a chance to share experiences and develop as a teacher. Again, there was a clear gulf between the aspirations around learning by me, as a learner, and the desire by the presenters to work in their own sphere of expertise and in their own style. As educators we need to consider the learner more than we consider our desire to teach.

The final paper was presented by a senior leadership team from a secondary school (a head teacher and his deputies). This was fantastic to see and, as a teacher, it invigorated me after the previous two papers. This was a longitudinal study exploring the second year of a learning revolution (my words). A whole school approach to change their emphasis on teaching and learning that, unfortunately, had lost its momentum from the honeymoon period in year 1 and become quagmired in a technical use of prescribed lesson plans in year 2, rather than developing reflective practitioners. Alas research suggest that innovation in teaching means work-plus-work and teachers in this study, when faced with increased work load, adopted a ‘safe mode’ rather than really pushing the boundaries forwards. Furthermore, teachers became protective of their subject areas and queried the benefit of these learning tools in the delivery of their unique bodies of knowledge.  However, this was a brave and difficult undertaking and tells us more about such top-down approaches and the need to develop sustained and sustainable pedagogical and curricular change.

I will now move on to the afternoon session which I chaired. However, I have posted my presentation online in slideshare and will instead explore my colleagues' presentations. Lori explored the old department for children, schools and families (DCSF) gender agenda and how she approached the underachievement of boys and girls in participation and achievement  (P&A) in Phys Ed. She acknowledged that in this agenda practitioners and practitioner involvement were critical to improvement in P&A and could help with gender reform through the examples that these individuals could provide for students. By creating mock dialogues between academics and practitioners Lori tried to help teachers to explore a 3rd space between the theory found in universities and the practice found in schools. Lori found through these conversations that older secondary schoo, students 'threw away' the subject because of gender differences and the ways in which physical education was packaged. Furthermore, she felt that practitioner research allowed dialogue in this 3rd space but ponder the importance that teachers placed on gender agenda. Practitioner research allowed teachers and academic partners to problematise the gender agenda but without questioning the academic's voice as being authoritative. This positioned academics as knowers and the teachers as receivers of bodies of knowledge. Lori acknowledged this as a mistake and proposed both parties as knowers and learners rather than givers and receivers of knowledge in this 3rd space.

Saul explored his reflections on becoming a dancer in a male dominated 'jock' culture. As footballer at the start of his Phys Ed student teacher in the early 1990s he explored his discovery of dance and the enjoyment he gained from dancing and then the gender/sexuality (heterosexism/homophobia) stigmas  that became attached to being and becoming a dance educator. He questioned the persistent rhetoric which now need to change so that Phys Ed is appropriate for the 21st century. Using video (which I can't show here) Saul interpreted the dance as stories that highlighted the reinforcement of dance as something that 'other men' do. I cannot do justice to this presentation and will ask Saul to write a blog himself on this enlightening ideas - indeed it is easy to get lost in the power of gendered dance story that I see in Saul's work and hope that he can go some way of explaining his ideas and thoughts.

Bringing the three papers together Deborah spoke to each if the authors in turn. I have spoken to her and over the next few days I will place her paper (in full) on the PEPRN website.

The first day of the conference is always a little slow as people arrive from around the country and across the world. The lull before the storm allowed me to engage in some planning of my own (which I won't bore you with) and to engage in some pedagogical discussions of my own with colleagues from other institutions. This type of professional development (PD) - autonomous in nature and determined by common interests and a desire to further my own knowledge and understanding of my field – seems to be what is lacking from systemic PD. If all (or at least more) PD worked like this then teachers might actually have time to investigate and challenge their pre-conceptions and ideas about and around Phys Ed rather than merely accepting things are as they are.

The first of the parallel sessions started 4.30 and the Phys Ed special interest group (SIG) explored the theme of researching Phys Ed and self-determination theory. As the latter seems to be a buzz word in the research in our subject I was interested to see what it was all about. After listening to three fascinating papers (although I have to admit that the statistical analysis was beyond me) I will now try and summaries the findings.

[However if you go into the resources section on the website you will find David Kirk’s discussion paper on the symposium which is much more extensive than my summary]

The first of the three papers suggested that autonomous motivation is important in predicting habitual physical activity. The second paper found that ‘in-class’ variances between the ways in which individual pupils are treated by their teachers also had an influence on autonomous motivation. The pupils’ perception of their teacher’s perception of individual student need seems to be important in the development of increased student motivation. Some of the students in these studies felt that year-on-year consistency (in terms of the teacher who is responsible for their learning over time) was important. Other students, unsurprisingly, found that being taught by the same teacher year-on-year was de-motivating. I concluded from this that some students develop positive relationships with their teachers (even if that is shown through respect for the teacher and an understanding of their 'ways' rather than just liking them and the way they interacted with these students) while others don’t.

The third paper explored predictors of these teacher behaviours. Age, floor space, numbers of pupils, level of academic qualification, environment (warm or cold)  and perceived pressure (felt by the teacher) all had an impact on teacher behaviour. Older teachers and more qualified teachers were more controlling in their pedagogy. Increases in the number pupils and degrees in the floor space both had an impact on type of pedagogy used and tended to be an indicator of controlling rather than autonomous behaviours. The presenter concluded that older teachers and more academically-minded teachers were more likely to exercise controlling pedagogies with less open questions than those who had chosen teaching over qualifications. Furthermore she suggested that those who had engaged in recent teacher education courses had greater experience of autonomy as opposed to controlling teacher behaviours.

The discussant concluded that self-determination is a teaching revolution but there is currently more questions than there are answers and no proof that autonomy leads to greater physical activity. Yet importantly there is some evidence to suggest that student motivation is not related necessarily to Phys Ed at a class level but at an individual level between student and teacher (in the singular). This suggests that teachers have the potential to have a lifelong impact on individual pupil’s lifelong physical activity. Yet are we teaching to increase student motivation or motor learning or perceptions of confidence...or improve school team performance?

I thought that it might be useful to write a daily blog from the British Educational Research Association national conference and thought I would start with the physical education special interest groups "invisible college." The invisible college is a pre-conference gathering where the phys ed research community meet to listen to a scholarly lecture before engaging in a discussion around the lecture in the morning and then participate in relevant discussions in the afternoon. The afternoon session was around grant writing and, while being interest to me, I will make the executive decision that it may not be of interest to you.

However, the morning session (which I tweeted about at the time) was by Professor Peter Hastie and explored the need to put pedagogy back into physical education research. Peter's argument was that research has been focused on measureable health outcomes (often measured by student activity through movement) which have excluded the teacher, the student, the teaching, the learning, the context - in fact everything that relates to what is happening in schools. Outcomes are not the only thing that is important in physical education and we must be concerned with the explicit pedagogical inputs that are occurring in our classrooms. We, as Phys Ed teachers, need to acknowledge that physical education facilitates the activity outcomes that occur in lessons and therefore we need to be concerned with how we present learning in our work - which means we need to care about our teaching and what the students learn. The outcome of increased participation in Phys Ed is not enough and could be considered meaningless if we don't understand what happened in the classroom.

Peter went on to suggest that lifelong physical activity is a poor yardstick against which to measure physical activity. Instead he suggested that a personal belief in the child that they were a mover was more important. If children, or specifically a child, believe(s) that they are a mover and that they stand a greater chance of experiencing enjoyment in their phys Ed experiences. Furthermore he believed that students needed to feel competence in their area of activity and finally he advocated that students would benefit from autonomy and opportunities to really engage in areas of interest. Such opportunity places the emphasis on meaningful, sustained and sustainable physical engagement rather than an experience curriculum that has been described as a mile wide and an inch deep.

While Peter's lecture was aimed at encouraging researchers to put the pedagogy back into research I felt that it supported the arguments and discussions that were occurring in the blogsphere and on Twitter. There is an argument that outcome can be considered coincidental if we have less or little regard for the inputs. As teachers we cannot assume that a constant methodology (or pedagogy) will lead to new outcomes. Einstein, I think, said that madness was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes. We need to consider our inputs so that we can improve the outcomes that our students’ enjoys.