Physical Education in Schools

Len Almond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317856337
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

At a time when PE has become a compulsory part of the National Curriculum, this book focuses on the role of PE and sport in schools. This edition includes sections on the National Curriculum, vocational education, GNVQ and GCSE.

Chapter One
Generating a new vision for physical education

Len Almond

Introduction

The changing status and position of school sport, dance and adventure-based learning and the subsequent questioning of their roles in the school curriculum, the association with extra-curricular provision and the requirement of heads of physical education departments to engage in school policy-making have contributed to the feeling that there is a lack of a clear direction for physical education. Teachers have been conscious also of the absence of a support structure to enable them to adequately justify physical education and produce a coherent rationale that would stand up to the vigorous questioning of teachers in other departments. The skills of defending one's arguments, writing policy statements and matching aspirations with day-to-day practices go far beyond the traditional strengths of physical education teachers who are used to the practical world of sport and dance.

I shall attempt to sketch out such a direction - a vision of physical education - which will attempt to represent a coherent set of ideals and aspirations that can inform this vision and that I believe the profession could pursue. This vision needs to be translated into a set of strategies that illustrate a process of delivery on how to achieve these aspirations. However, such a strategy must be able to generate a set of practices that never lose sight of the long-term aspirations enshrined in the vision and that exemplify real guides to action and practice. This is a very tall order, so my sketch represents a framework for discussion to enable us to clarify the variety of interpretations that I hope this chapter can generate and that will lead to real guides to practice.

A New Perspective for Physical Education

McNamee (1992) and Meakin (1990) clearly located the development of personhood as a principal strand for the aspirations of physical education. In other words physical education in schools in their view should be centrally concerned with the development of personhood and teachers need to reflect critically on how their teaching and learning strategies can contribute towards its promotion. Arnold (1979) McNamee (1995) also argue cogently that the practices of physical education represent cultural practices of significance and they present a clearly articulated case for the role of sport in cultural development.

It is these publications that have influenced me considerably in my own deliberations about the values of physical education in our society. They have informed my own articulation of what directions the physical education programme should be aimed at and what focus should be the central stimulus for planning and action. From this perspective I am proposing a framework to guide practice.

First of all my framework for a vision of physical education consists of three central ideas that represent a useful heuristic to focus our attention on the kinds of ideas and aspirations that can guide our actions. The three elements of the framework are:

• Active living.
• Cultural wealth.
• Physicality.

They represent three central aspects of physical education that are interrelated and symbiotic, as well as representing a synergy. What do they involve?

Active Living

'Active living' is a term much used in health promotion but for me it represents an idea that is important to physical education.

Our physical education programmes in schools should be concerned with promoting physical activities because they represent purposeful pursuits that can enrich lives and improve the quality of living. The teacher's task therefore is to help young people acquire a commitment to being active informed by the satisfactions aroused in the pursuit of purposeful physical activity of the kind provided by schools. As a result of finding satisfaction, success and enjoyment in being active within the physical education programme, further participation outside school is stimulated and consequently young people begin to take the first steps in acquiring a commitment to being active. But what are the key components of such a commitment?

Stimulating active living involves:

1. finding joy in being active
2. learning to love being active
3. seeking out active opportunities to enhance one's quality of life
4. reinforcing one's commitment to being active.

The purposeful activities of physical education provide the means by which we can initiate young people into the richness and potential of active living, which can transform lives and enable them to flourish as persons.

Finally, purposeful physical activity can promote the corporate life of a school by stimulating morale and providing opportunities for teachers, pupils and ancillary staff to find mutual satisfaction in individual and team successes. When schools place a high value on purposeful physical activity it can promote further participation beyond the school.

I would suggest that a central tenet of physical education is that we are striving to encourage young people to see that a commitment to active living is a 'good buy¹.

Cultural Wealth

My second element, 'cultural wealth' is directly linked to the first. Sport, dance and adventure pursuits are human practices of great significance and value that affect people in a very pervasive manner and have become a fundamental and important part of human heritage and cultural life. Such activities take up a great deal of media coverage and at certain times international festivals of sporting excellence arouse a great deal of interest generating also considerable political and social debate. In the same way sport, dance and adventure-based activities have inspired the art world to create works that have contributed to a deeper understanding of these cultural forms. These activities have the power to enrich and transform lives, become an absorbing interest that rewards and fulfils, and also provide avenues for the enhancement of human capacities and qualities and the pursuit of excellence.

It has been argued most convincingly by Lawton (1975) and Skilbeck (1984) that one of the tasks of schools is to provide access to, and engagement in, cultural forms and practices so that young people can become acquainted with important and significant features of cultural life. Schools provide the means by which young people can become initiated into sport, dance and adventure activities, which contain rich traditions and exemplify the very best of human endeavour. Coming to understand this scope and recognizing their significance within our culture and tradition is an important aspect of school life. Hence it is important to acknowledge their significance because any form of educational enterprise concerned with such traditions would be incomplete without their inclusion.

There is a certain risk in describing the curriculum in terms of an initiation into a cultural tradition because there is a tendency to represent tradition as something fixed and unchallengeable. Thus, cultural initiation becomes the transmission of the status quo, a commodity handed down from generation to generation. This is far from satisfactory because it is likely that only cultural forms and practices of dominant interests and groups may be promoted and defined exclusively in narrow terms. There is a need to go beyond the simple transmission of cultural forms and examine their transformative power of understanding derived from studying and engaging in such activities as sport, dance or outdoor and adventurous activities. It is important to recognize that over time some traditional activities lose their appeal as interests change, and technological developments occur, which provide the means for new purposeful physical activities to arise. Within society distinctive changes occur and generate new perspectives, which add new dimensions to traditional pursuits.

Schools need to recognize their role in stimulating new interest and widening perspectives on the richness and potential of the vast range of pursuits possible. They need to recognize also that the contribution of purposeful physical activities to the enhancement of an individual's quality of life is important because they have the power for enriching life.

Physical education in schools provides the means by which young people can learn how to participate and become involved in purposeful physical activities; they are able to make choices and select activities that can contribute to the enrichment of their lives and add immensely to the quality of living.

At this point it is necessary to acknowledge that purposeful physical activities represent only one curriculum source for enriching, transforming and enhancing the quality of lives. Pupils need to go beyond engagement in a variety of activities, they need also to learn to appreciate and learn from their engagement in school activities. Engagement, appreciation and reflection are important processes which enable them to consider in an informed and intelligent way what they can do with their lives and to make decisions about how they choose to spend their time.

Physicality

The third element in my framework - 'physicality' - is not an easy term because our language does not allow me to express it more clearly. Physicality does not mean 'taming the body' or 'schooling the body' in the sense that physical activity for some people means conditioning the body, submitting it to a form of regimentation or attempting to perfect the body; nor is it a form of curbing the body. It is more an attitude of mind than any kind of activity area, yet it represents a new range of possibilities.

Sport provides opportunities for competitive experiences against others and there is a richness of possibilities within this discipline. Dance also has a wealth of experiences that are distinctly different from competitive sport. However, these disciplines do not adequately cover a range of experiences which are different from competitive sport or expressive (artistic and aesthetic qualities) movement forms. In essence physicality represents a kind of a challenge curriculum and for many people this may well be a better and more appropriate term. Thus, for the purpose of this book I will use the term 'challenge curriculum'. However, the full articulation of physicality needs to be explored in a different context, because I believe it represents an important feature of physical education which has yet to be articulated clearly.

What is a 'challenge curriculum'? It covers all activity areas together with variety of purposeful physical activities not covered by the existing National Curriculum, eg judo and other combat sports, tai chi, rowing, skipping and conditioning activities. It represents also personal striving educational opportunities as opposed to competition against others. Both are a valuable entitlement for all young people; however, in this context only a challenge curriculum is proposed because the competitive curriculum is already clearly understood.

Many people appear to have a need to seek out and face personal challenges in which they can extend themselves, push back personal limits and overcome odds, barriers or fears. It represents an adventure in exploring personal boundaries and potential, and illustrates how people want to demonstrate their competence, explore physical qualities such as endurance or strength, or engage in complex tests that challenge both their physical and mental powers. Yet it can be much more than simply a personal challenge: it can be about extending one's physical capacities and powers into new dimensions. On the other hand, for some people it is not so much a challenge as a need to do something physical and to enjoy being active.

At one extreme it represents a desire to sail single-handed round the world or walk to the centre of Antarctica. At another level some people feel a need to run, swim or cycle a certain distance, perhaps in a particular time - can I do it? Or perhaps it represents the need to be active in the form of a run, a walk or cycle with others or on one's own - even to be solitary - and simply enjoy the satisfaction of being physically active. In the same way, mastering particular movements and practising them for the sheer experience of the movement represents a further dimension of a challenge curriculum.

The framework below attempts to sketch out three main features of a challenge curriculum for physical education.

1. Seeking out challenge and/or risk in terms of:
   • mastery (of techniques; complex movement forms and skills; getting something right; accomplishing a difficult task);
   • pushing back boundaries (extending personal or externally imposed limits);
   • overcoming odds or barriers;
   • exploring physical qualities;
2. Seeking out opportunities to do something physical:
   • being active in some way alone or with others;
   • being active and feeling at one with environment or surroundings.
3. Coming to terms with unfolding emotions in the face of challenge and risk:
   • overcoming, conquering or suppressing emotions and learning behaviours for coping with, cooling out or reducing emotional reactions that interfere with one's capacity to do something, eg fear in gymnastics.
   • picking oneself up after adversity (failure, difficulties).

This brief sketch does not do justice to this idea but I hope to persuade the reader that this element deserves our critical appraisal and exploration of its possibilities. I am simply identifying an aspect of physical education that can easily be overlooked yet it represents an important dimension - it is this aspect of physical education that excites: it creates a personal challenge to be faced and the thrill and satisfaction of trying to master it. There are a number of possibilities which could enlarge our understanding of this dimension of physical education.

We could unite some features of gymnastics, athletics, adventure-based learning, dance and swimming (and others) into a challenge curriculum, though there is no reason why individual activity areas could not retain their own specific challenges. A challenge curriculum represents an organizing idea (or a focus) to build a new vibrant and exciting aspect of the physical education curriculum around it. The challenge curriculum can operate at a personal level and represent an individual form of curricula; it is also possible for group challenges to be devised which provide different forms of learning. Teachers could design a whole range of physical or skill ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on the contributors
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Generating a new vision for physical education
• 2 The context of physical education
• 3 Sport education in schools
• 4 A changing focus in games teaching
• 5 Reconstructing a new perspective for athletics
• 6 Gymnastics in the physical education curriculum
• 7 A health focus in physical education
• 8 The Active School
• 9 Revisiting the Key Stage 4 curriculum