Transcript Sample Presentation

School of Sport and Exercise Sciences
Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Group
How well does PE
promote active lifestyles?
Recommendations for
physical educators and PETEs
November 2012
Dr Jo Harris
Loughborough University
Loughborough
London
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Health warning!
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Physical education is
the foundation for, and
cornerstone of,
physical activity
promotion
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PE’s key contribution to
public health is effective
promotion of active lifestyles
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PE pays a lot of lip service
to this area…we talk
a good story but we don’t
always ‘walk the talk’
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Some activities (e.g. games)
are not more important
than others (e.g. dance,
gymnastics)
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What is this obsession
we have with
competitive team games?
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Physical education is
different from, but
connected to, physical
activity and sport
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Key features of curriculum PE are
‘learning’ and ‘inclusion’
LEARNING
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INCLUSION
As a consequence, school PE
needs to be taught by
well qualified professionals
who regularly access
professional development
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The identified learning in PE
lessons is as, if not more,
important, than the selected
context (i.e. activities)
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To promote physical activity,
it is not essential to exercise
children to exhaustion
or make everything fast
and furious
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You don’t need to fitness test
a child to help
them be more active
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You don’t need to weigh
a child to help
them be more active
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Fitness testing could be
part of the solution
but, unfortunately,
is more often than not
part of the problem
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Monitoring activity levels is
more important than
fitness testing
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PE teachers should know more about
‘physical activity’ recommendations
than ‘fruit & veg’
5 a day
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One hour a day
I am not anti-competition,
anti-games, anti-performance,
or anti-fitness testing
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PE teachers should
measure what’s important
(e.g. physical activity levels,
attitudes), not what is
easiest to measure
(e.g. fitness, fatness)
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Assessment policies should give
credit where it is due…
PE teachers should stop
rewarding skills only
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Teaching physical
competence
is key to developing
children’s confidence and
desire to be active
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Schools don’t necessarily
need more funds, time or
equipment to promote
physical activity well
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Me then
• PE teacher: concerns
about non-participants
and low ability and/or
disengaged pupils
• Hope: pupils active
out of/when leave
school, didn’t care at
what level
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Me now
• Influences: Len
Almond, Chuck
Corbin, Ken Fox,
Stuart Biddle…
• 30 years of HRF…
• Pragmatist
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Focus
The role of schools and
PE, in particular, in
promoting active
lifestyles and the extent
to which this contributes
to public health
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Limited, to date
• To date, the
effectiveness of
school PE in this area
has been somewhat
limited.
• Says who?
• Why?
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Says who? ‘PE has not delivered the
goods’ (Trost, 2006)
• Enduring emphasis on competitive team sports
rather than true lifetime activities.
• Failure to meet public health objectives.
• Experiences not consistent with the goal of
promoting lifelong PA.
• Served the needs of athletically gifted children at
expense of less athletic children whose need for
regular PA and positive movement experiences
is greater.
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‘It’s boring until Year 10, you have to learn all
the skills and do the same stuff over and
over again’ (Smith & Parr, 2007)
• 11-14 year olds:
dissatisfaction with
repetitive, skills-based
lessons.
• 14-16 year olds: more
+ve, lessons more
sociable, recreational,
game-oriented, more
choice.
• But mismatch between
PE and leisure activities.
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‘If you’re not good at a certain sport
then you don’t like it’ (Lake, 2001)
• PE: dislike of - sport, teams, competition; feelings of:
incompetence, frustration, forced participation.
• Competitive team sport - privileged position in
discourse - polarised orientations towards sport, PE
and exercise.
• Need to challenge the privilege afforded to particular
modes of participation and to make efforts both to
recognise and value alternative activities and
meanings.
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Resistant to change and
requires radical change
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• Resistant to change; dominated
by multi-activity, sport-based
forms since mid-C20th.
• Transmission of
decontextualised sporttechniques to large classes.
‘When are going to play a game
Sir/Miss’?
• Learning rarely moves beyond
introductory levels.
• A conservative force in a largely
conservative educational
establishment.
But, there are good reasons for PE’s
limited effectiveness in this area
• Reduced physical
activity in life
generally
• Competing, sedentary
leisure-time activities
• Limited (and/or
reducing) PE
time/resources
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Plus, it’s complicated & difficult!
• Behaviour change
and social reform is
highly complex.
• There are no quick or
easy fixes to
activating a nation.
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Are we serious?
• If PE is serious about
its contribution to
public health, and is
to be taken seriously,
it needs to consider
doing more than it
currently does to
promote active
lifestyles.
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PE, the chameleon of all curricula
• ‘Muddled mission’.
• Educating in and
through the use and
knowledge of the
body and its
movement.
• ‘Learning to move’
and ‘moving to learn’.
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PE involves promotion
of active lifestyles √√√
BUT there is less clarity
about:
• What it is called
• How this is achieved
• How much it should be
prioritised.
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A rose by any other name?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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HRF?
HRE?
HRPE?
HEPE?
Health and Fitness?
Fitness?
Active Lifestyles?
Summary from Research on HRPE
What do we know?
What do we NOT know?
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How healthy is PE?
• Expression of health in
PE is neither universally
accepted nor
understood.
• HRE = different things
to different people.
• Superficial
understandings.
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Confusion, narrow interpretations
& unfounded assumptions
• HRPE = dreary drill,
running laps, FT
• HRPE = MVPA
• PA = Fitness
• HRPE = daily PE
• HRPE = lifetime
activities only
• Health =
shape/size/weight or a
fitness/bleep test score
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Testing, training and tinkering
• Teaching of activity
areas untouched
• ‘Fitness for life’
discourses commonly
expressed through
‘fitness for
performance’
practices e.g. testing,
training activities.
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Mind the Gap!
Rhetoric/Policy
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Reality/Practice
National Curriculum for PE
in England
• Key Concepts: healthy, active lifestyle.
• Key Processes: making informed choices about
healthy, active lifestyles.
• Range and Content: exercising safely and
effectively to improve health and well-being.
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Physical Education and Health,
Quebec Education Program
Competency:
• Adopts a healthy, active lifestyle
– Commit to a process of changing lifestyle habits
– Demonstrated by developing/implementing a plan that
must include regular PA and by showing the ability to
critically reflect on their own process and lifestyle
habits and to analyse impact on health and well-being.
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‘Thrash Yourself Thursday (TYT)’
Lisa McDermott,
University of Alberta, Canada
• Canadian elementary school fitness-based
initiative to produce ‘healthy’ students
• Participant observation; conversations with
teacher and semi-structured interviews with 20
pupils (6-8 years)
• Discursive onslaught intent on reconceiving PE
as a site for intervening in the ‘pathologies’ of
‘inactivity’ and ‘obesity’.
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PETE Problems
• PETE is not adequately preparing future PE
teachers to promote healthy, active lifestyles.
• Changes need to be made to health-related
interactions and experiences within PETE.
• PE is unlikely to effectively promote healthy,
active lifestyles without the health-related aspect
of PETE being radically changed, especially and
crucially the school-based provision.
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Health-related models
and approaches
• Physical Activity, Fitness
and Wellness Education
(Siedentop & Tannehill,
2000)
• The Stairway to Lifetime
Fitness (Corbin & Lindsey,
1997)
• Pedagogical Model for
Health-Based PE
(Haarens et al., 2011)
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Physical Activity, Fitness
and Wellness Education
• To provide
children/youth with
the skills/knowledge
that will prepare
them to develop and
maintain physical
activity
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• Stairway to lifetime
fitness: doing activity and
exercise; getting fit; selfassessment of fitness and
activity; self-planning;
lifetime physical activity;
lifetime fitness
• Level of dependence – level
of decision-making; level of
independence
Stairway to Health
The Fun Theory
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Pedagogical Model for HBPE
Draws on Jewett, Bain
& Ellis’ (1995) and
Metzler’s (2005) work
on models-based
practice in PE.
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Central theme: pupils
valuing a physically
active life, so that they
learn to value and
practice appropriate
physical activities that
enhance health and
well-being for the rest
of their lives.
How?
• Requires that teachers’
beliefs are oriented
towards self actualisation
and social reconstruction.
• The affective domain
(valuing physical activity)
needs to be prominent in
planning for learning.
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Case for Developing new
‘PE for Health’ Pedagogies
• Surprising silence
around the
pedagogies to be
used in the health
dimension of PE
practices.
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• Development of
new, complex,
evidence-based,
personalised ‘PEfor-health’
pedagogies is next
major step in PE
research.
Personal thoughts/views
• PE develops competent
and confident movers who
regularly participate in and
benefit from PA...leading
to a lifetime of activity and
enhanced quality of life.
• Enormous potential to
contribute to public health
but significant
challenges/constraints,
and unreasonable
expectations.
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But we need to...
• Distinguish PE from PA
and sport.
• Clarify the learning
beyond improving
performance.
• Meet the needs of ALL,
especially ‘hard to
reach’/vulnerable
children.
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Polarised views
• HRPE = anticompetition, games,
performance, fitness
testing.
• The teaching of skills
and fitness need to be
separated.
• There is a hierarchy
of activities.
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Non-evidence-based practice
• Fitness tests do not
provide an accurate
measure of activity
levels.
• Dominant gamesbased curriculum fails
to acknowledge
participatory trends of
young people.
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Recommendations for
physical educators
• Student-centred:
responsibility/decisionmaking; empowering; acting
on dislikes, issues
• Benefits of being active
(social, psychological)
• Develop competence and
confidence of ALL pupils (fat,
inactive, clumsy)
• Reward/praise effort,
progress, personal
improvement (not just
attainment)
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PA promotion mind-set
• Routinely inform of activity
opportunities in EVERY unit
of work
• Educate about how active
should be and assist in
setting/achieving activity
goals over time
• Regularly monitor activity
levels (including participation
in PE, inclusive XC) & help
to self-monitor/regulate
• Identify/counsel ‘low active’
pupils
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Reach out and move beyond PE
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• Engage in academic
discourse across the
curriculum
• Play a central role in a
whole school approach
to health/PA
• PA is not solely
individually determined,
it is dependent on social
and physical support
mechanisms
• Communicate with
families/community
members
Recommendations for PETEs
• Knowledge of: PA & health; determinants of PA;
behaviour-change theories.
• Understanding of HR outcomes and how they
might be achieved; skilling/re-skilling; creatively
connecting concepts with activities.
• Becoming critical consumers of knowledge.
• PA advocacy (parents; policy-makers).
• Working with professionals, diverse learners,
families in school & non-school settings.
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Disparate agendas for PE
and public health
• PE tends to reflect and reinforce concepts
relating to fitness, sport and performance
• While health education is more closely
associated with health, activity and participation.
• Consequently, PE teachers tend to be viewed
outside the PE profession as sports teachers or
coaches, more interested in performance and
excellence, than participation and health.
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And finally!
• Activating a nation is
complex. PE has a key
part to play but can do
better.
• PE per se does not
promote activity; pupils’
experiences and learning
do this, determined by
teachers’ philosophies,
actions, interactions.
• PE cannot be taken
seriously in this area if it
continues to pay lip
service to it.
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Thank you for your attention!
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