In a study by Pill (2007) that investigated game sense approaches, researchers found that in order to

become an effective decision maker, the learner needs to develop a cognitive awareness, which
includes more than developing the motor skills that physical education requires.

Use the following questions as a guide to construct this discussion (do not simply answer the
questions sequentially).
What is Physical Education?
We can attempt to describe PE by referring to:
 Its content
o Activities
o Knowledges
 Its purpose
 An end point
 What a student should learn, understand or be able to do

5) Reid (1977) suggests that the primary criterion of value for physical education is the be found in
the pleasure it provides to those that participate in it.

MacAllister (2013), physical education should be defined in such a way that it depends not so much
on teacher action for pupil pleasure, but rather more on pupil activity for the sake of valuable
learning and development.

Physical education is about more than what physical educators do.

Students can be engaged in educational physical activity without being in school and without the
need for the involvement of a physical education teacher.

McNamee (1998), says that having a healthy and active lifestyle might well capture the idea of a
person considered physically education; one whose knowledge was tied to an action in important
respects’.

7) Addressing movement and participation, it was stated that students develop skills in fundamental
movement patterns and coordinate actions of the body through play, games, sports, gymnastics,
dance, swimming and outdoor activities. Sport was thus distinguished from other activities, including
games, rather than these activities being presented as different aspects of sport.

For student achievement: human development, human movement, physical activity and the
community, people and food, health of individuals and populations, safety, human relations.

In sport education the design and delivery of physical education centres on students’ participation in
range of sporting roles in addition to that of a player. Students vigorously act as the coach, manager,
umpire or journalist for teams participating in seasons of competition rather than units of activity.

There is a critical distinction between physical education and sport.

9) "the great thought of physical education is not education of the physical nature, but the relations
of physical training to complete education, and then the effort to make the physical contribute is full
share to the life of the individual, in environment, training and culture". 
The four objectives of fitness (organic), skill (psychomotor), social development (character), and
mental development (intellectual) that still today dominate the rhetoric of physical education”
(1990, p.41).

Physical education programs can be judged on whether students “get and stay fit”, learn new skills
and strategies of sports, enjoy playing those sports, and develop increasingly strong and
independent leisure interests.

14) Education of human motion to be as wide a range of forms of movement as possible at all
intensities appropriate to the developmental stage of the individual. The purpose is to joyfully
increase the movement vocabulary in individuals and build physical literacy for motivation to move
as much as possible across the lifespan.

Education about human motion and its influences on the body systems needed for optimal
development and functioning at each stage across the lifespan. Included is gaining an understanding
of the nutrients required to better nourish development and health as well as those to be avoided
because of their harmful assaults on well-being. In addition, learning about unsafe practices and
physical behaviours to better manage health and well-being to contribute to lifespan health literacy.

Education through human motion to advance the biological, cognitive and socioemotional processes
that are inextricably intertwined and produce changes for healthy human development at each stage
of the lifespan to grow human capital.

15) PE should be about getting children involved in physical activity and teaching them about
different physical activities ... (because) that’s what sport’s all about isn’t it? (emphasis added)

Yet, at no time did a teacher intimate the contrasting view that might be summarized as ‘putting the
education back into physical education’. The clear impression one formed was that for many PE
teachers (and, again, particularly the male teachers) the emphasis in PE is and should remain on the
physical rather than the educational.

What has influenced what Physical Education is?

3) chapter 2- Team games were indeed traditional to physical education, but up until the end of the
second world war only in the male and to a lesser extent female private schools of the upper classes
of the British population.

The physical education programmes in place in the school curriculum today are the outcome of
contestation and struggle between a range of competing groups’ attempts to define the subject. In
the process, the activities that make up programmes, the way in which they are taught, and the
reasons that they are proffered for teaching them all contain the residue of these struggles, and
reflect the interests of the contesting parties. These interests are not reflect in an equitable manner,
however, since some parties, as we will see, have been able to mobilise resources which have not
been available to others. Since physical education programmes in school advantage some parties
more than others, some children that experience these programmes in school are, often unjustly
disadvantaged. Indeed, it is this problem that has concerned some sociologists of school knowledge
since the publication of knowledge and control, and has been at the root of the more recent debate
over physical education, since some physical educators have begun to recognise that their
programmes may have been relevant to only a small proportion of their pupils.
The debate over gymnastics reveals a fundamental rift within the physical education profession
between female and male physical educators, a rift which has had lasting influence, and competing
definitions of physical education associated with each party. The females championed educational
gymnastics, which embodied a form of child-centred progressivism, while the males supported
competitive gymnastics, which was embedded in the logic of scientific functionalism and drew on
the new knowledge of skill development, biomechanics and exercise physiology.

5) MacAllister (2013), lifelong appreciation of any given sport, game or physical activity becomes
possible for pupils later precisely because of their physical education teacher has over time been
able to pass on a passion for their subject discipline.

17) practice how you want to play it: that is, for there to be an effective transfer from practice to the
play on game day, practice needs to represent the game

What is the role of a Physical Education teacher?

Elements for the teacher:
 Plan
 Preparation of learner, learning and the environment
 Pre-testing
 Provide opportunity for practice
 Provision of feedback and praise
 Presence

2) The teacher helps the child to achieve a new level of skillful performance. While absolute levels of
performance will vary, each and every child is able to participate in decision making based upon
tactical awareness thereby retaining an interest and involvement in the game.
Learner learns a game – learner begins to appreciate the game as they begin to see the relevance of
particular technique (tactical awareness) – understanding when to make appropriate decisions (what
to do, how to do) – the actual production of the required movement (skill execution) – the observed
outcome of the previous processes measured against the criteria that are independent of the learner
(performance). The sequential aspects of the model are critical. Unlike traditional teaching methods
this approach starts with a game and its rules which set the scene for the development of tactical
awareness and decision making, which, in turn always precede the response factors of skill execution
and performance.
When teachers assess the performance of a learner they measure the appropriateness of the
response as well as efficiency of technique. When teachers assess skill execution they look at the
mechanical efficiency of the movement and its relevance to the particular game situation.

5) MacAllister (2013), Physical education teachers should, I think, rather concentrate on ensuring
their pupils are routinely and systematically engaged in physical activities likely to promote long-
term well-being and flourishing. One would hope that pupils would derive pleasure during school-
based physical education activities but such immediate pleasure is not, it seems to me, a
prerequisite for one becoming physically educated in the long term.
7) With any approach and any lesson, the teacher is critical in facilitating greater equity in relation to
students’ participation and development.

8) Kirk (2005), summarised traditional physical education pedagogy as “characterized by relatively

short units of activity... an overwhelming focus on technique development; a lack of accountability
for learning and little progression of learning; and the almost exclusive use of a directive teaching
style” (p.246).

The Productive Pedagogies framework for the design and enactment of quality teaching makes
explicit that student engagement in work of intellectual quality is necessary for all students to have a
chance to ‘do well’(Queensland Department of Education, n.d.). This does not discount the need for
directive teaching to produce specific movement task objectives, rather, it foregrounds the need for
a ‘tool kit’ of instructional strategies to meet specific task outcomes and in order to create a menu of
learning experiences that meet the needs and learning styles of a group of students.

It is also detrimental to the alignment of sport teaching in physical education with contemporary
sport skill learning theory such as environmental design and dynamic systems theory (Chow, Davids,
Button, Shuttleworth, Renshaw, Araujo, 2007) for skill learning.

Teaching sport and sport related games from a Game Sense perspective requires awareness that
sport skill learning extends beyond the physical, or motor, movement aspects of physical education
to include cognitive conceptual awareness so that players develop as effective decision makers
(Griffin & Sheehy, 2004).

15) For many teachers in the study, enjoyment was also seen as a vehicle for the development of the
kind of active lifestyles that would promote health by developing adherence to activity in a manner
that would be likely to persist beyond school and into later life.

It is the duty of a physical education teacher to allow children to be as physical as possible.

For many PE teachers who subscribed, more or less, to a health ideology, sport was still seen as the
main vehicle for health promotion: ... my fundamental job is to raise levels of tness and skill
expertise in whatever area I’m working in ... we’re talking about why we need sport. (emphasis
added)

Many ‘philosophies’ incorporated sport, health and education for leisure (with sport implicitly taken
to be intimately associated with the promotion of health):

... providing children with positive habits throughout their life, positive sport- ing habits ... (The)
number one aim as a teacher is to teach pupils various sporting skills and then ... to enjoy it more,
enjoy coming to the lessons ... then probably the third would be to motivate them to do things.

16) PE teachers and sport coaches are in the broadest sense, influencers, in the business to persuade
people to play and be physically active.
What activities and content are taught in Physical Education?
2) traditional methods of physical education have tended to concentrate on specific motor
responses (techniques) and have failed to take account of the contextual nature of games. For
example, it is usual to teach a very prescribed response, say, the overhead clear in badminton,
before the children have grasped the significance of the shot within the game, which in this case is to
drive the opponent to the back of the court. The tendency for teachers is to teach “how?’, before
they teach “why?”. Bunker and Thorpe believe that if the emphasis is shifted to tactical
considerations in a game children will recognise that games can be interesting and enjoyable as they
are helped and encouraged to make correct decisions based upon tactical awareness.

15) Various PE teachers (especially male) appeared to assume that competition was an important, if
not the essential, element of sport and, thus, PE. The importance of achieving competitive sporting
success frequently appeared to dominate these teachers’ ‘philosophies’

In this manner many teachers in the study perceived the acquisition of sporting skills as a central
function of PE; particularly in the initial stage of secondary education (at Key Stage 3) (‘from Year 7
to Years 8 and 9 ... they are increasing their repertoire of skills’). Indeed, for some teachers, skill-
acquisition remained the role of PE throughout the secondary school life of pupils. Some made no
attempt to hide their unequivocal commitment to the acquisition of sports skills in the face of recent
developments

15) Sport, and especially team-games, continue to be the most prominent activity area in the vast
majority of curricula for boys and girls in secondary schools and lie at the heart of many teachers’
‘philosophies’ of PE.

19) aspects of learning: physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, social. Spectrum of knowledge:
wellbeing, health, behaviour, skills, depositions

What is the aim or purpose of Physical Education?

5) Reid (1977) believes that, an account of human well-being as the ultimate aim of education will
require, in turn, some specification of the ways in which its plural component values are reflected
in particular aspects of the school curriculum. He speculates that the physical education
curriculum can contribute to the promotion of such human well-being and value in a plurality of
ways: the intellectual, the ethical, the aesthetic, the economic, the hedonic (Hedonism is a school
of thought that argues seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering are the only components of well-
being.), and in terms of health and welfare.

Reid (1977), there is no honest alternative to a frank acknowledgement of the essentially hedonic
character of the games and sports which play a fundamental part in the school physical education
program.

Parry (1998), concludes that Reid is a victim of the hedonic fallacy maintaining that education has to
do not only with the pursuit of pleasure, or the pursuit of knowledge (of a certain valued kind) but
also with the development of human excellences (of a certain valued kind).

Peters (1970) declares, that education must involve knowledge and understanding and some kind of
cognitive perspective.
Peters (1972) suggests that practical activities can satisfy the knowledge and value conditions of
education when they are transformed by theoretical understanding and/or when the person
pursues the activity in a skilled way according to the standards which are consecutive of
excellence in his art.

Physical training should not interfere with growth

Physical education should specifically provide pupils with a platform for participation in lifelong
physical activity (Physical Activity Task Force, 2003)

7) Physical activity now has the opportunity to realise its potential for a major tool of health
promotion for people of all ages and play a unique part in meeting the health related needs for all
young people.

15) by a teacher who described personal development and health education as her two main aims,
but who laid particular stress on PSE: I think it’s an extremely good way for pupils to develop self-
confidence in physical ability, in terms of relationship building, in terms of learning to co-operate
with others ... In terms of keeping themselves healthy for the future, I think it is extremely
important.

16) Fun integration theory suggests fun as the centre piece for changing the high attrition (reducing
strength/effectiveness) rate from sport during adolescence. Fun is an essential component of the
motivation to be physically active for children, youth and adults.

An example of cognitive distortion in PE is the common perception that providing children and youth
with lots of different activities in PE will expose them to something they like that they will choose to
pursue beyond the classroom and into their later life – which leads to what has been called multi-
activity curriculum model for PE.

17) play with purpose- manipulate something to change the shape of the games conditions to play.

In presenting this discussion you may wish to consider

Influences and experiences that may have shaped your initial ideas.
 Personal experiences
 Societal needs and norms
 Research
 Political influence
 Social platforms
 Media
 Sport
As these needs or factors change, our beliefs regarding PE evolves or alters

1) Beni, S., Fletcher, T. & Ni Chronin, D identified five themes, social interaction, fun, challenge,
motor competence and personally relevant learning as the main influences of meaningful
experiences in physical education and youth sport.
7) The Australian minister for sport, territories and local government has acknowledged that is
people enjoy their sporting experience, they are more likely to continue to be involved. Those
whose experience is not so good can be turned off for life.

16) Daniel Kahneman’s research suggests we choose to do things based on memory of the
experience and the anticipation of the new memory that will be created. In other words, what is
important in directing behavioural choices is the story that is created from the memory of the
experience.

Any questions or possible misunderstandings that you may have had relating to specific themes of
lectures.
What the justification for the changes in your thinking is.
Specific impacts on your future professional practice resulting from lectures.