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- Title
How to win the battle for survival as a school subject? Reflections on justification, objectives, methods and organization of PE in schools of the 21<sup>st</sup> century.
- Authors
Crum, Bart
- Abstract
This paper starts with the observation that in many countries around the world school PE is sailing in rough waters and in real danger of losing its position in the curriculum. A second observation is that this situation is due to confusion in and failure of the PE profession itself. Too many physical educators speak about ‘teaching PE’ without any evidence of an intention to produce learning. Consequently, PE in the reality of our public schools does not achieve the profile of a relevant teaching-learning activity and therefore is losing political and public support. Next, it is argued that the precarious position of the PE profession can, at least partly, be explained by the ideological legacy of the profession. Two longstanding PE ideologies – namely «the training-of-the physical» concept and «the education-through-the-physical» concept – which were constructed in order to gain respect and recognition, continue to negatively influence the perspectives of physical educators and their practices in schools. Both concepts induce non-teaching PE practices. The first ideology leads to PE as fitness training, the latter to PE as supervised recess or entertainment. In conclusion: in order to save PE as part of the curriculum, the profession needs a new paradigm, a new way of theoretical thinking and a new way of acting in practice. The paper goes on to outline the main characteristics of a new paradigm and the following issues are discussed: (a) justification as a school subject, (b) objectives of ‘teaching movement and sport’, (c) view of human movement, (d) didactical principles and (e) an ‘ecological’ curriculum and institutional openness. For the justification of ‘teaching movement and sport’ (a better label than PE), the following starting assumptions are applied: the school should concentrate on subjects that (1) are emancipating because they prepare youngsters for a relevant, humane and independent participation in social-cultural life; (2) can be arranged according to the typical institutional status of the school; and (3) cannot be fulfilled better by other socialization agencies. The justification can be summarized in three propositions: - In modern societies participation in movement culture contributes to the quality of life of many of its members. - A lasting and satisfying participation in movement culture demands a repertoire of competencies that does not come automatically to people and thus requires organized teaching-learning processes. - Since every youngster goes to school for at least 12 years and since schools are provided with professional teachers, the responsibility for the introduction into movement culture should be in the hands of the school. ‘Planned introduction into movement culture’ is seen as an appropriate label for the teaching-learning process in schools and ‘competencies for lasting participation in movement culture’ as a general label for the desired outcomes. Objectives of ‘teaching movement and sport’ are then specified and formulated in terms of affective learning (learning to like to be active, to play, to participate in sport), technomotor learning, sociomotor learning and cognitive / reflective learning. Next the view of human movement is discussed. Because of its educational productivity a ‘relational’ view of the body and a ‘relational’ view of human movement are recommended instead of the traditional substantial view of the body and the Newtonian view of movement. Teaching movement and sport is not about the physical, the body machine, but about children moving and teaching them how to move, teaching how to solve movement problems. In line with this view two didactical principles are elaborated on namely (1) problem orientation, and (2) student orientation. The final paragraph contains a plea in favor of ‘ecological’ curricula and institutional openness.
- Subjects
PHYSICAL education; CURRICULUM; TEACHING; LEARNING; PHYSICAL education teacher attitudes
- Publication
Retos: Nuevas Perspectivas de Educación Física, Deporte y Recreación, 2017, Vol 31, p238
- ISSN
1579-1726
- Publication type
Article