Physical Education is…?

I saw this argument discussed (or mentioned) on twitter and thought I would try and answer it. I am not sure that there is a simple response but it tests my understanding and my ability to articulate a balanced argument. It is worth noting that (if you have even read this far) that I am not going to go back and edit this so you are getting my thoughts as 'shot from the hip.' I guess that that is my idea of what a blog should be. Not something rehearsed but something that comes from the heart and mind in one iteration. So…physical education is…?

This house believes that physical education is…

About doing …

• Physical education is a practical activity that serves as a break from the rigours of life (whether these are the stresses of work or the confusion and melee of school). It is a vehicle for healthy living and while it has long been associated with traditional team sports (like football, Hockey, basketball, rugby, cricket etc) and leisure activities (like running, cycling, aerobics etc) anything that improves our general well-being should be enough to satisfy the population.
  
• Sport is the essence of physical education. It is the doing or watching that is important and besides sport allows us to develop leadership skills, work cooperatively and prepares us for the cutthroat world outside the comfort of our own homes (or for some within their homes and neighbourhoods).
  
• Physical education is about national sporting success. If kids don't like competition or elite sports then they have to acknowledge that fact and find something else to do. As long as the country does well on the world stage then the forms of physical education as sports participation is a worth incarnation of sport in schools.
  
• No pain, no gain. If something is easily obtained then it is not as worthwhile. The struggles inherent in working hard (and beyond your comfort and ability range) are good for you and certainly builds character. Adversity will end your childhood and make an adult of you.
  

About informed participation …

• It is not enough to do. Those who engage in physical activity need to be, in the words of Daryl Siedentop, 'competent', 'literate' and 'enthusiastic' participants. They need to be able to improve their personal ability so that they can succeed to their best. They need to understand physical activity so that they can be critical consumers i.e. they can watch or play and understand the rules and the nuances of the activity. Finally they need to take part for taking parts sake not because someone tells them to. Coercion is not a pathway to lifelong physical activity but is a repeatedly reissued invitation for physical education to be mocked in the media and across social networking sites.
  

  
   

  From twitter over the last 24 hours
  

  • Physical
    education! Ugh
    
  • A very bad time at physical
    education class
    
  • physical
    education works sucks.
    

    
     

• A survey undertaken in the UK http://www.realbuzz.com/articles/top-10-most-popular-sports/ suggests that of the top ten most popular participation sports for men and women on one was a team game. Yet our schools teach team games ahead of anything else. Furthermore when we try something else we get lambasted by the press http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/6338489/Yoga-and-circus-skills-replace-school-rugby.html .
  
• Does this mean that physical education is about sport and elite participation or does this mean that the way physical education is viewed is wrong? Take the example of exercise makes you thin and thin is healthy. How much of that statement is true? Looked at like that… then not much… but that is the crux of the argument that we put across on a daily basis. We have made associations so broad that anything seems to be possible and which leads people to extreme behaviours rather than healthy lives.
  
• We need to inform our children, parents and adults about what good and safe living is and surely that should start in physical education.
  

Is academic…

• Physical education and sport lends, borrows, gives, and shows (among other things) examples of the workings of the human body to the world. http://sportsmedicine.about.com/ Many of our passions about sport come through our heroes and role-models and a plethora of sports jobs have grown up around the field http://www.uksport.gov.uk/jobs/ . Indeed how many people went to the Beijing Olympics and how many were actual competitors? This is a huge employer and people should know the options.
  
• However, some don't think that physical education equates to being academic (Twitter: Joke for tomorrow: I'll be sitting for a PE theory test! Yes, physical
  education. HAHAHA!) yet with kinesiology departments and sport science departments and physical education and sports studies departments http://www.beds.ac.uk/departments/physical have we overlooked an important part of a children education?
  
• Some don't even know that PE means physical education – what went wrong (Twitter: pe?? as in physical education? Or oh PE is Physical Education xD like gym lol). It seems that gym has replaced lifelong physical activity or learning about how the physical occurs. There is an association with physical education as doing i.e. Correct me if I'm wrong but PE stands for PHYSICAL Education! (thanks to twitter for some life conversations) rather than understanding. Have we turned our subject into a 'doing' only subject?
  

  
   

  
   

  If you have got this far then thanks for sticking with me.
  

  
   

  Education has some issues to address and physical education has some decisions to make…i.e. what are we and what do we do?
  

  
   

  
   

Cooperation rather than just collaboration

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. Albert Einstein

I would have argued that there are many occasions within a single school day when students are asked to work together. Indeed there are numerous examples of students forming their own collaborative groups to complete tasks, ask each other questions, and solve mutual dilemmas (although not always in ways that their teachers, or their parents, would approve of). Furthermore, teachers generally - and physical education teacher specifically - often selected groupings on the spur of the moment to facilitate collaborative learning. The teams inherent in many of the activities in physical education have long been reported as encouraging team work, collective responsibility and leadership but these are not explicit outcomes of team games.

Let me put it another way. If my car breaks down in the middle of the road then I would expect a number of people to help me move it out of the way. Why? Because it is mutually beneficial to all of us and because some people are genuinely nice people. However, this is not sustainable. We don't go around and push lots of other cars out of the way or generally do good things. No. Once the car is moved and I am waiting for the recovery truck then I am on my way and this is the way randomly select teams work in school. They are fit for purpose but unless they are encouraged to stick together and the individuals involved develop (and are encouraged to develop) a sense of belonging to a team then they quickly dissipate and vanish. In fact many children won't recall the teams they were in for the previous lesson because it simply isn't important.

However, what happens if we make the teams important and instead of them lasting for ten minutes in a lesson they last for a whole lesson or four, or even for a full term or semester. Furthermore, what if the teams had names and identities, and the students within them had roles and the teams were heterogeneous with existing friendship groups and rivalries split up . Finally, what if every student was accountable for their contribution to the lesson and/or unit of work, what if they had to depend on one another to succeed, shared a goal and had time to interact with each other and reflect upon what they were doing well and what need improving? Well in that case the students would be working cooperatively. This cooperation lends them purpose and as President Eisenhower said "only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg."

That said, don't just take my work on it; this is what a few of my pupils thought about it:

• We worked together and measured how far we were getting on different things or how long it took us and we were able to help each other by checking techniques to see if they were good or bad and saying what they should do to improve it, and stuff like that
  
• Yes, there's a certain element of knowing that you've worked together and you've learned to trust them and what they say is usually right.
  
• I think it was to see how we sort of work together, and taught each other and like we might not be able to teach but we could teach each other because we like know each other better and things like that.
  

 

So they were cooperative rather than collaborative but why was that important? I will let Anne-Marie, a dear friend (and former colleague) of mine, answer that question:

• The group you worked with was a group of boys who I had experience of working with during library lessons. In those lessons they had great difficulties working with one another. They were a very immature form, especially the boys, and their form tutor recommended that [some were] not be seated or asked to work together.
  
• Several of the boys tend in lessons to avoid participating yet in your lessons when their peers needed them to be involved, they were more attentive and participatory.
  
• The importance of the lesson was the development of the boys' ability to work together as a team, supporting and encouraging one another. This, in my opinion, is far more important for their overall development than individual proficiency in an athletic technique. The way you designed the lesson there were important roles for each individual, each contribution of each mattered. Every child felt valued and I suspect that that was the reason for the lesson's success.
  

By encouraging individual accountability, positive interdependence, group processing, Promotive face-to-face interaction, and by having a group goal the kids worked together and this "Union gives strength" (Aesop).

Action Research for the Reflective Teacher

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Action Research for the Reflective Teacher

View more presentations from Ashley Casey.

Making Cooperation part of your teaching

I have been interested in the use of cooperative learning in my teaching for a number of years. My interest grew out of my realisation that it wasn't enough to believe that cooperation was an automatic and assumed part of my teaching and instead I decided that I had to make it a key component. My initial use of cooperative learning came in gymnastics where I created a jigsaw classroom in which my students could learn about gymnastics, and themselves and each other. A jigsaw classroom is a simple way of encouraging cooperation. Firstly I picked fair teams or 'home groups' that were split by gender, ability and race and which kept existing rivalries and friendships separate.

Once the home groups for the unit had been picked and team mates identified then, just like with a jigsaw puzzle, these groups are split into their individual parts (called experts). These individual experts then form new groups or expertises.

Each expert group now has responsible for developing one part of a routine (for example a floor routine, a vaulting box routine, a routine using a bench and a routine using ropes). In this way one person from each home group now has a unique understanding of one aspect of gymnastics. Once the allocated time has passed and the expertises have been mastered then experts returned to their groups.

They were now the teachers in their home groups and as they were the only people who understood their section of the routine then they had an important role to play in the learning of the home group. In turn these experts then teach each other their segment of the routine. Once all four elements are united each home group should be able to perform an identical routine. In my teaching the experts acted as judges for their section of the routine and an overall mark was awarded based upon the routine with bonus marks given for the teaching done by each expert.

There are over a hundred recognised approaches to using cooperative learning in the classroom, although only a few have been successfully used in physical education. The five main components of cooperative learning are:

If students have the time and opportunity to achieve each of these then they can be said to be cooperative rather than simply collaborative.

The action research cycle

I thought it might be useful to look at the action research cycle itself and use a technological example, which seems to be on the agenda of many physical education teachers, from my own teaching. However, firstly I will attempt to clarify the action research process. In his seminal paper Action Research and Minority Problems Kurt Lewin (1946, pp. 37-38) carefully laid out his vision for the cyclical process of action research:

Planning starts usually with something like a general idea...If this first period of planning is successful, two items emerge: namely, an “overall plan” of how to reach the objective and secondly, a decision in regard to the first step of action. Usually this planning has also somewhat modified the original idea.
The next period is devoted to executing the first step of the overall plan.
In highly developed fields of social management, such as modern factory management or the execution of a war, this second step is followed by certain fact-findings. For example, in the bombing of Germany a certain factory may have been chosen as the first target after careful consideration of various priorities and of the best means and ways of dealing with this target. The attack is pressed home and immediately a reconnaissance plane follows with the one objective of determining as accurately and objectively as possible the new situation.
This reconnaissance or fact-finding has four functions. First it should evaluate the action. It shows whether what has been achieved is above or below expectation. Secondly, it gives the planners a chance to learn, that is, to gather new general insight, for instance, regarding the strength and weakness of certain weapons or techniques of action. Thirdly, this fact-finding should serve as the basis for correctly planning the next step. Finally, it serves as a basis for modifying the “overall plan.”
The next step again is composed of a circle of planning, executing, and reconnaissance or fact-finding for the purpose of evaluating the results of the second step, for preparing the rational basis for planning the third step, and for perhaps modifying again the overall plan.

In this article Lewin (1946) envisioned action research as being effective in a very specific context in which he was involved with representatives from the local communities, school systems, single schools, minority organizations of a variety of backgrounds and objectives. The specifics of the approach are what make it applicable in educational settings, as it allows for the documenting of everyday lives and practices. Every school, while sharing some common features, is different and the diversity of their populations (and the traditions maintained within) are such that specific approaches are needed for specific institutions. The ability to identify effective case-by-case strategies that when employed in a unique situation had the greatest positive impact, rather than randomly deciding upon a course of action is what makes action research an effective agent of change.
The cycle can be imagined as:

Overall plan --> First step --> Evaluate the action --> Gather new general insights --> Planning the next step --> Modifying the overall plan

Case Study

I was privileged to work with an outstanding librarian in my last school. In her work as an educator she purchased and developed a wiki for the school to use with its students. When I first saw the potential of this system I was determined to use it in physical education but I wanted its use to be meaningful and effective so I set myself the task of devising such an intervention. So my overall plan was to use a wiki in my physical education lessons. However, this was an objective and it took me eight months to instigate the first step. This first step was to use the wiki as a platform for a process of student-designed games making in which my students would create an invasion game from scratch. The wiki would serve as a permanent location for the game which could be accessed 24/7 by the participants (myself, my students and the librarian) and by Professor Peter Hastie (in the role of an advisor) and his students (both in school and university) who would play and evaluate on the games. A huge amount of work went into this first step and yet it was with some trepidation that I taught the first lesson of eight first lessons. Each encounter with the students lead me to evaluate the action I was taking, gather new general insights on the lessons before planning the next steps.

For example: The students found that the differences between imagining a game on the wiki and playing it on the school’s courts difficult. This meant that the advisor and I had to help them with our expertise in games. However, we had to be careful not to tell the students what to do and we found ways of questioning their ideas and offering a range of solutions to difficult problems.

Throughout this process I was modifying the overall plan and trying to find better ways of using the wiki. We initially used student email addresses but designed that log-ins should be made-up names not real names. In the original project I had imagined that all the students would access and edit the wikis but the students wanted to have one ‘wiki manager’ so that they could control the design process. Two of the better games are explained below (which shows the imagination and skill of the students as game designers):

Piko Piko. This was a five-a-side invasion game played across three netball courts. There were two rectangular goals (one at each end of the court) in which players could score one point and which a goalkeeper could defend. The goalkeeper’s area was out-of-bounds to all outfield players and therefore shots were taken from a distance. Two additional goals (hula-hoops on poles) were positioned either side of the half way line and were worth two points. These were undefendable and were positioned within an out-of-bounds area. Players carried two pieces of equipment: A “basher” (a foam swimming pool noodle) which was used for controlling the ball when it was on the ground also and for tagging the ball-carrier thus forcing him to pass; and a “jug” (literally a plastic milk jug with the end cut off to make a scoop) which was used to carry the tennis ball, to pass, parry and shoot. The objective of the game was to outscore your opponents by throwing the ball through any of the three available goals. Players were allowed to run with the ball in the scoop, dribble the ball on the floor with the basher, and hit the ball with either piece of equipment. When tackled (or bashed) the player with the ball was required to pass and therefore only an untackled player could score. Each half started with a bounce ball in the centre (similar to a face-off in ice hockey). Play was restarted (either from a goal, the ball leaving the pitch or an infringement) with a free pass to the opposition.

Run the Gauntlet. This game was played on a single netball court. Two 5-metre end zones were marked out with cones and a 60 cm wooden pole (the flag) was positioned on the middle of the dead ball line within the end zone. The first objective of the game was to pass a foam American football into your opponents’ end zone before being touch-tackled four times. The second objective was to place the ball on the floor of the end zone, pick up the flag and run it back into your own end zone before the opposition hit the flag-runner with the football. Each half started with a jump ball in the centre (similar to basketball). Play was restarted (either from a successful flag run, the ball leaving the pitch or an infringement) with a free pass to the opposition.

Finding a starting point for teachers-as-researchers

This first post is dedicated to a number of people:

Kurt Lewin who first coined the phrase “action research” and who envisioned social change as a collaboration with all those involved rather than as a systemic ‘top-down’ hotchpotch solution.

John Collier who tried to find a solution to the ‘relocation’ of the native American Indians that was co-constructed by all rather than simply enacted by Government officials.

Lawrence Stenhouse who first considered that educational concerns were best considered and affected by those in the classrooms. It was Stenhouse who first advocated the role of ‘teacher-as-researcher’ in the UK and who set out to show the sceptics that it was laudable and valuable position for teachers to take.

The pupils who have I taught over a career spanning fifteen years. They helped me to become a practitioner-researcher and challenge the way in which I taught physical education and eventually how I teacher teachers to teach physical education.

I have been toying with the idea of a blog for a number of months now and having dipped a toe in twitter I have decided to give this a go. The purpose of the blog is to act a guide to classroom-based research – especially but not exclusively - in physical education.

So what is the first step: Find a problem. I would suggest that researching what you are good at becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in which you prove that you were good at it from the start. Indeed evaluate your teaching and find something you are struggling with or which isn’t as good as you want it to be. Personally I decided that I was the very centre of my classrooms and all direction came from me and the only voice that was valid was my own. This led me to find new ways of teaching (i.e. Sport Education, Cooperative Learning and Teaching Games for Understanding) and then to examine my use of them. Before I could do this however I had to learn about them and try to conceptualise how they worked and how they might work in my classrooms. This took time reading books (both academic and practitioner texts) and articles (both academic and practitioner) and a period of trial and error. Indeed my first unit of Sport Education lasted just 5 weeks before I had the plug pulled by a colleague while my last unit (in the academic year 2008/2009) spanned the whole year. So give it a go...can you think of something you do in your teaching that isn’t as good as you want it to be? Maybe you teach a fantastic swimming unit but your gymnastics is a little in the last half of the last century. Personally, I am now considering the way that I teach at University and trying to take my school practices in the gym into the lecture theatre...not a simple process.