Teaching Physical Education Creatively

Angela Pickard, Patricia Maude

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415656078, 9780415656078
• eBook ISBN: 9781317702245
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teaching Physical Education Creatively provides knowledge and understanding in order to engage creatively with the primary Physical Education curriculum for both trainee teachers and qualified teachers. It is full of ideas for developing the teaching of dance, games, gymnastics and outdoor and adventurous activities in an innovative and engaging manner.

With an emphasis on developing creative teaching processes by building from children's curiosity, imagination and need to explore and move, it forges clear links between research and practice, and offers suggestions for developing exciting, engaging new approaches to teaching physical education.

Key topics explored include:

Physical Competence and Physical Literacy

Creative ways to develop the teaching of dance, games, gymnastics and outdoor and adventurous activities

Developing understanding of space, speed and dynamics

Creative lesson planning

Inclusive approaches and aspects of differentiation

Teaching Physical Education Creatively presents the theory and background necessary to develop a comprehensive understanding of creative teaching and children's learning. Packed with practical guidance and inspiration for lively, enjoyable physical education, it is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in initial teacher training, practicing teachers, and undergraduate students of physical education.

CHAPTER 1	TEACHING PHYSICAL EDUCATION CREATIVELY

INTRODUCTION

In this book, we argue that teaching is itself a creative act and that learning is a creative activity; a process of exploration, discovery, problem-solving, ways of representing knowledge, experience and thinking in a variety of ways. We are concerned with how creative processes can be harnessed by every teacher and every learner within Physical Education. It is an aim of this book to encourage and enable teachers to fully engage with a creative approach to the teaching of Physical Education in the primary phase. In order to support teaching for creativity, we draw on five key principles that underpin teaching Physical Education creatively, which are outlined and discussed later in this chapter. These core features are at the heart of our thinking as we explore and share examples of creative learning and teaching approaches in this book within specific areas of the Physical Education curriculum. It is hoped that this book will also demonstrate starting points for you to develop further creative learning and teaching opportunities in Physical Education. This chapter contends that Physical Education has valuable purposes as a means to develop physical, intellectual, emotional, social and artistic capabilities. We introduce and argue for creativity, explore the range of policy, practice and definitions that exist in relation to creativity, consider creative teaching and teaching for creativity, and outline the creative potential of the body through the core features of teaching for creativity.

This book is well timed because, at the time of writing, a review of the Primary National Curriculum has just been completed; the draft Physical Education programme of study was published in September 2013 and is to be introduced for teaching into schools by September 2014. It is worth noting that criticisms of the previous National Curriculum claimed that it was ‘squeezing out room for innovation, creativity, deep learning and intellectual exploration’ (DfE 2010: 40). Within the report regarding the National Curriculum review, it has been suggested that:

Schools should be given greater freedom over the curriculum. The National Curriculum should set out only the essential knowledge (facts, concepts, principles and fundamental operations) that all children should acquire, and leave schools to design a wider school curriculum that best meets the needs of their pupils and to decide how to teach this most effectively.

(DfE 2011: 6)

Furthermore, Children’s Minister Tim Loughton, in his speech ‘Promoting PE in schools’, which he gave to the Association of Physical Education, claimed that:

Although we are clear we want PE, swimming and competitive sport to be a compulsory part of the curriculum at each of the four key stages, the new Programme of Study, when it comes out, will be shorter, simpler and far less prescriptive to allow for the maximum level of innovation in schools… in return we need you to seize the opportunity to be creative, to inspire young people to engage with PE and help them understand the enormous benefits it offers.

(Loughton 2012)

Teaching and learning in Physical Education should be rich, inspiring, purposeful and imaginative.

A Health Position Paper in 2008 from Association for Physical Education (AfPE) shared a useful definition of Physical Education:

Physical Education is the planned, progressive, inclusive learning experiences that take place as part of the curriculum and acts as the foundation for a lifelong engagement in physical activity and sport. The learning experiences offered to children should be developmentally appropriate to help them acquire psychomotor skills, cognitive understanding, social skills and the emotional learning they need to lead a physically active life.

(Harris 2008: 3)

Physical Education has lifelong value and purpose and lends itself to a creative approach to learning and teaching. Much research has found the multiple benefits of a creative approach to learning and teaching (Fryer 1996; Beetlestone 1998; Gough 1999; Sternberg 1999; Craft 2000; Craft et al. 2001; Jeffrey and Woods 2003; Fisher and Williams 2004; Craft 2005; Jeffrey 2005; Jeffrey 2006). Such an approach means teaching essential knowledge, skills and understanding within creative contexts where the focus is on developing children’s capacity to become highly active explorers of knowledge, ideas and strategies, and in enabling and motivating them to apply knowledge and skills by making choices and decisions. High-quality and creative teachers offer a careful balance of support and challenge to learners in order to enable them to explore their capabilities with confidence and to extend their abilities to work effectively in all aspects of Physical Education. As Desailly (2012: 3), drawing on Jeffrey and Craft (2001), contends, ‘there is a strong argument that creative teaching is actually effective teaching’.

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

There has been much debate about this illusive term ‘creativity’. Creativity is typically described in terms of a product, a process or a creative person (Mooney 1963; Taylor 1998; Lubart 1999), and can be seen as reflected in everyday potential as opposed to being preserved for the gifted few. Creativity, then, involves ideas, playfulness, exploration, problem-solving, purposefulness, and artistic and imaginative invention. Anna Craft (2001, 2002) uses the phrase ‘little c creativity’, which values ‘everyday’ or ordinary creativity, in contrast to extraordinary or ‘big c’ creativity:

Little c creativity … focuses on the resourcefulness and agency of ordinary people. A ‘democratic’ notion, in that I propose it can be manifested by anyone (and not just a few). It refers to ability to route-find, successfully charting new courses through everyday challenges. It is the sort of creativity, or ‘agency’ which guides route finding and choices in everyday life. It involves being imaginative, being original/innovative, stepping at times outside of convention, going beyond the obvious, being self-aware of all of this in taking active, conscious, and intentional action in the world.

(Craft 2002: 56)

The All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education report (NACCCE 1999) was significant as it recommended a core role for creativity in relation to both learning and pedagogy. The encouragement was for greater creativity in education through ‘a balance between teaching skills and understanding and promoting the freedom to innovate and take risks’ (NACCCE 1999: 10). Here, creativity was defined as ‘imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value’ (NACCCE 1999: 29). A definition of creativity dependent on end products does limit its potential, so this book engages with creative processes; the generation of creative ideas, creative responses, creative composition, creative appreciation and evaluation.

A number of policies and practices promoting creativity in schools followed the NACCCE (1999) report, all influenced by political and economic agendas. These included Excellence and Enjoyment (DfES 2003), Expecting the Unexpected: Developing Creativity in Primary and Secondary Schools (Ofsted 2003), Creativity: Find It, Promote It (QCA 2003), Creative Partnerships Programme (DfES 2006), which funded education projects involving community artists, and Nurturing Creativity in Young People (DCMS and DfES 2006). An extension of the policy sought to involve young people as both spectators and participants in creativity and culture through the introduction of a five-hours-a-week ‘cultural offer’ (DCMS and DfES 2007). This policy refocused the Creative Partnerships programme as a cultural learning programme (McMaster 2008), where young people, through partnership, were to ‘find their talent’ (Creative Partnerships 2008).The Early Years Foundation Stage (DCSF 2008) also recognised the importance of creativity and the role of teachers in fostering children’s curiosity and capacity to take risks. Furthermore, in ‘Towards a New Curriculum’, Alexander (2009) affirmed the need for independent and creative thinkers and learners. Embedded in this arts-and-culture-orientated policy was a notion of creativity as ‘life-wide’ (Craft 2005).

Despite these developments, and also due to a change in government in 2010, there remains anxiety among educators that creativity is being stifled. Indeed, the focus on creativity has been paralleled by an expansion of performativity policies used by the government to seek to raise standards in schools. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), together with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), has now established a significant ‘performativity’ culture (Evans et al. 2005) through national inspections, national testing, target setting and league tables. It has been argued that the creativity/creative learning policy contrasts with the continuing testing regimes, audit culture and quality assurance measures that seem to favour technician-orientated pedagogies (Jeffrey and Woods 1998, 2003; Boyd 2005). It appears that teachers in England are encouraged, on the one hand, to take risks, innovate and nurture creativity, and, on the other hand, are subject to heavy-duty tracking, measurement and accountability. As Cullingford (2007: 133) asserted, creativity represents ‘open mindedness, exploration, the celebration of difference and… is taken to be an automatic opposition to the language of targets, to instrumental skills, the measurement of outcomes and the dogmas of accountability’. Performativity can be seen to be ‘hijacking the creativity discourse’ (Turner-Bisset 2007: 201), and this impact has been felt sharply within the foundation subjects. Curriculum time in Physical Education (PE) has become increasingly marginalised as greater emphasis has been placed on teaching core subjects such as Literacy and Mathematics. Nevertheless, creativity within Physical Education is possible within subject-focused time, but also with a range of other subjects in a cross-curricular way. Given the pressure of target setting and a heavy emphasis on coverage that seems to exist in the current curriculum, it is unsurprising that some may think that it is safer to teach in a traditional, didactic manner where learners are viewed as ‘empty vessels’ (Piaget 1952) as opposed to active builders of knowledge. Desailly (2012: 4) makes a strong argument when she says that ‘becoming a teacher who is able to teach creatively and to encourage pupils to learn creatively and to develop their own creativity is also to become a highly effective teacher’. We acknowledge that to teach creatively may take some teachers out of their comfort zone, but, as Goodwin (2010: 10) summarises, there is an excitement as well as a risk in creativity, stating that ‘creativity can be uncomfortable, unpredictable, anarchic, boundary breaking and insecure but also playful, invigorating and pleasurable’.

CREATIVE TEACHING AND TEACHING FOR CREATIVITY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Creative teaching, then, can be viewed as ‘using imaginative approaches to make learning more interesting and effective’ (NACCCE 1999) and the features of creative teaching, as propose...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Teaching Physical Education creatively
• 2 Physical competence, physical literacy and creativity
• 3 Introducing dance activities
• 4 Developing dance
• 5 Introducing gymnastic activities
• 6 Developing gymnastics
• 7 Introducing games activities
• 8 Developing games
• 9 Creative places: outdoor and adventurous activities
• 10 The creative practitioner: planning for creative Physical Education
• Bibliography
• Index