Meaningful Physical Education
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Meaningful Physical Education

An Approach for Teaching and Learning

Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Douglas Gleddie, Stephanie Beni, Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Douglas Gleddie, Stephanie Beni

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eBook - ePub

Meaningful Physical Education

An Approach for Teaching and Learning

Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Douglas Gleddie, Stephanie Beni, Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Douglas Gleddie, Stephanie Beni

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About This Book

This book outlines an approach to teaching and learning in physical education that prioritises meaningful experiences for pupils, using case studies to illustrate how practitioners have implemented this approach across international contexts.

Prioritising the idea of meaningfulness positions movement as a primary way to enrich the quality of young people's lives, shifting the focus of physical education programs to better suit the needs of contemporary young learners and resist the utilitarian health-oriented views of physical education that currently predominate in many schools and policy documents. The book draws on the philosophy of physical education to articulate the main rationale for prioritising meaningful experiences, before identifying potential and desired outcomes for participants. It highlights the distinct characteristics of meaningful physical education and its content, and outlines teaching and learning principles and strategies, supported by pedagogical cases that show what meaningful physical education can look like in school-based teaching and in higher education-based teacher education.

With an emphasis on good pedagogical practice, this is essential reading for all pre-service and in-service physical education teachers or coaches working in youth sport.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2021
ISBN
9781000387933
Edition
1

Part I

Introducing Meaningful Physical Education

1 The why, what, and how of Meaningful Physical Education

Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Douglas Gleddie and Stephanie Beni

Introduction

We believe in the inherent value of movement in our lives and the lives of the students we teach. When meaningfulness is prioritized, students’ experiences in physical education have the potential to enrich the quality of their lives (Kretchmar, 2008). Prioritizing the facilitation of meaningful experiences has the potential to shift the focus of current physical education programs to better meet the needs of contemporary learners (Quennerstedt, 2019).
Ideas about prioritizing meaningful physical education are not especially new; they are present in the physical education and sport pedagogy literature throughout the past 50 years, with scholars arguing for the inherent value potential of movement as a site of meaning-making to enhance human existence (Arnold, 1979; Chen, 1998; Ennis, 2017; Jewett & Bain, 1985; Kretchmar, 2007; Metheny, 1968; O’Connor, 2019). These arguments are also complemented by recent developments in the field of positive psychology where it is recognized that meaning and meaningfulness are valued concepts to clarify questions of human well-being and flourishing (Leontiev, 2013). By prioritizing meaningfulness in physical education, teachers would work with children and youth to identify features of an experience that are meaningful to them, such as those that are enjoyable, challenging, involve important opportunities for learning across several domains, and are personally relevant; the types of intrinsically motivating experiences that are likely to lead to a commitment to active participation (Teixeira, Carraça, Markland, Silva, & Ryan, 2012). Through collaboration with their teachers, children and youth may develop a deeper awareness of what they find meaningful and may be more likely to seek out these types of experiences in other contexts beyond physical education. There is, however, limited guidance for teachers in how they might promote meaningful experiences in physical education.
As part of the Routledge Focus on Sport Pedagogy series, we aim to provide clear descriptions of how several practitioners (teachers and teacher educators) have used the idea of meaningful experiences as the main filter for their pedagogical decisions and actions. Bringing together these descriptions has allowed us to develop a prototypical outline of the Meaningful Physical Education (Meaningful PE) approach, which we articulate in this chapter. The Meaningful PE approach offers guidance to support how practitioners can identify and enhance the quality of physical education experiences for learners. Fundamentally, we argue that greater attention to the meaningfulness of experience can promote richer and more impactful learning for young people in physical education to influence the quality of their ongoing engagement with movement and physical activity participation.

What do we mean by meaningful?

Kretchmar (2007) defines meaning ‘in a broad, common sense way. It includes all emotions, perceptions, hopes, dreams, and other cognitions – in short, the full range of human experience’ (p. 382). All experiences therefore have meaning in that the individual interprets and makes sense of the experience through attaching a value, symbol, or emotion to it. However, often the noun meaning has been conflated with the adjective meaningful. Meaningfulness is an individual and subjective construct that entails a value judgement(s) or interpretation of the meaning of circumstances (Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker, & Garbinsky, 2013).
Metheny (1968) suggests an experience becomes meaningful when ‘we seize upon it, take it into ourselves, and become involved with it’ (p. 5). Meaningfulness is therefore an interpretation of the significance something holds for an individual and involves the participant becoming aware and making sense of an experience in relation to past, present, and future experiences through a process of synthesis and reconciliation (Jarvis, 1987). Many psychologists now generally accept that meaningfulness involves a tripartite structure: a) purpose: a motivational component, related to goals, aims, and direction; b) feelings of significance: an emotional component involving evaluation of life’s inherent value and worth; and c) coherence: a cognitive component related to understanding of one’s life making sense and being comprehensible (Martela & Steger, 2016). Based on these proposals, it follows that meaningfulness in physical education involves considering the purposes and goals of movement, judgements related to the emotional value of the experience, and a sense of coherence where physical education can be connected to other life experiences (Chen, 1998). Based on this definition, the primary theme of Meaningful PE is to support students in coming to value physical education through experiencing meaningfulness (i.e., interpreting an experience as having personal significance) and recognizing ways participation enhances the quality of their lives.

Why Meaningful PE?

A consideration of why to use Meaningful PE begins with questioning one’s overarching vision or philosophy for teaching. For us (and the other contributing authors), prioritizing meaningful experiences is crucial if we want children to experience some of the things in and about movement culture that have been and are so central to the quality of our own lives. It has become part of our individual and collective vision for physical education (Ní Chróinín, Beni, Fletcher, Griffin, & Price, 2019). We want children to walk through the doors of a gym or dance studio or enter onto a field, hiking trail, bike path, or body of water and be filled with a sense of excitement, joy, and adventure rather than dread, boredom, or fear. Beyond our personal beliefs and perspectives, however, there are some other broader reasons that support our position.
In many contexts there is a current emphasis on what we and some others see as a narrow set of utilitarian, health-based outcomes for young people where disease prevention through personal fitness is privileged over seeking the joy of movement. Along with others (Ennis, 2017; Kretchmar, 2008; Lambert, 2020; O’Connor, 2019; Thorburn, 2018), we resist this view, arguing that physical education is better positioned as an opportunity for students to engage in active participation in ways that make experiences more meaningful and enrich their lives. As Kretchmar (2006) suggests: ‘one of the greatest things about physical activity and play is that they make our lives go better, not just longer. It is the quality of life, the joy of being alive’ (p. 6). In this way, Meaningful physical education places the quality and personal significance of students’ experiences at the forefront of a teacher’s pedagogical decision-making (Kretchmar, 2008).
Prioritizing meaningful experiences also links to some of the major purposes of physical education, represented in policy documents and also in the beliefs and values of key stakeholders (such as teachers, students, parents, and administrators). Major analyses identify a range of benefits for young people that are linked to participation in physical education. For example, Engström (2008) identified several ways in which physical education supports learners’ participation in active lifestyles well into adulthood. This may be reflected in learners achieving increased motor competence or learning to value and participate in a physically active lifestyle that reflects social and cultural awareness of individuals, communities, and the environment (McEvoy, Heikinaro-Johansson, & MacPhail, 2017). We take a slightly broader view of the overall purposes of physical education, aligning ourselves with the purpose of democratic transformation (Ennis, 2017), where ‘different ways of being in the world as some-body are both possible and encouraged’ (Quennerstedt, 2019, p. 611). In this way, education is viewed as a continual transforming of experience, with an aim of cultivating experiences that lead to the growth of further experience (Dewey, 1938). Although we aim to emphasize the positive qualities and values of a meaningful experience (those that encourage further exploration and participation), at times a meaningful experience might also have a negative value (e.g., unpleasant interpersonal interactions or finding a challenge ‘beyond reach’). Dewey (1938) distinguishes these experiences by describing them as educative and mis-educative, with educative experiences being those whereby the individual seeks continuity of the experience rather than avoidance. Educative experiences that prompt reflection tend to produce powerful learning (Rodgers, 2002). From this perspective, having learners seek and become aware of the personal meaning of movement through reflection becomes part of the core purpose of physical education, where it is understood as a ‘suitable learning context for initiation into a range of worthwhile social and cultural practices’ (Thorburn, 2018, p. 26).

What is Meaningful PE based on and what does it consist of?

In finding an experience meaningful, attention is drawn to its quality, which influences the likelihood of individuals seeking the experience again or avoiding it. According to Dewey (1938, p. 44) individuals attach value to the experience ‘because of a transaction taking place’ between an individual and aspects of the environment, which in physical education could be: peers; the teacher; the gymnasium, swimming pool, dance studio, or playing field; objects such as balls, nets, or apparatus; or the tasks that represent subject matter (Quennerstedt, Almqvist, & Öhman, 2011). Personal meaning transactions and interpretations are therefore not constructed solely within but in relation to culture (Bruner, 1990), where individuals make connections to ‘something that reaches beyond the actual experience, linking it to something else’ (Leontiev, 2013, p. 462). Thus, attending closely to the meaningfulness of experiences necessitates consideration of the ways in which meaningfulness involves a complex mix of individual cognitive and affective elements as well as relational, social, and cultural dimensions. By aligning Meaningful PE with a transformative purpose and recognizing the social nature of learning, social constructivism serves as an appropriate theoretical basis upon which to ground its teaching and learning principles. Social constructivist perspectives ‘focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge’ (Palincsar, 1998, p. 345).
Pedagogically, our approach is built from a major review of literature we conducted on studies focused on meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport since 1987. We drew from Kretchmar’s (2006) assertion that meaningful experiences in physical education tend to consist of several features: social interaction, challenge, fun, motor competence, and delight. In that review of 50 peer-reviewed empirical research studies, we found support for the first four of those features, while adding another: personally relevant learning (Beni, Fletcher, & Ní Chróinín, 2017). Although we did not find empirical support for delight, we believe it is worthy to acknowledge because it supports a perspective that physical education can promote ‘temporary and special affective states that are memorable in their own right but are also motivators for additional delights at higher levels of skill, knowledge and understanding’ (Kretchmar, 2005, p. 205).
  • Social interaction: Teachers should carefully consider how opportunities for social interaction are organized and structured based on students’ needs and desires. Social interaction can occur in positive ways, supporting ongoing participation (Light, 2010), learning (Lyngstad, Bjerke, & Lagestad, 2020), and a sense of accomplishment, particularly when working in teams (Domville, Watson, Richardson, & Graves, 2019; Koekoek & Knoppers, 2015; Ní Chróinín, Fletcher, & Griffin, 2018). This requires consideration of all relationships in the learning environment (e.g., student-student, student-teacher) and therefore, teachers should aim to foster a strongly developed sense of community in the classroom (Azzarito & Ennis, 2003).
  • Challenge: Kretchmar (2006) identifies ‘just-right’ or optimal challenges as essential to enticing children to enter and invest in developing their personal playgrounds. Optimal challenges possess the lure of success, which can be achieved with sufficient support, time, effort, persistence, and patience (Mandigo & Holt, 2006). Dyson (1995) showed that when students were provided with opportunities to choose their level of challenge, they found physical education more meaningful. Challenge can also serve as motivation to continued participation. Students in a study by Gillison, Sebire, and Standage (2012) felt motivated by appropriate levels of challenge because they were provided with: a sense of achievement, explicit outcomes which served as reasons to try an activity, the option to set one’s own goals, and self-improvement in skills or fitness. Inappropriate levels of challenge can have harmful effects on participation – when the level of challenge is too easy or too hard, it can induce boredom, which leads to apathy (i.e., ‘meaninglessness’) toward physical education (Dismore & Bailey, 2011). Careful consideration should be given to the presentation of competition, as some children thrive in interpersonal competition while others do not. A balanced approach to competition might involve avoiding activities that emphasize winning more than learning, the use of alternative scoring systems that reward aspects of participation beyond winning (e.g., spirit points to reward positive social behaviours), and encouraging a focus on achieving personal bests. This can be done by having students set personal process-oriented goals across domains during competitive activities, such as encouraging teammates, limiting erroneous decisions in game play, or focusing on efficient or consistent skill execution.
  • Fun: ...

Table of contents