Learning to Teach Primary PE

Ian Pickup,Lawry Price,Julie Shaughnessy,Jon Spence,Maxine Trace

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780857252180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Educazione fisica

This book encourages effective teaching and learning in primary physical education, supporting the reader in meeting the QTS Standards and beyond. It explores the importance of PE for children?s learning and advocates a developmental approach to teaching; it also examines a model of professional practice based on personal reflection and self-appraisal, and emphasises the importance of continuing professional development. A rich selection of practical activities is provided, which cater for children?s learning needs across the primary years. Content is related to current agendas and issues, including the Primary National Strategy, Excellence and Enjoyment, Every Child Matters and the forthcoming Olympics.

1

The importance of physical education
in primary schools

Lawry Price

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By the end of this chapter you will have an understanding of:

• the status and importance of physical education;
• the benefits of physical education for children and teachers;
• knowledge about what constitutes quality physical education;
• how developing a personal rationale and philosophy for the teaching of physical education informs the effective teaching of the subject.

This chapter addresses, and makes a contribution to, the following Professional Standards for QTS:

• Professional attributes – Q1, Q2, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8, Q9
• Professional knowledge and understanding – Q10, Q18
• Professional skills – Q29, Q32, Q33

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Introduction

The importance of physical education: What does the subject provide for learners?

Why do we teach what we are required to teach?

Alongside informed notions about what we believe children need to know and should be able to do, teachers will draw from their own personal knowledge base to establish the principles and values upon which they build a personal philosophy for their own teaching. This inevitably changes and develops over time as further knowledge and experience accrue and contribute to allow us to become the rounded professional we all aspire to at the beginning of our teaching careers.

When it comes to considering specifically why we teach physical education there may well be less existent informed knowledge, although primary practitioners will commit to educating the whole child as a foundation principle of their everyday practice. Looking at this from a child’s perspective there is little doubt that general movement and physical activity play a centrally important role in the lives of children and young people. Bailey (2001) illustrates this graphically in his research findings, pointing out the following as barometers for the subject’s importance.

• Physical activity play is the first appearing and most frequently occurring expression of play in infants.
• Children in all cultures around the world engage in spontaneous and rule-governed forms of physical activity.
• Most children would rather take part in physical activities than in any other endeavour.
• They would also prefer to succeed in those activities than in classroom-based work.
• Physical competence is a major factor influencing social acceptance in children of all ages and both sexes.
• Regular physical activity can make significant positive contributions to the physical, mental and emotional well-being of children.

The status and importance of physical education are spelt out in National Curriculum and QCA documentation and above all else emphasise its unique place in the curriculum as the only area of learning that focuses on the body, its constituent parts, and the development of its movement potential.

When this is set alongside the physical development learning area noted in the Curriculum Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage, and numerous references contained within the texts, books and teaching resources that support the teaching of the subject, we can begin to appreciate more fully both the subject’s pronounced importance and its uniqueness.

First and foremost, PE supports and develops individual children’s physical competence, and by doing so their self-esteem and personal confidence. The motor skills acquired through effective teaching and learning serve the purpose of helping children to perform in a variety of physical pursuits, not just in a school setting but also for everyday activity, and such skills prepare them for the practical physical demands of their daily lives.

By promoting physical skillfulness, physical development and a growing knowledge of the body in action, PE provides opportunities within its activities frameworks for children to be creative and expressive, to experience competition and to take on challenges as individuals, or in groups or teams.

Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, PE promotes positive attitudes towards active and healthy lifestyles, and clearly contributes to lifelong participation in activity as part of staying fit and healthy. Through such a process of learning children can discover their own unique aptitudes, abilities and personal preferences, and thereby can make informed choices about how they can get involved in lifelong physical activity.

When all of this is set against the particular learning needs of children within the 3–11 school setting, it is clear that there exists a multiplicity of benefits for pupils and teachers alike from quality physical education provision.

But all of this depends on the subject being well taught, and this is where you as the teacher can have a significant impact so that children are highly motivated and approach their learning in the subject enthusiastically, and with a continuing yearning and desire to perform to the best of their abilities.

Some recent developments in the world of PE have been:

• World Summit – Magglingen (Switzerland, 2005);
• UK – afPE Mission Statement (revised 2006);
• National strategies – PESSCL/CPD;
• New Association – AfPE-defined aims for PE;
• New curriculum developments – Foundation and Formative Physical Education;
• New standards for the teaching profession extending from training through to AST/Excellent Teacher status;
• Every Child Matters agenda.

Starting points

The term physical education conjures up a range of thoughts and emotions dependent upon your own personal experience. These can vary from the positive vibe of the benefits accrued from such learning experiences in school to the downright negative view of painful memories that include exposure to the elements and performing in front of others.

Whatever your experience, there is a statutory obligation for the entitlement of children to receive a physical education of relevance, usefulness, value and quality. Standing back and reflecting on what the outcome of this not happening will be opens a debate about the whole education of the child – clearly an important and significant component would be missing if such learning opportunities were not provided.

As a teacher you will be uniquely placed in the primary school setting to oversee all aspects of individual children’s development and will be responsible for their intellectual, spiritual, moral, social and physical development during this period of compulsory education. Advocacy for a developmental approach to the teaching of physical education, which emphasises the focus on each individual child’s needs, is crucial within this philosophy for the subject. This necessitates ensuring that the PE experiences that are provided are appropriate and take full account of children’s psychomotor, cognitive, social and emotional development during the primary stages of learning.

As a teacher of physical education you will need a clear picture of what you are helping children to achieve in this area of the curriculum. If the definition of becoming physically educated includes mastering motor skills, being physically fit, regularly participating in physical activity, understanding the benefits and risks of physical activity, possessing a knowledge about a range of activities that entail physical activity, and valuing physical activity as a lifelong pursuit, then ensuring it is developmentally appropriate for the individual (that is always putting individual needs first in a sensitive and supportive teaching–learning environment) is of the essence. Above all a recognition that herein lies an important part of children’s overall education is vital and indeed crucial to that premise.

Within the Every Child Matters agenda there is further testimony that physical education has a significant role to play in the fulfillment and delivery of the five outcomes noted in the strategy, central as they are to education’s role in society. The five outcomes are as follows.

• Being healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle.
• Staying safe: being protected from harm and neglect.
• Enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood.
• Making a positive contribution: being involved in the community and society and not engaging in antisocial or offensive behaviour.
• Economic well-being: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving full potential in life.

Your responsibilities in these aspects can clearly take physical education as a key contributor to achieving these defined outcomes.

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REFLECTIVE TASK

Learning objective: to recall your own personal physical education

What can you remember about your own experiences of engaging in physical education activity when you were in primary school?

Can you recall working with hoops, bean bags, quoits, skipping-ropes, and airflow balls in games activities?

Can you remember doing country dancing and dreading holding hands for the first time with a member of the opposite sex?!

Have you memories about working on gymnastic apparatus structures, attempting to climb ropes and experiencing the thrill of the extra spring you could get from using a beat-board?

Remember playground games and playing in teams? Remember Rounders?

Do you remember sports days? What particular features of such events stick out in your mind?

Make notes against each of the questions posed above and use as a possible set of starting points for developing your own philosophy for the subject.

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Benefits of PE for children

Understanding the range of benefits that a quality physical education experience gives children is of paramount importance in constructing a personal rationale for the subject, particularly its contribution to an individual child’s quality of life. These include:

• physical fitness;
• psychomotor skills;
• regular physical activity;
• emotional well-being;
• social skills;
• personal responsibility;
• cognitive skills;
• subject-related knowledge.

The first and perhaps most obvious benefit (but always worth stating and emphasising) is physical fitness. Children possess an innate need to move, even from their very first moments of coming into the world, and with opportunity and encouragement from siblings, parents and adults (not least teachers) they will be physically fit as a result of their PE in school and the other range of movement activities they engage in out of school. Physical education makes a contribution to building individual children’s overall endurance capabilities, but it also involves cardio-respiratory fitness work, supporting the growth in muscular strength that occurs during the primary age phase, muscular endurance for a range of different activities, the maintenance of flexibility, and body composition emphasis (the rate of body fat mass to lean tissue mass). When considering these crucial components of physical fitness we are defining health-related fitness as opposed to sport- or skill-related physical fitness which involves the specific skills and strengths needed to excel at a particular sport. School-based physical education should endeavour to ensure that children benefit from a broad approach to physical fitness that aims to encourage a lifelong commitment for physical health, not just sport-specific mastery.

A second benefit is the systematic and progressive learning of psychomotor skills. It can come as a shock, and sometimes will raise eyebrows, that physical skills are not innate, do not develop naturally, and that we need (and indeed benefit) from learning the...