Examination of an Issue Experience in Physical Education and Health
Introduction
Health and Physical Education studies offer an opportunity for creative delivery that can help to encourage engagement, and improve students’ performance across other subject areas, including STEM and humanities. This essay about experience in physical education and health examines issues in this sphere and what can be done to solve them. A review of the available literature shows a rich history of awareness of the issues associated with this problem, and demonstrates a wealth of creativity in teachers’ and education researchers’ attempts at addressing or ameliorating it. Through ongoing refinement of techniques, standards by which engagement is measured have improved from being the hope that students will abscond less, to the expectation that they will delve more deeply and extract more beneficial learning from their available resources.
“Research supports the positive impact of physical activity on the overall psychological health and social engagement of every student”. A well-designed physical education curriculum provides students with social and emotional, as well as physical and physiological benefits. Whilst previous ideals of engagement may have constituted the simple desire to have students attend at the school on school days, progressive improvements have led to higher standards of engagement. It is now expected that students will improve their methods of learning, to learn “how to learn' and engagement itself has become a central focus of school life for all students. In order to discuss engagement, we must also develop an awareness of students’ motivations. Different types of motivation, both autonomous and controlled, and amotivation as the absence of motivation, can be used to categorise and describe types of motivation that students have for being engaged or not. We may also think of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Whilst numerous factors contribute to the level of achievement of students, only half of the effect of students’ motivation is attributable to the students themselves as intrinsic motivation. The next major contributing factor is their teachers, at slightly less than ⅓. The remaining influence is contributed by schools and principals, peers, and their home environments in approximately equal measure. These extrinsic motivators comprise the other half of motivation in total.
To understand the motivations of students, we must understand the students themselves. Where are they from in terms of their family, culture and other heritage, what influences their daily lives, and how do they identify themselves? There is a diverse spectrum of gender, ableness, and ethnicity that must be considered when creating content, and motivations for engagement in school and class. Levels of engagement are declining and girls aged 15-18 are at highest risk of inactivity and disengagement in physical activity.
Methods employed to engage students begin with some basic principles. Students who have fun in class are more likely to engage, and when activities include a range of skill levels appropriate to the variety of skill levels of the corresponding students, all feel welcome and able to participate. “A positive experience in physical education can be a stepping stone toward a more active and healthy lifestyle for all students”.
Students of different groups tend to have differing patterns of engagement. There is increasing pressure on students to perform at an elite level. The future of Australian students requires them to be better at linking between disciplines, with collaboration and translation from one field to another in a more creative way. English, Maths, and Science can all benefit from students’ engagement in an outdoor physical activity.
One way to engage students is to give them more control of their own destiny. We can ask students what they want to do during the year. A constructivist approach to PE with its focus on participation can lead to broader improvement in the physical, social and mental health of all students. Students with autonomy-supportive teaching approaches benefitted from having a higher level of motivation and engagement in activities. It was found that the autonomy-supportive approach led to the improved motivation, rather than that motivation was essential for the autonomy-supportive approach to be effective.
Another method is to introduce activities that students might already be engaged in, or see as being of practical benefit to themselves. Students gained motivation to pursue basic engineering skills from the need to perform maintenance on their bikes as part of the Bikeability program.
As young people are seen to be in a unique stage of knowledge absorption and personality shaping, and are prolific in their technology usage , it would seem appropriate that future school health education initiatives should be aimed at combining young peoples’ health awareness and communication networks. It is further identified that a healthy lifestyle depends on the early adoption of healthy living habits and readily accessible information; unhealthy lifestyles among youths are strongly linked to unhealthy habits in adulthood. Indeed the concept of radical love, introduced by Agnello, is defined as being “dedicated to, want the best for, concerned about, care for, encourage, support, connect with, recognize, praise,guide, inspire, be inspired by, humanize interrelations with, go beyond the call of duty for, stick up for, protect, mentor, work with for world Transformation”. Whilst conversely student movements resulting from perceived discrimination can be very disruptive to the smoothe governance and management of the school, as evidenced by the numerous social justice campaigns writ large across the social media space, as well as college campuses over the past few years.
Research from children, youth and their parents indicates that the reasons why they begin to lose interest in physical education and drop out of extracurricular sports and physical activity include changes in interests or responsibilities, not having fun, feeling incompetent, disliking the coach, not getting along with other players, too much emphasis on winning, lack of family support for getting to practice, and negative sport experiences. During class a major factor in student engagement or disengagement is the percentage of wasted time. Studies show that students often spend a large part of their time waiting, without doing anything constructive. One method to ensure that students are able to actively participate in the session and receive maximum benefit is appropriate lesson planning. This can smooth transitions between activities, improve the effectiveness of instructions and increase the time students have to participate. Students can also benefit from having multiple games or activities running simultaneously, thereby giving them a number of options to choose from. People need to engage in a praxis that incorporates theory, action, and reflection as a means to work toward social change and justice, and he devised a literacy program based on this ideal as well as the practical needs of his students.
Value, potential for success, teacher caring, focus on improving mastery, and intrinsic motivation, are key factors in student engagement. These are values that can be incorporated into the HPE program in a very practical manner, and can diffuse throughout students’ at school~ and after school~ lives.
Active learning strategies directed by students such as can be used in Health and Physical Education classes, can be useful in engaging students in school, giving them a sense of ownership of the content they are studying. Introductory Activities using the five senses (observing, reading, listening, asking, feeling, tasting, smelling) can start students off on a productive path of engagement.
Discussion of the Issue, Addressing Some or All the Key Questions
We assume that students are attending school with the intention of learning. This is an assumption worthy of challenging in order to achieve best results for engagement across the broadest spectrum of students. We may also be tempted to assume that all students are ‘normal’, but this would risk disengagement for students who didn’t fit our preconceived notion of normal. As demonstrated in the literature, the vast diversity of identity with which students may affiliate ensures that there is no normal. We should pay special attention to diversity in terms of disability, gender, ethnicity, and aboriginal identity. There is also a caution here for the risk of disengagement, and the potential fallout that can result from that. Students who are disengaged disadvantage themselves and also the community at large, and that may disrupt the school as well.
The student’s needs, as mentioned above include a need to be valued, for teachers to care, and believe that they have potential for success, and an ability to master the skills available for them to learn. They need sensory experience that addresses them in every way possible, so as to stimulate and engage their interest. As teachers, we can address those needs by including activities that provide these outcomes. As simple as it sounds, it does require excellent prior preparation and planning in order to avoid poor performances.
There are many and varied HPE programs provided in schools that demonstrate a vast array of creative concepts and practical activities suited to engaging students and responding to their learning needs. A few of them are mentioned above, and they demonstrate some of the creativity of HPE teachers, as well as methods by which HPE can contribute to not only learning, but also stimulating an interest in other subjects such as STEM and humanities. Real life activities such as bicycles, tents and other activities that students can think of as being ‘fun’ can be used constructively by a learned teacher with a well planned lesson to encourage students to use skill sets that will benefit these other subject areas.
HPE programs available can be adapted to ensure that they are demanding of the appropriate skill levels for students to find them engaging while simultaneously being challenging and rewarding. This is like the ‘Goldilocks’ principle of HPE teaching.
Developments in local Australian schools seem to be abreast similar moves in US and UK school systems to develop the level of engagement for students. Although the focus across the board seems to be on STEM subjects and metrics of analysis, with HPE increasingly sidelined, there is a growing momentum of consensus that portrays HPE as the missing link, which can bolster students’ performance in other subjects, and overall attendance and engagement.
A number of articles touched on the idea of ‘critical pedagogy’, and talk about education as a transformative experience for students. They highlight the ability for students from diverse backgrounds to achieve as well as those from privileged circumstances. They point out that human relationships such as the teacher-student relationship are ongoing and continually developing. This is similar to the way in which a sport game is continually evolving, requiring adaptation and flexibility from the teacher to maintain a continuing optimum engagement.
Conclusion
A well developed HPE program, balancing competition and inclusion, catering to the needs of all students from diverse backgrounds, can improve engagement not only in HPE, but school life in general, and improve students’ performance in other subjects, and help them develop life skills that will assist them to become more capable in everyday life. Inclusion of broad skill sets can increase this crossover in practicality, whilst deepening engagement in all aspects of school life. A feature that came to the fore was the responsiveness that students have to teachers who are themselves engaged in the school and lives of the students.
