PHASE Asia Pacific 2019

Drawing on the work of Neil Postman, and envisioning a future in which physical education ends (i.e. ceases to exist) as a subject, this keynote will ask what the end (i.e. the purpose/outcome) of physical education should be to improve its longevity and purpose.

Against an international background of concern about the health of children and the implications for shaping productive young people, schools have been increasingly co-opted to the achievement of national public health agendas. In recognition of these demands, Dr. Louise McCuaig's research team undertook a five year investigation of the ‘health work’ performed by teachers in schools.

This presentation draws on the findings of this research to demonstrate the benefits and costs of this complex dimension of teachers’ work and the implications for schools, teachers and their students. Drawing on Antonovsky’s salutogenic perspective of health, Dr. McCuaig further explores the manner in which interventionist thinking can undermine robust and educative health, sport and physical education programs in school settings. Building on this critique, she will conclude with a range of strengths-based curriculum design strategies that can simultaneously address education agendas concerning science, literacy and numeracy, and the development of students’ healthy living knowledge and skills.

Due to the long-standing marginalised status of physical education among school subjects, physical educators have perpetually struggled to establish their work as relevant and necessary. Numerous factors, however, work against these efforts. In this presentation, Collin will focus on paradigm shifts in physical education research as an antagonizing force in the pursuit of the profession’s legitimacy. A paradigm shift is an academic response to a professional challenge (what can physical education do to promote academic achievement, physically active lifestyles, social-emotional learning, etc.), often spurred by wide-scale attention to issues at a societal level (an underperforming education system, obesity, mental health, etc.).

Paradigm shifts recast the focus of research and reframe the purpose and intended outcomes of physical education. Unfortunately, societal issues tend to persist longer than our attention to them does. With each shift, we all but abandon robust research efforts pursuing solutions to a given issue and instead create a capricious evidence base that subscribes to “hot topics.” This ultimately results in limited impact of research on policy or practice and leaves the profession with an identity crisis.

Thus, despite its long-standing presence in school vocabulary, what we call “physical education” denotes widely diverse understandings, even among physical educators, and the day-to-day activities of teachers have, for the most part, remained unchanged by the meandering commitments of the academic field. Collin will propose recommendations for creating a more stable and sustainable basis upon which physical education can firmly stand.