Am I a Change Agent ?

 

Welcome back! But first let me ask you something first. Would you rather sink or swim? Swim, am I right? Exactly!

So now you are probably wondering why I asked you that? David kirk (2012) suggests that there are three future for physical education. He suggests that we can have more of the same, drastic reform or complete extinction. I agree to a certain extent. I believe that there are only two outcomes for PE. If we stay the same and continue to do what we have done in the past, I feel this will lead to the extinction of PE. However, reform is already taking place with the new LCPE curriculum so why now swim with it. Why not change and adapt to the new curriculum and make PE better, more enjoyable and sustainable for our future generations.

So why change you might ask? Why not I say. As a country Ireland is extremely resistant to change and our education system seems to be even more reluctant to change. However, changing curriculum is only half the battle as we need teachers to change also, this is where me and you can make a difference. With childhood obesity at an all-time high, we as physical educators need to try and intervene and prevent these figures from rising. Clearly what we are doing now is not working as these figures continue to rise. There is an urgent need for change. ‘Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Overweight and obesity are now dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries.’ (who 2018). If that doesn’t justify a need for change I don’t know what will.  Teachers who are established in the school are comfortable doing what they have always done, it is our job as newly qualified teachers to challenge these norms and persuade them to change.

What can we change? With this fantastic new LCPE curriculum at our fingertips we need to adapt and change our teaching style for it to work. Traditional throwing in the ball simply won’t work. If you haven’t yet read through the new LCPE curriculum, here is a link for you to have a read https://pdst.ie/sites/default/files/Final%20Spec%20for%20LCPE.pdf . I was lucky enough to team teach the new LCPE on my teaching practice on my school placement before Christmas. The new curriculum has potential for huge changes to the norm of physical education. With an emphasis on flexibility and choice it almost hands the development of the curriculum back to schools and the community. As outlined in the Fullan and Miles paper "all large-scale change is implemented locally" (Fullan&Miles, 1992). We must adapt and change our teaching strategies to suit our community. Its not going to be easy, but I invite you to take the challenge.

Often, people’s reason for not changing is our time constrains. They argue that we only see the class for an hour a week and that this will have little impact on their behaviours. I disagree with this. As part of my LSP placement, I am doing physical activity with patients in a psychiatric ward for an hour a week. I have done four weeks with these patients and I can already see a huge change in the patient’s attitude towards physical activity. So, I would argue that it is not the amount of time allocate it’s the quality of the lesson.

In the future as a newly qualified PE teacher I will always continue to promote change within PE to educate the students to the best of my ability and maximise participation in physical activity. I will continue to adapt to the changing society around me through regular reflection. That is all for now. 

Until next time! Goodbye and good luck for now!

References

·         Kirk, D., 2012. Defining physical education (Routledge revivals): The social construction of a school subject in post-war Britain. Routledge.

·         Fullan, M.G. and Miles, M.B., 1992. Getting reform right: What works and what doesn't. Phi delta kappan, 73(10), pp.745-752.

·         World Health Organization. (2018). Physical activity. [online] Available at: http://www.who.int/topics/physical_activity/en/ [Accessed 05 March. 2019].

What Kind of PE Teacher Am I Becoming

What kind of P.E teacher am I becoming.

Hello and welcome back to my blog! I have recently been out on school placement last semester, which I can confidently say I loved every minute of it. It wasn’t all plain sailing, it had its ups and downs and I learned a lot about myself, as a teacher. Now that I am back in college, I am posed with the question of ‘what kind of PE teacher am I becoming? Am I going to be the students like mister woodcock that only values the gifted and sporty students? Or am I going to be the teacher that encourages participation and enjoyment of physical activity regardless of ability and skill level?

When exploring what kind of PE teacher, I am becoming I had to step back and ask myself a few questions, as it was not something I had previously thought about.

The first question I asked myself is, what are my goals as a PE teacher? This is vitally important that we have set goals and know what we are striving for. When answering this I looked to what I valued most about PE. I think my core value is pleasure. When I was in school I played football at its highest level. My teacher showed interest in me and I was winning. I felt great. However, I had a serious injury which knocked me from competing at the highest level. I then began to struggle to get back to that level and soon began to interest in playing that sport at all as I felt inadequate. It was only by luck that my friends got me back being active and enjoying sports again. When I was not enjoying sport, I wasn’t taking part in physical activity. One of the aims of the JCPE (2003) is the ‘motivation of the student to choose a lifestyle that is active, healthy and meaningful’ and this is unattainable without finding an activity enjoyable for the student. Therefore, I value pleasure and enjoyment so highly. If you don’t enjoy doing something you will be reluctant to do it. Without pleasure and enjoyment students will not participate in PE. Whitehead (2013) states that ‘pupils needs, interests and motivation are seldom a concern’. Is this wrong? I personally would like to include students interests and needs when planning my lessons

Weiss (2000) further backs this up saying that by ‘providing enjoyable experiences is a potent strategy for increasing activity levels in youth, their attitude about the value of exercise, and ultimately long-term health outcomes’.

An interesting video I found online outlines the importance of students having and enjoyable experience in PE which leads to participation in physical activity in later life. Negative experiences in PE class will have the inverse effect. The video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9BU-STDqLY and its well worth a watch.

Pleasure is the feeder for the rest of my values such as fitness, skill and knowledge. I am a firm believer of learning by doing. However, for the students to ‘do’ they must first enjoy. If students enjoy, they will become more engaged and active. When they are active they will be improving their skills and even basic FMS while also improving their fitness. Finally, they will be able to see the benefits of physical activity with correct prompts and support from their teacher. When I was on teaching practice the most rewarding thing for me wasn’t the sporty student being able to master all the skills and become an elite athlete it was the participation and enjoyment of the lesser sporty students in the class. Seeing a smile on their face and hearing them say that was fun I can’t wait for next week really made my job seem worthwhile. This doesn’t mean that I disregard knowledge and skills I just feel that for physical activity to take place you must spark interest (Perceived enjoyment) first and then work on knowledge and skills from there. What's your opinion on this guys?

Anyways that’s enough out of me and a just a small insight as to what kind of teacher I am becoming at this moment. This is liable to change as I progress through my career, but for now my core value of PE lies with pleasure and enjoyment of physical activity. Let me know what you guys think below. Stay tuned for my next blog where I will be discussing am I change agent?

That’s all for now. Goodbye and Goodluck.

References

·         JCPE Curriculum online. (2003). 1st ed. [eBook] Available at: https://www.curriculumonline.ie/getmedia/ca078585-b4e2-4146-9d22-9fada4bd2478/JCSEC21_Physical_Edcuation_syllabus.pdf [Accessed 13 Feb. 2019].

·         Weiss, M.R., 2000. Motivating kids in physical activity. President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Research Digest.

·         Whitehead, M., 2013. Definition of physical literacy and clarification of related issues. ICSSPE Bulletin, 65(1.2)