Blog 1 - The importance of what is said and what is done in the name of physical education
Examines the inconsistency between what is said and done in the name of physical education, both in our formal and informal interactions.
Blog 2 - Movement is as much a part of physical education as its analysis
Explores the idea that science had become the operating centre for Physical Education and that the subject has become more about understanding and testing movement that moving itself.
Blog 3 - The role of the teacher in moral education
Suggests that teachers are responsible for the moral education of students and that sport doesn’t automatically teach fair play, but that it – like skills and strategies - needs to be taught and modelled by teachers and coaches.
Blog 4 - Hide and seek: teachers alone cannot plan for what students’ learn at school
Explores the idea that planning a curriculum is not enough and that multiple curricula – decided by different groups within the school – all operate in parallel to create a hybrid or ‘functional curriculum’ that privileges certain learning around such things as ability, gender, race, disability etc.
Blog 5 - Class dismissed! Working in a classless society where class is an invisible determinant of success
Suggests that while many politicians would have us believe that we live in a “classless” society there are significant inequalities that impact on our students’ experiences of school and of physical education.
Blog 6 - The wrong horse for the life course?: Offerings in physical education aren’t representative of lifelong activities
Suggests that there is a significant difference between the offering made to boys and to girls in terms of team games and lifestyle activities on physical education curricula and extra-curricular timetables.
Blog 7 - A 21st century education: ‘New’ teachers and critical pedagogy for the digital age
Suggests that the time for technocracy (the development of technically proficient performers) is over and that the current model of school is “so last century”.
Blog 8 - If it’s said enough times does it make it true?: The need for critical pedagogy and personal inquiry around the obesity epidemic.
Seeks (or sought) to challenge the wholesale acceptance of “obesity” as an epidemic.
Blog 9 - The Ghost of Physical Education Past
Explores a paper written more than 25 years ago but which predicted the death of physical education as a curriculum subject.
Blog 10 - Volume 1: The Nature and Purposes of Physical Education
Examines the highly contested policy space in schools; most particularly the politicization of physical education and school sport.
Blog 11 - “It’s just not Cricket, old boy”: the place of school in preparing compliant young people
Explores the idea that school is more about civilizing students to be ‘good members of society’ than it is about education.
Blog 12 - “It’s behind you!”: Looking forwards as an alternative future for physical education
Explore the idea that we need to look forwards at what physical education, indeed education, ought to be.
Blog 13 - “PE is something to get through”: If it ain’t broke then why do so many kids not like it?
Re-examines a twenty-year old argument that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to programming in physical education doesn’t work.
Blog 14 - Imitation as the highest form of flattery, until something better comes along
Explores the concept of ‘habitus’ and the idea that we human movement is not an individual concern but is instead developed through societies, cultures, and traditions.
Blog 15 - Barking up the wrong tree: Games and Sports as the reasons why we work
Explores the idea that sports and games are not things we do to ‘escape’ life or something we do just after work in our social time. Instead play should be seen as a central focus in both adults’ and students’ lives.
Blog 16 - “A rose by any other name”: Problems of identity in physical education
Explores what it means to be a physical education teacher in a ‘world’ that seems focused on the continued diversification of our knowledge base.
Blog 17 - Changing the Sun: themes rather than activities as the centre of children’s learning
Investigates the idea that activities should not be the sun around which physical education revolves.
Blog 18 - Challenges and pressing agendas: Thinking more about what we need to do and less about what we like to do
Explores the key issue that face at time when we seek to understand more about physical education and physical activity.
Blog 19 – Health, Physical Activity and Physical Education: One way of squaring the circle
Argues that physical education has an established place in society and this could be used to promote and then enact a notion of PE that was firmly centred on health.
Blog 20 – Physical capital is worth more than the paper it’s written on and yet are we even aware of it?
Explores the ways in which being good at sport and physical education affords learners physical capital which in turn allows them to develop their social status.
Blog 21 – Clean water, fresh food, a roof over your head, a job, and physical activity opportunities: The right to be healthy should include all the basics...shouldn't it?
Examines the idea of valuing the physical activity life. It suggests that the opportunity to be self-active is not an individual thing but a community thing.
Blog 22 – “Mirror, Mirror on the wall who is the slimmest of them all?”
Suggests that through ‘our’ actions and inactions, and our voice and ‘non-voice’ we have been compliant in western societies pursuit of being slim as a measure of a healthy good looking citizen.
Blog 23 – Tinkering around the edges is not enough: gender sensitive physical activity programmes
Suggests that we need to look hard at physical education and its gendered nature and consider starting again from scratch.
Blog 24 – Life is learnt through what ‘I can’ do rather than just what I think
Explores physical literacy and asks if this isn’t a better way of doing things.
Blog 25 – The ends and not the means of PE: Who decides which is important?
Explore constraints of changing practice. It suggests that whilst we may have a desire to change our practice and improve the learning experiences for young people, what we do on a daily basis in physical education is constrained by the expectations of our schools and the expectations of society.
Blog 26 – Knowing about something is not the same as doing it: Girls apparent engagement and disengagement in PE
Explores the idea that there is an expected way of being a student in physical education and then there is another way; an individually right way.
Blog 27 – Tipping the balance: Should PE have a fair handicapping system?
Explores the link between what 53 year olds did in terms of sport at the age of 15 and what they are doing now.
Blog 28 – Ability is a fixed concept, but shouldn’t it be fluid?
Explores how ability has been ascribed to students and that ‘we’ often assume that ability is fixed, rather than acknowledging it has a dynamic process.
Blog 29 – I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry. But is sorry enough?
Reconsiders Ennis’s notion that physical education, as a subject, owes more than just apologies to many students for their sport-based physical education experiences.
Blog 30 – Being ‘normal’ in PE: Unrealistic measures of ability for disabled students
Explores the experiences of five disabled students in physical education.
Blog 31 – Why isn't PE taken seriously by girls when physical activity is on the rise?
Argues that we need to look beyond the ‘traditional’ views that girls dislike PE, and understand the different forms of learning that girls want to engage with.
Blog 32 – “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”: Might multi-activity programmes be a good thing?
Explores the notion that more is better and that multi-activity programmes may have contributed to an increase in young people’s participation rates over the last 40 years.
Blog 33 – Students’ rush in where teachers fear to tread: Sport Education as student-centred approach
Explores one the first empirical studies of Sport Education. It reports on the positive benefits to students’ learning that it can accrue from its use.
Blog 34 – Get ‘em young and keep ‘em keen
Explores Kirk’s discussions around the need to invest in the physical education experiences for young people aged 7-11.
Blog 35 – Q: “What did you learn in PE today?” A: “how to stand in a queue.”
Asks what types of experiences we present to children in a) our choices of activity and b) the pedagogical approaches that we use.
Blog 36 – Why teaching and learning is far more complex than a “process-product” equation.
Muddies the water around the idea that ‘teacher does and students do’ (i.e. that what a teacher teaches students will learn) as the basic premise of teaching and learning.
Blog 37 – Take care of the basics and the rest will start to look after itself
Explores the impact on the transfer of learning by comparing the difference between learning fundamental skills and learning specific skills.
Blog 38 – “I feel pretty, oh so pretty…” but don’t talk to the ugly sister
Explores girls’ perceptions of the body in physical education. It presents the messages often conveyed by girls around ‘pretty’ vs. ‘ugly and black vs. white.
Blog 39 – I am the king of the jungle and you’re the dirty rascal
Asks what cultural experiences children and young people bringing into PE from their experiences of sport in extra curricular and community sport.
Blog 40 – Experiential Learning as a community experience
Examine learning theory – particularly experiential learning – and ask what place it has in our classrooms.
Blog 41 – The obvious one of the pass in the game
Suggests that game play is an inherently social experience and that techniques are possibly meaningless when the interdependency of passer, receiver and defender is overlooked or ignored.
Blog 42 – Including rather than ‘fitting in’ students with Special Educational Needs
Explore research around the inclusion of children with special educational needs (SEN) in physical education.
Blog 43 – ‘Walking the talk’ around the nature and purpose of PE
Asks if we consider the nature and purposes of PE enough in our planning and subsequent teaching.
Blog 44 – Why Rip wouldn't be winkled if he was a PE teacher
Returns to 1992 and a paper that asks if PE is relevant to young people in a postmodern world.
Blog 45 – Choices in teaching and learning
Explores the differing forms of instruction that support students’ performance of motor skills.
Blog 46 – Is student autonomy a precursor to lifelong physical activity?
Explores the idea that many children cannot afford for PE to be boring and irrelevant.
Blog 47 – Learning from our PAL’s.
Considers peer-assisted learning. In other words, how teachers effectively create pedagogical contexts in which students learn in groups and from their peers.
Blog 48 – Girls and Boys and hidden messages
Suggests that what we say as teachers has an impact on gendered expectations for participation in PE.
