Teaching Physical Education to Children

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the research on programs and curricula of teaching physical education to children. The research describes the programmatic nature of helping teachers learn to teach, including information on program structure and curricular content. The section on curricula examines ways teacher educators use pedagogical methods to promote teacher professional development that aim to positively influence student learning. The intent is to represent the current knowledge base on teacher preparation in physical education including relevant core concepts and how the major research findings might guide future policy and practice. The Elementary Physical Education Program (EPEP) has on the one hand been heralded as important, for benefits such as health, fitness, exercise, social interaction, motor development, skill development and more recently obesity control, yet on the other hand often absent in practice, under-researched, and therefore under-theorized with respect to the rhetoric around claims made to justify its presence within the curriculum (Barrett, 46).

A dearth of research reports the conditions and realization of physical education in elementary school programs for children's. The research being more about justification of physical education through “opportunity”, “potential” or “responsibility to create situations” for learning. Reporting of activities that review and evaluate the curriculum exist but have not been prevalent, ongoing or extensive. Programs and justification for particular forms of EPE seem to be based on assumptions and generalizations made about the transferability of related research to practice with little research examining the difference between the intended and enacted curriculum, the processes, practices and outcomes. As this has become recognized by researchers, and to some extent the broader world of accountability in education, only recently has the huge variety of contexts and complexities of the enacted curriculum been the focus of research. However, some research related to primary programs continue to also make the weak link between the efficacy of physical education and healthy active lifestyles that go well beyond the physical education classroom (Kirk, 27).

Discussion and Analysis

The purpose of physical education to children within every culture influences the way in which physical educators are prepared and the content included in the curriculum shapes their professional development. Children's physical education has consistently taken on a scientific functionalist aim, which promotes physical prowess and competition. While the overarching role of schools and school physical education is to improve society, being overly responsive to whimsical trends of society warrants caution. Kirk and Tinning (1990) warn us as a profession of the dangers associated with the act of social responsiveness without the companion social critique. Political agendas and dominant cultural views historically infuse a strong influence on the social construction of physical education. In turn, those definitions of physical education shape what core content is included. Kirk and Tinning maintained that scientific functionalism is the dominant world-view of physical education. They characterized this perspective as an “unquestioning belief in the status of quantitative, objective information focusing on the physical and physiological functioning of the body” (Tinning, 133).

The EPEP may be understood as ...