Physical Education (what) futures - thinking about sustainability

First published 12/07/23

Updated 12/01/25

In 2023 I was asked to provide a keynote about the future of physical education at an international conference. Although my work is usually within the sphere of 'curriculum and pedagogy', being asked to do some futurist thinking about what the next ten years might hold for physical education teaching enabled me to consider some interesting questions in this presentation.

Understanding where we come from: A very brief history of 'western' physical education

Public school physical education started in many places as gymnastics and drill to 'condition' the bodies and minds of the working class, with sport and the 'character' lessons learnt from the 'battle on the playing fields' largely being the reserve of the all-boys private schools. Through gym and drill students would learnt discipline and respect for authority. There was no need for learning how to 'think' (Porter & Felstead, 2025). The cartesian dualism view of th human condition as consisting of separate mind and body progressively gave way to a more holistic understanding of the human condition, from which the engagement of the mind through drill and gymnastics and therefore the educative purpose of physical training came to be questioned. This lead many to a move from physical training to physical education, and the thought that education through the physical was provided by team sports.

In the 1960s, a major shift occurred in physical education known as "New Physical Education" or the Movement Education. This was a direct departure from the "Education of the Physical" (which focused on the body to be drilled and trained) toward "Education Through Movement." This approach to physical education viewed physical activity as a medium for the total development of the child person - physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally. Out of ths movement came the seminal work of Mosston, Hellison, Siedentop, Martinek, Maulden & Redfern, and others.

From the 1990s, what some called 'the physical education method' (Metzler, 2011) came to be considered by many theorists as 'broken'. As one example, Kirk (2013) argued that the multi-activity curriculum model; that is, short-duration units teaching largely decontextualised sport skills through drill type practice (e.g., three weeks of basketball followed by three weeks of gymnastics), could not help students achieve the levels of competence that provided the foundation for the pursuit of a lifetime of physical activity. It serves only to highlight the already sporty students.

What is abundantly clear in the literature, is that since the 1990s, children and adolescent movement ability has declined. Children and adolescents have become more sedentary as movement ability has declined. We should ask, is PE provided via a multi-activity curriculum plan part of the problem or part of the solution? (Pill & Harvey, 2019).

A vision for physical education in the C21

Kirk (2013) proposed a shift from the traditional "multi-activity" approach to Models-Based Practice.

In the influential 2000 paper, "Physical Education: What Future(s)?" Penney and Chandler argued that moving into the C21, physical education was at a crossroads. This was because the common multi-activity curriculum model was not fit for educative purpose and that if physical education was to remain relevant in the 21st century, it must move away from a narrow focus on traditionally taught sport and instead physical education must embrace a new education mission. This mission was to move physical education beyond an "end in itself" (e.g., physical education is needed to get students ‘fit’). Instead, it should become what they termed “a connective specialism”. This means, physical education that enables students to participate in the physical activities available to them in their social and physical landscapes of the 21st century. This would require a more thematic and conceptual approach rather than the often comon activity specific approach to curriculum. 

Some have suggested that child and youth movement competency and correspondingly participation has declined because of the rise in popularity of 'video' or digital games. Physical education teachers face the same participatory challenge as a digital game creator: how to get people to persist at something that takes a long to master and involves repeated failure in getting to mastery. So, why aren’t we using the same educational design principles as digital game creators? [If interested in this area, I have written about this elsewhere, 2011 here 2014 here and also in past Learning through Sport blogs - the links below] 

A sustainable future for physical education

In the context of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda, the sustainability goal for education is Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4): Quality Education. Goal 4’s mission is to: "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all." Quality education is considered the "multiplier" goal because achieving it is the key to unlocking almost every other sustainability target, from ending poverty to climate action. I discuss Quality PE in a blog here.

Sustainablity can also be considered through the lens of the challenges facing society. 

For example, how is and will urban poputaion density effect PE? Richard and colleagues (2023) have written about the challenges emerging and progressively more evident in teaching physical education in intensive urban environments. Space and resource considerations are prominent in their consideration of what socially and culturally relevant physical education is and will become in increasingly population dense and therefore outdoor space restricted urban environments. 

How is and will climate change effect PE? Climate change is arguably transforming physical education from a predictable outdoor activity into a complex, high-risk environment that requires significant pedagogical and structural adaptation. The adaptaion can be considered through two main lenses: Operational Adaptation (how to safely move in hotter and greater UV concentration, and extreme weather event, climates) and Curricular Integration (how we teach for sustainability). With regard to operational adapation, schools have a responsibility to keep staff and students safe. This will mean in many places the new expense of covering in canopies outdoor recreation and sport areas to protect participants from extreme weather events and during the day from high and extreme UV exposure. There is an increasing body of research in the area of physical education teacher occupational sun exposure and student sun protection behaviours.

Another area of emerging area that culturally enriches future physical education stems from greater awareness of one aspect of the 'hidden curriculum', the role physical education played in education as a colonising mechanisms in many parts of the world. In areas where for some time, knowledge of local games and ways of playing were surpressed in favour of local participation in the games and sport of the colonisers, an increasing number of physical education teachers are at least in part 'decolonising' their curriculum by introducing games from country and education about the culture of play and physical activity that existed prior to the advent of western education.

How is and will technlogy effect PE? AI and other technologies already have the capacity to 'power up' or accelerate learning in physical education by acting as just-in-time feedback mechanisms (such as video delay technology), effectively providing each student a personalised system of feedback and instruction. There has long already been the ability to self-teach using YouTube tutorials, and there is already VR and immersive reality technology able to provide customised physical activity experiences. Now that VR and IR are increasingly becoming AI assisted, these tools have the capability to 'teach' as well. 

If everything a student needs to teach themself how to play a sport (for example) is online and/or available via easily accessible AI assisted digital technology, and available anywhere and anytime, the role of the PE teacher moves from instructor and the use of the historocally common physical education method of demonstrate-explain-practice, and even from the more progressive ‘facilitator’ of learning of the teacher using problem and inquiry based learning pedagogy, to perhaps that of a knowledge navigator. 

Then, what happens when you don’t need other people to play (or practice to play)? I admit I am a massive Star Trek fan. I have often thought about the potential of the Holodeck (a high-tech facility that creates immersive 3D virtual reality simulations) for teaching physical education and for sport coaching.

If a Holodeck were integrated into school Physical Education, might it represent the ultimate evolution of the New Physical Education push for Education through Movement. It would solve the two biggest constraints of PE in population intensive urban environments: physical space and student engagement. It would provide customised scaffolding of task complexity to meet the individual student readiness to learn. If a Holodeck were integrated into school Physical Education, might it represent the ultimate evolution of the "New Physical Education" and "Education Through Movement". It would solve the two biggest constraints of PE in population intensive urban environments: physical space and student engagement. It would provide customised scaffolding of task complexity to meet the individual student readiness to learn. It would provide physical cultural legitimacy by taking students out of the confines of the school gym and oval into (simulated) authentic physical activity contexts in their local community. It could take students into simulated historical play contexts. For example, students could learn a Mayan ballgame in a reconstructed 10th-century Mayan court, integrating physical education and history teaching, thus enabling one aspect of physical education as a connective specialisation that Penney and Chandler discussed. With regards to education in movement of tactical understanding of game play, students could stand in the middle of a "frozen" professional basketball game to analyse defensive play from a first-person perspective and then like chess pieces, move the players into what students determine are ‘better’ positions, and then run the game simulation to play out from there. Imagine students being able to choose their favourite sport person to give them tips on how to play while watching the student play (in imersive or virtual reality play of the game), or that sport person (an AI version of them) takes the student for a virtual reality practice session. 

While the Holodeck may be a 'long way off' and perhaps even fanciful, from what I have seen recently of VR and IM technology, we are not far from being able to provide experiences like I just described. The technology now exists to convert a standard 2D photo into a 3D hologram using AI, thus lifting the image holographically off a page and through AI enabling it to be intercative. Through VR and IM glasses, we have the technology now to creating holograms that we can interactive with. Suzuki (2025) provided a sense of what the virtual reality future of physical education can be in the near future. Incorporating advanced technologies in the development of technology-driven education infrastructure addresses Sustanability Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

Thanks for stopping by and reading this post. If you would like to connect with me on a project to do with the ideas in this blog or any of the other ideas that I have blogged about, you can contact me by the email link available here

Related posts

Sport coaching and PE Teaching - thinking like a game developer here

Game design principles and sport coaching / teaching here

References

Kirk, D. (2013). What is the future for physical education in the twenty-first century. In S. Capel & M. Whitehead (Eds.),  Debates in physical education (pp. 220-231). Routledge.

Metzler, M. (2011). Instructional models in physical education. Routledge.

Penney, D., & Chandler, T. (2000). Physical Education: What Future(s)? Sport, Education and Society, 5(1), 71–87.

Pill, S. (2011). Enhancing moving, learning and achieving through sport teaching in physical education by learning from digital game design. In Edited Proceedings of the 27th ACHPER International Conference (p. 78-).

Pill, S. (2014). Game play: What does it mean for pedagogy to think like a game developer? Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 85(1), 9-15.

Pill, S., & Harvey, S. (2019). A narrative review of children’s movement competence research 1997-2017. Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research, 81(1), 47-74.

Porter, D., & Felstead, R. (2025). Drill, physical exercises, and outdoor games in English elementary schools, c.1870–1902, with particular reference to Birmingham. Sport in History, 45(4), 550–576.

Richards, K. A., Hemphill, M. A., Shiver, V. N., Gaudreault, K. L., & Ramsey, V. (2023). Teaching physical education in an urban intensive environment. Urban Education, 58(8), 1745-1771.

Suzuki, N. (2025). Badminton: Tactical Games Model–A Plural Virtual Reality Approach (Japan). In Game-based Approaches in Physical Education (pp. 170-182). Routledge.