Meaningful physical education and teaching for effective learning

 I had the pleasure of chatting with Tim Fletcher about the concept of Meaningful Physical Education (MPE) at a conference a few years ago. I enjoyed the opportunity to get this insight as my research and teaching is at the research-practice nexus on problems of practice and pedagogy. I believe MPE has much guidance to offer physical education pedagogical practice, however, the ideas of MPE are not new (which are acknowledged in the book - Meaningful Physical Education: An Approach for Teaching and Learning). 

More broadly in education literature, the idea of 'meaningfulness' has often been attached to the idea of 'relevance'. 

Relevance is something I have been chatting about for many years. This 2009 Edutopia blog here is a good read on why making learning relevant matters. An example I often use relevant to my local context, is the teaching of badminton in secondary physical education. Badminton would be taught locally in most secondary school physical education programs and in the old senior years (Year 11 and 12) physical education it was one of the most often selected activities to be taught as one of the performance contexts for grading. When I ask at conferences, events and faculty talks, who can tell me where the closest badminton club to the school can be found, usually, no one knows; and this is generally because there isn't one. Unless the school is a private/independent school competing in the idependent schools sport competition then the school is unlikely to have a school badminton team. What is the relevance of badminton to the present and long term physical activity participation preparation for the majority of students in this context? In contrast, most secondary schools will have 4-to-6 outside tennis courts. In my city, most suburbs will have access to community tennis courts, and most schools will have more than one tennis club in their catchment area. I did a Google Map search of tennis clubs within a 10 minute drive of the closest secondary (high) school near where I live, and I was surprised to see there are 11 clubs! I know the three clubs closest to my house each have muliple courts open to the public '24/7' - no booking and no fee, just walk on and start playing. In this context, is badminton or tennis more meaningful to the potential long term physical activity of students at this secondary school! 

Relevant learning means effective learning. Do the majority of students leave my local secondary school with the confidence in their competence to be able to walk onto a tennis court and 'have a hit' with a friend now or some time in the future, is something I often wonder? 

MPE premises that if students find the movement experience in PE meaningful then they are more likley to pursue that movement experience outside of PE. This seems to assume that opportunities to do that pursuit outside of the PE class exist and the disposition to do so have been curated through physical education.

Without relevance, students may not see the learning as important and may even see it as unnecessary, even if they have enjoyed the experience. [If interested, I write about influencing how people remember an activity here]

Relevance is a feature of quality teaching - teaching for effective learning literature as it is of MPE. In Australia, the past 20-odd years of teaching have been influenced by ideas like 'productive pedagogies' and it's derivitive 'quality teaching' to guide teachers of all learing areas. Based on teaching for effective learning literature like 'quality teaching', I find that 'quality PE' should have all of the hallmarks of MPE. For example:

Quality Teaching Dimension                                                    Meaningful PE Dimension

Significance/Personalise and connect learning                           Personally relevant learning

Intellectual Quality                                                                      Challenge and Competence

Learning Environment/Create safe and rigorous                        Social interaction, Delight & Fun

conditions for learning

Relevance is a key contributor to intrinsically motivating student learning.

'Meaning making is an active process'. That is, there is a link between the students in the moment awareness during an activity and their reflection on experience that creates 'meaning'. Furthermore, there is a link between the 'now' and past experiences. The teacher’s role is to structure the experience to help students "make" the mental connection happen and happen in a meaninful way.

The idea that physical education curriculum is based on teacher interest/what the teacher likes to teach rather than student interest is a common critique of what is labelled the common or traditional teacher-led multi-activity curriculum model. But since the mid-1960s, pedagogical approaches that emphasize integrating student interests and opportunity for physical activity to improve engagement and promote lifelong physical activity are evident. MPE seems well suited to supporting these approaches (e.g., see the work of Mosston, Sidentop, Hellison, Martinek and others). MPE also seems well suited to supporting quality teaching/teaching for effective learning in physical education. 

I bring MPE or relevant physical education down to just three things for teachers to think about when designing a physical education curriculum:

Relevance is a Personal Association with what is being taught (is it of interest?)

Relevance is the Personal Usefulness of what is being taught (does it have value in helping students achieve an outcome, 'task', a goal, or an ambition that they identified?)

Relevance is Personal Identification with what is being taught (does it resonate with the student sense of current self as well as their possible or ambitioned self?)

Thanks for stopping by and reading this post. If you would like to connect with me about a project to do with 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

Meaningful physical education and main theme models here

Developing Meaningful Understanding of Games and Sport in Physical Education here

Sources

Fletcher, T., Ni Chronin, D., Gleddie, D., & Beni, S. (2021). Meaningful physical education: An approach for teaching and learning. Routledge. 

Mills, M., Goos, M., Keddie, A., Honan, E., Pendergast, D., Gilbert, R., ... & Wright, T. (2009). Productive pedagogies: A redefined methodology for analysing quality teacher practice. The Australian Educational Researcher, 36(3), 67-87.

Pill, S. (2011). Seizing the moment: Can game sense further inform sport teaching in Australian physical education?. Revue phénEPS/PHEnex Journal, 3(1).

Pill, S., & Hyndman, B. (2018). Gestalt psychological principles in developing meaningful understanding of games and sport in physical education. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 37(4), 322-329.

Priniski, S. J., Hecht, C. A., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2018). Making learning personally meaningful: A new framework for relevance research. The Journal of Experimental Education, 86(1), 11-29.

Williams, J., & Pill, S. (2019). What does the term ‘quality physical education’ nmean for health and physical education teachers in Australian Capital Territory schools?. European Physical Education Review, 25(4), 1193-1210.