While teaching at an international school a few years ago, which was a wholly wonderful experience, the Athletic Director repeatedly said to me, “physical education is learning through movement.” Although that statement is and should be highly acceptable to all, the level to which schools can complicate this understanding by requesting written evidence of “learning through movement” is indicative of the irony we face. While some programs still struggle to do so, the movement towards basing physical education on physical literacy (exposure to a variety of skill sets, voluntary participation, striving for personal fitness, and an understanding and appreciation for the role that physical activity needs to play in all of our lives) continues to yield positive results. And yet, when schools purportedly embrace physical literacy and then confuse it with misguided interpretations of assessment, we are doing our students a disservice.
While it is essential that we distinguish extracurricular sports from physical education, typically implemented extracurricular programs and practices can shed light on the issue at hand. Extracurricular school teams usually get to train a few times a week over the course of a few months. During this time the teams usually play a string of local games that culminate in an end-of-season tournament. At the end of the season the coach will give an account of the season: the way the team developed, examples of individual player achievements, high and lows, and next steps as we say goodbye to the departing athletes. However, at no time during the sports banquet will the coach refer to written tests the players took during the season. And yet, we are all clear that the coach has been able to see the learning on the court/field and report that to us in summing up the season. Why then do we not trust the physical education (PE) teacher to be invested to the same degree in their classes, and to accurately share with others the learning through movement that has been observed on the road toward physical literacy?
Perhaps it all comes down to the ill-conceived human constructs in education. Grades and grade point averages are, thankfully, not a part of after school sports, but they are entrenched in the regular school day and are perhaps more ruinous in PE than they are anywhere else. Grades allow ranking and stratification, and as every educator should be aware by now, grades, ranking, and stratification have nothing to do with how we best learn. Rubrics do help protect teachers when they indicate what ranking and stratification has or hasn’t occurred in their class, and although in theory are designed for learning, often end up being more about grading.
At the heart of PE in schools is the need to provide students with exciting opportunities to learn in a dynamic setting. Does any student clap with joy when you ask them to sit on the gym floor and fill out a written reflection? The answer is likely a resounding no. And yet, as the educators in the room, it appears that this is what many have come to believe as necessary or have been required to implement by administrators. It is undeniable that reflection is a fundamental part of learning; having it replace a student’s opportunity to move during class, or even worse somehow represent what a student has learned through moving in class, is highly questionable. Students in school rarely, if ever, are a part of a program that does justice to their physical needs on any given day.
Schools need Directors of Teaching and Learning as educated, experienced mentors who guide best practices. They also need Curriculum Coordinators who can make sure that the school’s curriculum is documented accurately to inform teachers and others of specific curriculum details. Ultimately, teachers need support in becoming the best teachers they can be. If that somehow manifests itself in PE as students sitting on the gym floor, or in a classroom, writing about movement, administrators have failed to see PE for what it is and the incredibly important role it plays for our students.
While working at another big international school, my Vice Principal once called me to a meeting to tell me that allowing students to work in teams, and subsequently providing feedback on those learning experiences was going to get me, “hung out to dry.” This administrator’s perspective was that unless I had written assignments from individual students, I did not have evidence of an individual’s learning. As we reflect on physical literacy, it confirms for me that this administrator, perhaps blinded by positional power, or distracted by misguided curricula guidelines, failed to embrace and engage in the necessary conceptual discussion, to see physical education for what it is: learning through movement.
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Neil has been teaching primarily PE and health in the international school system for the past 34 years. He has worked and lived with his family in Spain, the People's Republic of China, Japan, Singapore, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, and Bolivia.
