Transformative Learning and Teaching in Physical Education explores how learning and teaching in physical education might be improved and how it might become a meaningful component of young peoples lives. With its in-depth focus on physical education within contemporary schooling, the book presents a set of professional perspectives that are pivotal for realising high-quality learning and teaching for physical education.
With contributions from a range of international academics, chapters critically engage with vital issues within contemporary physical education. These include examples of complex learning principles in action, which are discussed as a method for bettering our understanding of various learning and teaching endeavours, and which often challenge hierarchical and behaviourist notions of learning that have long held a strong foothold in physical education. Authors also engage with social-ecological theories in order to help probe the complex circumstances and tensions which many teachers face in their everyday work environments, where they witness first-hand the contrast between discourses which espouse transformational change and the realities of their routine institutional arrangements.
This book enables readers to engage in a fuller way with transformative ideas and to consider their wider implications for contemporary physical education. Its set of professional perspectives will be of great interest to academics, policymakers, teacher educators and teachers in the fields of physical education, health and well-being. It will also be a useful resource for postgraduate students studying in these subject areas.
Introduction Malcolm Thorburn
Part
1. The Societal Perspective
1. Physical Education, Economic Liberalism and the Free Market: Professional
changes ahead? Malcolm Thorburn
2. Aims and Values in Physical Education: Can rival traditions of physical
education ever be resolved? Steven A. Stolz and Malcolm Thorburn
Part
2. The Theoretical Perspective
3. The Transformational Wind of Theoretical Change: A historic and
contemporary view of physical education Mike Jess and Matthew Atencio
4.The Primary School Teacher Perspective: Using an ecological framework and
complexity principles as the basis for analysing teachers professionalism
Mike Jess, Nicola Carse and Jeanne Keay
5. Start Young: The possibilities of physical education Mike Jess
6. Physical Education Teachers as Agents of Policy and Curriculum Change
Justine Maclean
7. The Role Professional Learning Communities Play in School Based Curriculum
Development Andrew Horrell and Rosie Mulholland
Part
3. The Practice Perspective
8. Creating Autonomy-supportive Learning Environments to Improve Health and
Wellbeing in Physical Education Shirley Gray, Fiona Mitchell and John Wang
9. Pedagogy for Student Motivation, Learning and Development in Physical
Education Shirley Gray, Kevin Morgan and John Sproule
10. Understanding Teachers Day-to-day Practice: Challenging the unfair
picture Paul McMillan
11.The Digitized Future of Physical Education: Activity trackers, personal
analytics and algorithmic biopedagogies Ben Williamson
Part
4. A Futures Perspective
12. Past, Present and Possible Futures Steven A. Stolz
13. Conclusion Malcolm Thorburn
Malcolm Thorburn is a lecturer in Education and Physical Education at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. He has taught extensively in secondary schools and occupied a number of curriculum development roles at local authority and national level. He has also published widely on aims and values, policy and professionalism and planning and practice issues in education and physical education.