Creating Meaningful Experiences in Physical Education
The internet is now ready to burst with exercise videos, workouts and live streams to help you make sure your kids ‘stay active’ and ‘keep fit' while at home. While our circumstances have changed, this does not mean we should stop looking for the same outcomes from our physical education lessons as when the kids were in school. That is, creating meaningful, personally significant learning experiences where your child is motivated to keep returning to physical activity.
Below I’ve referenced one paper by Stephanie Beni, Tim Fletcher & Déirdre Chróinín who have looked at the question of what makes a meaningful experience in PE or youth sport. I’ve briefly summarised their findings so that all physical educators might take them into account before they set their next remote ‘workout’. In fact, it's well worth going to their website to read this blog on creating meaningful PE at home.
Their 2017 paper and research since suggests that there are broadly 5 features we can consider to contribute to ‘meaningful’ experiences in PE:
Social interaction - One feature of meaningful experiences in physical education are the social interactions they bring. These can have a positive or negative effect depending on the context. Clearly in these socially distant times we’ll have to get creative in how we bring our pupils together and develop this aspect. Can we task them to socially collaborate through videos and challenges and exercise? If not with others in their class, with their family?
Fun - Unsurprisingly, fun seems to be an important feature in creating meaningful experiences. I’ve already posted a summary of a paper by Amanda Visek that explores what some kids find fun in youth sport experiences. Be sure to consider internal, external, social and contextual factors. It also seems it is important not to make fun the sole focus of a session at the expense of all else. Remember, some kids do actually have fun learning too!
Challenge - Think goldilocks - not too hard, not too easy. An ‘appropriate’ level of challenge works best. To know what this might be, we need to know about our charges on both a cohort and personal level. We can do so much better than a fitness class for adults, repurposed for kids. Although aspects of competition are related to providing a challenge, this is more about presenting them with an inherently challenging process rather than a competition that is win/lose. Gamification of a tasks might be useful here.
Motor competence - This is related in some ways to the level of challenge. When kids engage in tasks in which they have low perceived motor competence they’re less likely to enjoy the process, persist with it and subsequently create meaningful experiences. Conversely, when they perceive themselves to be ‘good’ at something, they are likely to try harder and want to do it more. Let us make sure any activity we set helps them to culture a sense of motor competence. A series of easily accessible progressions and regressions suitable for ability will be important here.
Personally relevant learning - The final feature of meaningful experiences is personal relevance. Does the task you are setting have a clear purpose and clearly interpretable importance to the learner? Are they able to connect what they are doing to their broader lives? Everyone is different, so there should be room to allow this variation and individuality. Let them take these connections where they need. Perhaps most importantly, allowing ample space within or around your activities for reflection seems vital in helping people strengthen the personal relevance of a task and find meaning in how a challenge/activity/task relates to them.
So there you go, through combining this blueprint for developing physical literacy with this framework for promoting meaningful learning experiences through physical education - our kids time in lockdown is looking a much more active, productive enjoyable and meaningful prospect!