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| Feature | No.65 October 2013 |

Translating Physical Literacy into Practical Steps: the Role of Pedagogy

Len Almond

Abstract

This paper discusses a number of pedagogical implications of working to promote physical literacy. It looks at a pedagogy for translating physical literacy into action steps, a pedagogical process, pedagogical skills, relational pedagogy and the importance of giving learners a voice. The paper challenges practitioners to reflect on their work with learners and develop a pedagogy of engagement.

Introduction

It was emphasised in an article in Physical Education Matters (Almond and Whitehead, 2012) that the definition of physical literacy proposed by Margaret Whitehead was simple as well as complex. Its simplicity was seen as a major strength because it clearly articulated a vision of what could be achieved. However, this simplicity needs to be translated into meaningful components that enable practitioners to guide their practice and implement key messages and it is this process that is complex and demanding.

In the context of working with school age participants the key features of physical literacy have to be made accessible to the unformed and uninformed minds of young people. Their ability to evaluate life plans and make choices about what to do with their lives has not yet developed or more likely may not even have been considered. If we are to develop an understanding of physical literacy and how this relates to the importance of being physically active in purposeful physically pursuits throughout the lifecourse, there is a need to provide a detailed vision of what is entailed in physical literacy for all age groups, as well as clear and specific guidance to inform practice.

What are the building blocks that enable young people and adults to become physically literate?1

Developing a pedagogy for translating Physical literacy into action steps 2

In responding to this question and appreciating its implications, practitioners need to have a clear understanding of physical literacy so that they can develop and deliver an authentic curriculum, that is, one true to the principles of the concept. This curriculum will aim to ensure that all young people and adults:-

- Learn to love being active in a variety of purposeful physical pursuits

- Become competent performers in a range of purposeful physical pursuits

- Learn to recognise that being active in these pursuits can be rewarding and pleasurable and enable them to develop a commitment to an active lifestyle

- Have the confidence to explore participation in a wide range of purposeful physical pursuits and thus widen their life choices

- Learn to make informed decisions about the kind of purposeful physical pursuits they want to engage in on a regular basis

- Become perceptive and intelligent performers in their chosen purposeful physical pursuits

- Actively evaluate their life habits and patterns with respect to participation in purposeful physical pursuits that can enrich their lives.

- Withstand/disregard negative messages from significant others about the relevance of purposeful physical pursuits in their lives

- Learn how to accept responsibility for their own wellbeing and what they can do with their lives

- Acquire a sense of empowerment and agency - an ability to make choices and to control the procedures needed to achieve goals that the person values

- Understand that regular participation in purposeful physical pursuits develops a resource that enhances all round health and wellbeing and, as a result, people are more likely to remain fit and healthy throughout the life-course and into old age.

These aspirations paint a comprehensive and indeed challenging vision of what could be achieved in physical education and other activity settings. In addition they form the basis for the educational validity of physical education.

However, how can these key principles of physical literacy be translated into practical steps and meaningful ways of engaging with purposeful physical pursuits? A full explanation of this process would need to be very detailed so, for the purposes of this article, it is proposed that only two aspects will be addressed. The first is a neglected aspect of physical education: how can practitioners engage with young people (or adults) and promote purposeful physical pursuits? The second relates to what the essential aspects of physical literacy are that need to be explored through purposeful physical pursuits.

In order to address these two aspects, a focus on pedagogy will be used to demonstrate how the key principles of physical literacy can be used to guide practice. Underpinning this process is the idea of a pedagogical process and pedagogical skills.

A Pedagogical process

The pedagogical process of working with young people (or adults) is associated with helping them to develop as persons with autonomy and independence, to learn to ‘love being active’ in such a way that they become empowered to take responsibility to create a life-plan that includes purposeful physical pursuits that satisfies and offers challenges. The ability to bring this about is a crucial challenge for all practitioners and will entail the capacity for:

- Nurturing positive and enabling environments and establishing caring and productive relationships with learners

- Cultivating, shaping and nourishing appropriate dispositions that can enhance a person’s quality of life

- Establishing a pedagogy of engagement

Practitioners are needed with the professional skills to engage with people and help these learners to learn to love being active, recognise purposeful physical pursuits as an important priority in their lives, appreciate what they can offer, and care about their involvement and commitment. To achieve this, practitioners also need to foster learners’ capacities such as responsibility, independence, empowerment and agency so that they are able to make decisions about the kind of life they want to pursue and are able to make informed choices. However, to acquire the ability to do these things, practitioners will have to rethink their practices and adopt specific pedagogical practices and skills.

Pedagogical skills 3

The pedagogical skills required by practitioners are diverse. For example they need to connect with individual learners in such a way that kindles interest and enables learning to take place.

This includes reaching out to learners who are:

- Unmotivated/Reluctant participants e.g. those who have been alienated from physical activity

- Shy and reluctant

- Hard to communicate with/hard to reach

- Lonely or disinterested people

- Disadvantaged and disabled

Practitioners must engage all young people with challenges that will involve them and draw out their confidence and willingness to participate. This engagement process needs a hook that stimulates their curiosity and provides challenges that engage their interest as well as practices that are playful and also allow them to develop their confidence. In this process, the practitioner becomes a facilitator who is enthusiastic and empathetic. As a facilitator, the practitioner creates enabling environments and uses active learning as tools for promoting a love of engagement in purposeful physical pursuits, helping young people ‘get on the inside’ of what is available, recognising the attractions of these various opportunities.

Self-directed activities need to be seriously considered because they are recognised as intrinsically satisfying and are more self-engaging and self-fulfilling than imposed activities and enable learners to flourish. We need to consider that flourishing is also associated with people who feel in control of their own lives.

Within this process, the teacher as a facilitator needs to recognise the need to stretch the capabilities, attitudes and interests of individual students. The teachers’ understanding of when and how this can be achieved needs to be in tune with the way they are able to shape the opportunities that they make available. This is an important element in promoting a personal physical literacy journey.

Allied to a pedagogy of engagement is a commitment to building productive working relationships which could be called a relational pedagogy.

Relational pedagogy (building productive working relationships)4

Relationships and a social network are a central and valuable feature of human life which is fundamentally dialogical. It is through interactions with others that we are able to develop a capability for understanding and discovering much about ourselves. Indeed, much of who we are and how we learn is relational. Our identity is defined in dialogue with others and sometimes in opposition to what others want to see in us. We have a need for relationships and social contact that is natural and life enhancing and a failure to recognise this need is to risk our health and wellbeing.

Young people’s relationships with their teachers also have an impact on how they access opportunities in the curriculum, how they feel about themselves as learners and their accomplishments, as well as how far they are engaged in school life. In the same way, relationships with their peers can have both positive and negative influences.

We are partly shaped by recognition or lack of recognition by our peers and a person can suffer real distress or damage as a result of comments from peers that may reflect back a demeaning picture or even an image of inferiority. This may well influence how well young people take up opportunities available to them. This illustrates the crucial professional roles that teachers have in physical education. Practitioners have a role to play in how they engage productively with young people and establish positive working relationships and they also have to be aware of the relationships within groups of young people and nurture positive outcomes. The ways in which young people engage with each other and interact is an important area to consider. Practitioners need to encourage all young people to respect and help each other in the process of shaping positive images of a person’s self . They need to be alert to instances where a young person’s self-respect is threatened by inappropriate comments from significant others amongst their peers. This is just as important as facilitating opportunities for young people to improve their physical performances and accomplishments. This can only be accomplished in a community in which there is a shared commitment to action with a common understanding of the significant task in hand5.

There is a need to empower young people to acquire positive interpersonal dispositions, to take responsibility and recognise that their actions can have positive and negative consequences on others. This must be reinforced by a positive ethos within the running of a physical education community in a school (and also a sports club). A sense of belonging and a shared commitment to stimulate a real love of purposeful physical pursuits needs to be generated, as well as a desire to reach all young people and recognise that the context of this engagement can foster positive interactions.

Creating the idea of ‘Voice’ in Pedagogy

The idea of a ‘voice’6 is crucial for the development of pedagogy because it accepts that all young people (and adults) have a role to play in their own development. Giving people a ‘voice’ entails implementing structures that enable the voices of students (or adults) to be seriously considered together with the development of appropriate communication channels and procedures for listening to young people’s concerns, interests and ideas. Young people should be involved in all the important decisions that affect their wellbeing. Finally, teachers should be seen to be responsive to young people and prepared to consider and implement ideas that can improve their own practice.

Principles that should guide giving learners a voice

Practitioners need to:

- Have a genuine desire to hear what young people (or adults) have to say

- Recognise that young people (or adults) can contribute much to the learning process and can make a real difference

- Give learners the freedom to express a seriously considered viewpoint without feeling disadvantaged

- Listen to learners’ concerns and suggestions and be responsive to their needs

- Ensure that consultation topics are seen as important and serious

- Ensure that everyone is treated as an equal member of any consultation group

- Consult with young people about ‘what’ purposeful physical pursuits are accessible to all pupils

- Be aware of learners’ preferred ways of learning

- Ensure that any action taken following consultation is explained and justified to enable students to understand the wider context (alongside their own input) that shapes decisions

- Understand that there are a number of young people in each school (as well as adults in a community) who could be called the underserved – they rarely engage in any sort of purposeful physical pursuits. This group of students (or adults) need to be identified, engaged and action taken.

- Allow learners to take responsibility for their own practice

Thus, a practitioner’s responsiveness, attentiveness, watchfulness and perceptiveness are essential to good communication strategies to generate a shared meaning and an understanding of how to incorporate a ‘voice’ for young people into the practice of physical education.

However, prior to these pedagogical processes the conditions have to be created for learners to acquire the attitudes, abilities and accomplishments that underpin their understanding of how taking part in purposeful physical pursuits can open up their horizons to new experiences. These new horizons can offer different sorts of experiences that can excite, challenge and become absorbing activities that add immensely to the joy of being active and finding satisfaction in learning and accomplishment.

Creating a supportive environment

Donald Soper made the claim that ‘ you change society to make people better, not the other way round’ (The Guardian, 21st January 1993). An individual can only (or is more likely to) behave responsibly or learn to care about others if the environment permits and/or encourages this. Underpinning this pedagogical stance is a commitment to creating or maintaining a nurturing and caring context. This context is one that demonstrably stimulates and encourages every individual, respecting differences and nurturing strengths. Soper’s claim contains a great deal of insight because it has particular relevance for the idea of a nurturing and caring community that provides appropriate environments for young people to develop as persons and acquire a commitment to purposeful physical pursuits. In terms of physical literacy, there is a need to consider carefully what kind of ethos and culture is appropriate for promoting independence, empowerment, social learning and a sense of belonging, together with helping young people to have the power to make informed decisions and the ability to pursue goals that they have reason to value.

Advocates and ambassadors for physical literacy have to consider how the ethos, culture and environment for learning of individual physical education departments can be changed to assimilate and accommodate these additional and valuable ‘goods’. It is important that the environment, the school climate or the ethos of the way the physical education department functions is concerned with the collegiality and solidarity of the community in which learners are acquiring valuable qualities, abilities and accomplishments.

Teachers with their learners should be part of a community that has established an ethos that is conducive to the following:

- All individuals are valued

- There is a caring and considerate atmosphere

- There is a tolerant and sensitive attitude towards individual differences, needs and interests

- Fairness for all is promoted in the distribution of scarce goods

- Everyone is respected and trust is encouraged

- There is reflection on the consequences of personal actions and collective responsibility

- A constructive sense of the person is developed in which positive interactions and relationships with others are stimulated and pursued

These conditions can only be established when it is recognised that a set of common purposes and shared understandings about the enterprise of creating a learning environment and adopting appropriate pedagogies are desirable and can lead to successful common action. Just as teachers plan the content of specific purposeful physical activities to establish continuity and coherence, progression as well as development, they have to consider carefully how they can create the conditions that enable the development of a wide range of accomplishments associated with physical literacy (not just sport skills) for all their learners. Such a proposal reaches the very heart of fostering physical literacy.

Conclusion

In exploring how to translate physical literacy into practical steps, the focus has been on a pedagogy of engagement, a relational pedagogy and giving young people a ‘voice’ in their education. These are important steps that will challenge teachers to improve their practice and provide a more educationally valid experience for all young people. This is a huge claim but one that I would defend. There is still much to do and the Physical Education Matters articles in 2012 and 2013 provide a number of additional ideas; it is important that all these ideas are developed further. We cannot expect teachers to move from one position to another without careful consideration of the ‘problems of practice’ and the provision of evidence-based guidance that can truly guide and inspire teachers. Much of this article has focused on teachers but the content is just as applicable to adults.

Nevertheless, careful reading of this article and the whole of this Bulletin will provide food for thought and start us on a journey to discover new ways of working.

1 See the following article in this Bulletin: What is the value of Physical Literacy and why is Physical Literacy valuable?

2 See also Almond and Whitehead (2012) and Whitehead with Almond (2013) for more comprehensive ideas on this topic.

3 See Almond and Whitehead (2012) for further ideas.

4 For more information see D.H.Hargreaves (2004) and Bigger, S. (2010)

5 For a more detailed discussion of this topic see chapter two of Physical Education in Schools (Almond, 1996; p.21-33).

6 For more information on student voice see D.H.Hargreaves (2004). Flutter, J., and Rudduck, J. (2004) and Ruddock, J., & Flutter, J. (2004), ￼MacBeath, J., Demetriou, H., Ruddock, J. and Myers, K. (2003), Rudduck, J. & McIntyre, D. (2007)

References

1. Almond, L. (1996) Physical Education in Schools second edition. London: Kogan Page.

2. Almond, L. with Whitehead, M. (2012) Translating Physical Literacy into Practice for all Teachers. Physical Education Matters. Autumn

3. Almond, L. (2013) What is the value of Physical Literacy and why is Physical Literacy valuable?

4. Bigger, S. (2010) Self and Others: Relational Pedagogy for Critical Pupil Engagement. Swindon Philosophical Society, 14.1.2011. This can be accessed at http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/1304/2/Self,_Others_and_Pedagogy.pdf

5. Flutter, J., and Rudduck, J. (2004). Consulting Pupils: what’s in it for schools? London: Routledge.

6. Hargreaves, D.H. (2004) Personalising learning – 2: Student voice and assessment for learning. London: Specialist Schools trust

7. MacBeath, J., Demetriou, H., Ruddock, J. and Myers, K. (2003), Consulting pupils: a toolkit for teachers, Cambridge, Pearson Publishing.

8. Improving Learning through Consulting Pupils. London: Routledge.

9. Ruddock, J., & Flutter, J. (2004). How to improve your school: Giving pupils a voice. London: Continuum.

10. Whitehead, M. with Almond, L. (2013) Creating learning experiences to foster physical literacy. Physical Education Matters

Contact

Len Almond
6 Cottesmore Drive
Loughborough
LE11 2RL
United Kingdom
Email: len.almond@btinternet.com

http://www.icsspe.org/