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| Feature | No.65 October 2013 |

What is the Relevance of Physical Literacy for Adults?

Len Almond

Abstract

In this article I propose to explore how physical literacy can be applied to adults. I shall raise questions about the process in which practitioners work with adults. This will lead to a discussion on empowerment and its significance in the promotion of physical literacy.

Making the Case for Physical Literacy

If we examine the most recent definition of physical literacy by Professor Whitehead (2013) she identifies the following specific features (1) the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and

(2) understanding to value and (3) take responsibility for maintaining purposeful physical pursuits/activities throughout the life-course.

The first feature represents common aspects of work shared with physical education and the language that practitioners use when they explain what they are trying to achieve. However, the ‘understanding’ to ‘value’ and ‘take responsibility’ imply something very different.

Translating these dispositions into action steps implies that the adult will acquire these dispositions over time, come to appreciate what purposeful physical pursuits have to offer and learn to love them. They will have support of practitioners who have the skills to enable the adult to understand, value and take responsibility for participation. This does not exclude the possibility that an adult may come to this appreciation of his or her own volition.

So, what is the current situation? Is the adult population already sufficiently active because they have understood the value of purposeful physical pursuits or are some adults simply not convinced?

The UK Physical Activity Guidelines (CMO, 2011) recommend that adults need to undertake 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on at least five days a week to benefit their health. Yet, a recent survey by the ESRC (Farrell et al, 2013) of physical activity levels paints a very different picture, Professor Propper (Bristol University) says that 80% of adults fail to meet national government targets1.

This represents only 3 per cent of the time a person is awake yet the majority of adults are sedentary and sit in front of a television for 16-25 per cent of a day. This point is reinforced when it is recognised that many adults are less active at weekends and holidays than weekdays even though they are likely to have more free time. Not having enough time to take part in purposeful physical pursuits e.g. walking, is not an adequate explanation any more. In fact from the evidence above, most adults do not see taking part in any form of purposeful physical pursuits as a priority in their lives.

This issue is confounded when it is recognised that most adults have some difficulty with understanding the public health message (Department of Health, 2009) and fail to recall how much physical activity they need to do. The media also compound this problem by frequently citing research that contradicts established messages or raising false hopes with reference to new fads. As a result, the picture can be very confusing for many adults.

It would be reasonable to say that we have failed to demonstrate that engagement in regular physical activities can be a powerful force in promoting a person’s wellbeing and enabling them to flourish.

In a workplace health project (Sport England, 2007) with sedentary adults to encourage them to become more active and maintain a commitment over a year, the evaluation revealed that the main reason for staying with the project was “I have more energy”. This association with being active on a regular basis with having more energy and a sense of vitality provides a powerful argument for a more positive message for inactive adults. We need to use this idea that purposeful physical pursuits can energise lives and enable people to feel that they have more vitality and dynamism.

In this article the term ‘purposeful physical pursuits’ is used because it is preferred to physical activity and avoids a specific association with sports.

Purposeful physical pursuits encompass a wide range of possibilities including dance, competitive sport, adventurous activities, fitness, tai chi and recreation activities without favouring one over another. Sports are often used as an overarching term covering many forms of purposeful physical activities but they cannot seriously be associated with dance or tai chi and in addition sports can put some people off engaging in different forms of physical activity.

A second argument for a positive message to promote a commitment to purposeful physical pursuits is their potential for enriching lives; an emphasis concerning widening peoples perspectives about what they can do in their lives, extending their horizons of what they are capable of doing, achieving a sense of success and feeling good about what they have achieved. We need to remember also that this engagement will often be in a social context and can lead to building new social networks and a sense of belonging to something that people value.

In the process of energising lives, increasing vitality and dynamism and enriching lives, purposeful physical pursuits enable individuals to build a wellbeing resource that underpins their sense of flourishing well. A commitment to taking part in a purposeful physical pursuit on a regular basis can have positive effects on the complex inter-related systems of one’s body leading to an optimal level of functioning. It is this process that leads to feelings of vitality, energy and dynamism and the achievement of a wellbeing resource. It also provides the enabling conditions for enriching lives in other ways, developing other capabilities and enabling people to feel good and flourish well. In the same way, certain forms of exercise can help to restore people’s physical capacity and aid recovery following ill-health, an operation or a condition that inhibits a person’s normal life. In some cases people may not be able to recover the good health they once had, but it will help them to be as good as they can be or better than they would otherwise be.

Thus, adults can be placed in two categories, in the first one are people who acquired an interest in purposeful physical pursuits within their family and were supported by a school (or were introduced to them at school) and have maintained an interest and commitment. In the second category are adults who are either inactive (and report no physical activity)2 or are irregularly active in some sort of purposeful physical pursuit such as walking once a week, three times a month or just at weekend. In fact this represents the vast majority of the population.

An inactive adult (and perhaps a sedentary adult as well) is likely to be someone who had no interest in physical education at school or did not find the experience satisfying. As a result, engaging in purposeful physical pursuits is a low priority in their lives or it never crosses their minds even to consider finding the opportunity to engage in them.

For adults undertaking no physical activity or are irregular participants, the process of becoming more active will require a change in their normal behaviour. However, those who are inactive can be:

- adults who have no interest in becoming more active

- adults who have never had the opportunity to enjoy being active

- adults who have been turned off specific purposeful physical pursuits with bad experiences at school

- adults who dropped out from participating when they were young

- adults who are simply too busy with other forms of purposeful (but not physical) pursuits e.g. volunteering

- adults with family or caring responsibilities who finding time to be active difficult.

So, how or when does an inactive adult make a decision to take part in purposeful physical pursuits? A friend, a doctor or an advertisement (in a local paper) may trigger some sort of interest or need. For the inactive adult the most likely scenario is that they will either start walking on their own initiative or become a member of an organised local community for aerobics, pilates, joga classes or join a fitness centre with friends. In this context, they will come into contact with a practitioner who has qualifications and experience in a specific purposeful physical pursuit.

This highlights the complexity of enabling adults to come to appreciate the value of purposeful physical pursuits in their lives. In many ways it is similar to promoting these valuable pursuits3 in schools, however, children in schools are in a learning environment whereas making adults aware of these values is far more complex and demanding. This is a community health promotion issue that goes beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it can be addressed in the context of health practitioners and their roles in the empowering the individual to take responsibility for his or her own health.

An adult’s contact with a community health practitioner is crucial because positive experiences can lead to a love of being active, especially if the social group is welcoming and supportive. A great deal rests in pracitioners’ capability and understanding of how they engage with adults and provide positive experiences that stimulate a need to return to the activity time and time again. At the same time practitioners must avoid creating a dependency on them by individuals and take steps to empower the adult to take more responsibility for being physically active on a regular basis.

Practitioners engaged in promoting a specific purposeful physical pursuit have to go beyond their practical knowledge of the content that they can engage adults with and their basic understanding of supporting disciplines. Community health practitioners need to reach out and connect productively with disadvantaged communities, lonely or disinterested people, vulnerable communities or ‘hard to communicate with’ communities, but also they need also to reach out and connect with inactive individuals who could be persuaded or attracted to specific purposeful physical pursuits. Secondly, they need to engage them with a form of content that excites, attracts them and keeps their interest. These processes require two more capabilities for the practitioners – the capability to sustain the interest of the adults so that they acquire a commitment to be active on a regular basis and secondly they become empowered to take responsibility for maintaining their commitment.

If the experience of being active in a specific purposeful physical pursuit (or even pursuits) is rewarding, enjoyable and successful adults will return again and again and develop their interest and deep feelings of satisfaction in their participation. As the commitment grows, the adult will come to a greater understanding of the benefits of their regular participation and begin to value its qualities and role in their lives.

A changing Landscape

Over the past few years there have been major changes in the landscape of how the government works and as a consequence how the promotion of better health is involved. The White Paper Healthy Lives, Healthy People (2011) sets out the government’s new direction and proposals for public health; local authorities will direct health improvement and behaviour change will lie at the heart of this new initiative. This move will ensure that public health is responsive to the different needs of each community, it will create local freedom together with accountability and ring-fenced health improvement budgets. Public health leadership together with responsibility will be returned to local government. In this new initiative individual responsibility for behaviour change is a central issue.

Baroness Warsi (2011), speaking about building a new culture of social responsibility proposed that the country needs a “responsibility revolution” and a change is needed in society’s thinking. We need a conversion of the heart and mind, and it is a task that together we can do something about. Responsibility is about what an individual does and less about what the government can do. To bring about such a change cannot be achieved by government alone, it needs an empowered society. The idea of empowerment has had a major impact on development work and community action, but the theoretical principles underpinning this work have only just begun to influence work in public health. Thus, it is important to devote time to discussing the meaning of empowerment for individuals and communities because this has will have a major influence on how public health professionals put this theory into practice.

Drydyk (2008) in a critical review of empowerment suggests that to be empowered means that people are able to make decisions and influence their life-choices, overcoming barriers that hinder their ability to make informed choices in the opportunity structure in which they act. As a result, people will be better able to shape their own lives. He goes on to propose that empowerment as a goal is to have control over the determinants of one's quality of life and health, and empowerment as a process is to create a professional relationship with an individual client (or community setting) in which they take control over determining both the goals of a change process and the means needed to bring about a desired improvement. The empowerment process highlights that individuals need to have the means, the internal resources and skills, that need to be unlocked and nourished in order to enable a person to make considered changes and develop in a positive direction.

The concept of empowerment is important and represents a big challenge for all practitioners working with adults and promoting specific purposeful physical pursuits. However, this should not be taken as a professional’s right to impose their will. For the professional to have an agenda, other than facilitating increased control over the processes of change in a community or a person’s health-related behaviour, it would contradict the definition of empowerment as a process. It is morally problematic to attempt to make participants do what they have not consciously and deliberately freely chosen (Tengland, 2008).

The role of health practitioners has traditionally been seen as an educationalist who can give advice on what to do and how to do it. They are seen as experts in a specific area with access to information, resources and expertise. Laverack (2013) calls this a ‘power-over’ relationship. Another role has emerged and at its heart is the ability of the practitioner to enable the individual to gain more control over decision-making and his or her choices of action. He calls this a ‘power-with’ relationship and one that is non-coercive. He goes on to suggest that informed and autonomous choices refer to the capacity to be self-governing that lies at the core to empowerment approaches. The key attributes of the practitioner in an empowering role are as enabler, a helper, a motivator and guide to support others to facilitate change in their behaviour that is more health enhancing. Laverack quotes Per-Anders Tengland (2007) when he says that the logic of using an empowerment approach is justified because it is well founded and ethically sound to do so. Tengland (2012) compares behaviour change models and empowerment in the context of the ethics of health promotion strategies. He makes the point that behaviour change interventions can use various kinds of strategies to target people’s behaviour in the form of information, persuasion, coercion and manipulation. On the other hand, empowerment is a collaborative method where individuals are ‘facilitated’ to make changes in non-coercive ways. In his article he tries to show why we should prefer empowerment methods.

Thus, the health practitioners need an additional capability, one in which they facilitate a person’s behaviour change by enabling them to learn to take more control over the change process. They should be ‘experts’ on how to achieve an empowering process.

This implies that people can be inspired to recognise the significance of a personal resource and its potential impact on their lives. Health professionals need to recognise that it is not enough to provide people with knowledge about improving their health and provide information about opportunities, their professional skill must go way beyond this. Their knowledge and understanding needs to be applied in such a way that professionals can use their existing knowledge base of public health in order to develop strategies to ‘know what they can do with what they know and how they are enabled to frame possibilities beyond the conventions of the present’ (Bruner, 2007; p2).

Conclusion

In this article I have used the 2013 definition of physical literacy which highlights the need to address the ‘understanding to value and take responsibility’ for maintaining purposeful physical pursuits throughout the life-course. This is particularly relevant when dealing with adults.

It is quite clear from the surveys of participation levels that many adults do not value purposeful physical pursuits nor do they have any understanding of what they entail. It is clear also in the context of health that many adults do not recognise the significance of taking responsibility for their health.

As a result, there is a great deal of work that needs to be done. In the first instance, practitioners working with adults can learn a great deal from physical literacy, and proponents of physical literacy need to understand the challenges of encouraging more adults to engage in purposeful physical pursuits and seriously consider the role of empowerment. Practitioners would be advised to explore empowerment strategies but these need to be read alongside texts and articles on physical literacy that can provide insight into how this can be achieved.

In this collaborative process, adults seeking to engage in purposeful physical pursuits would be better served.

1 However, in this case the national government targets are not the same as the UK Physical Activity Guidelines (CMO, 2011). In the ESRC survey they see the target as performing moderate physical activity on at least 12 times a month that is 8 less than the CMO report. In this case there are likely to be considerably less adults meeting national health guidelines.

2 An inactive person or irregularly active person is one who does not meet the recommended (CMO, 2011) level of physical activity (30 minutes on at least five days a week) to improve their health.

3 See the article ‘What is the value of Physical Literacy?’ in this Bulletin for an explanation of its value.

References

1. Baroness Warsi (2011) Building a new culture of social responsibility. Cabinet Office.

2. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/building-a-new-culture-of-social-responsibility

3. Bruner, J. (2007) Cultivating the Possible. Presentation at the dedication of the Jerome Bruner Building in Oxford on 13th March 2007.

4. http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Transcript-Cultivating-the-Possible.pdf

5. CMO (2011) Start active, stay active: a report on physical activity from the four home countries' Chief Medical Officers. Department of Health.

6. Department of Health (2011) Healthy Lives, Healthy People: Our strategy for public health in England. HM Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/

7. Department of Health (2009) Be Active, Be Healthy: A Plan for Getting the Nation Moving. London: HMSO.

8. Drydyk, Jay (2008) “Durable Empowerment.” Journal of Global Ethics 4 (3): 231–245.

9. Farrell, L, Hollingsworth, B, Propper, C, Shields, M.A. (2013) The Socioeconomic Gradient in Physical Inactivity in England’ Working Paper No. 13/311. CMPO University of Bristol

10. Laverack, G. (2013) Health Activism: Foundations and Strategies. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

11. Tengland, Per-Anders. (2007) Empowerment: a goal or a means for health promotion? Med Health Care Philos. 10(2): 197-207.

12. Tengland, Per-Anders. 2008. “Empowerment: A Conceptual Discussion.” Health Care Analysis 16 (2): 77–96.

13. Tengland, Per-Anders. 2012. “Behavior Change or Empowerment: On the Ethics of Health-Promotion Strategies.” Public Health Ethics 5 (2): 140–153.

14. Sport England (2007) Evaluation of the £1 million Challenge, Manchester: North West Sport England Region.

15. Tengland, Per-Anders. (2007) Empowerment: a goal or a means for health promotion? Med Health Care Philos. 10(2): 197-207.

16. Tengland, Per-Anders.. 2012. “Behavior Change or Empowerment: On the Ethics of Health-Promotion Strategies.” Public Health Ethics 5 (2): 140–153.

17. Whitehead, M. (2013) The definition of Physical Literacy (July 2013). This can be accessed at http://www.physical-literacy.org.uk/definitions.php

Contact

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

http://www.icsspe.org/