Physical education futures PDF
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Physical Education Futures Can we imagine a future in which physical education in schools no longer exists? In this controversial and powerful meditation on physical education, David Kirk argues that a number of different futures are possible. Kirk argues that multi-activity, sport-based forms of physical education have been dominantinschoolssincethemid-twentiethcenturyandthattheyhavebeen highly resistant to change. The practice of physical education has focused on the transmission of decontextualised sport-techniques to large classes of children who possess a range of interests and abilities, where learning rarely moves beyond introductory levels. Meanwhile, the academicisation of phy- sical education teacher education since the 1970s has left teachers less well prepared to teach this programme than they were previously, suggesting that the futures of school physical education and physical education teacher education are intertwined. Kirk explores three future scenarios for physical education, arguing that the most likely short-term future is ‘more of the same’. He makes an impassioned call for radical reform in the longer term, arguing that without it physical education faces extinction. No other book makes such bold use of history to interrogate the present and future configurations of the dis- cipline,norofferssuchawide-rangingcritiqueofphysicalcultureandschool physical education. This book is essential reading for all serious students and scholars of physical education and the history and theory of education. David Kirk is Professor of Physical Education and Youth Sport at Leeds MetropolitanUniversity,wherehehasbeenDeanoftheCarnegieFacultyof SportandEducationsince2004.HeiseditorofthejournalPhysicalEducation and Sport Pedagogy. Physical Education Futures David Kirk Firstpublished2010 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon,OX144RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada byRoutledge 270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. ©2010DavidKirk Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans, nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writingfromthepublishers. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Kirk,David,1958- Physicaleducationfutures/DavidKirk. p.cm. Includesbibliographicalreferences. 1.Physicaleducationandtraining.I.Title. GV341.K5652010 613.7—dc22 2009003841 ISBN 0-203-87462-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN13:978-0-415-54993-6hbk ISBN13:978-0-203-87462-2ebk ISBN10:0-415-54993-0hbk ISBN10:0-203-87462-5ebk Contents Preface ix 1 The social construction of physical education: Present, past and future 1 2 Defining physical education and the possibility of the id2 10 3 Futures talk in physical education 24 4 The id2 of physical education-as-sport-techniques 41 5 Continuity and discontinuity: The residue of the past in the present 66 6 Four relational issues and the bigger picture 97 7 Physical education futures? 121 8 Securing the conditions for radical reform 140 Notes 146 Bibliography 150 Index 163 And I? How can I not be product of my times? Look to Mr Bligh’s bad language, I say, and all that that may mean. Our lives are a double helix of past and present. We are the lan- guage of our representations. We are caught in our webs of significance. (Greg Dening, 1993, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language, p. 9) Preface Although people differ in their assessments of the value of school phy- sical education, both while they are students and later as adults, a sig- nificant number report having learned to dislike physically active play, to disrespect physical education teachers, and to devalue their own capacity to learn movement skills. Given the ostensible purposes of most programs, that constitutes a fair indication that the conventional offering is a failure. Nobody needs to be blamed. We have a program- matic lemon. It is made so by design flaws, the limitations placed on teachers by workplace conditions, changes in youth culture, and the inexorable forces of history. There are no villains. It’s just that making lemonade with what we have is beyond most of us, and it probably wouldn’t yield the product we really want in any case. (Locke, 1992: 363) Thisbookisaboutphysicaleducationfutures. Thepluralisimportant, since I will argue that there is more than one possible future for physical educa- tion. In order to arrive at a position of proposing what those futures might be,thereareseveralothertasksIneedtoundertakethatarecontainedinthe statement by Locke. He claims that the design flaws in our currently domi- nant version of school physical education are so serious that our subject in this form is beyond rescue. We have, in his colourful prose, a ‘program- matic lemon’. I believe, with some considerable regret, that Locke is correct in this assessment, and so one of my tasks in this book is to assist you, the reader, to confront this unpalatable truth by carefully assessing and compil- ing the evidence on where we are now. For anyone committed to a healthy and sustainable future for physical education in schools, this may make uncomfortablereading.ButalongwithLocke,Ibelievethatunlesswefirstof all face up to and fully acknowledge the extreme seriousness of our current situation, until we grasp the nature of the problem, we cannot begin to contemplate a positive future. Havingestablishedpreciselythenatureofthedesignfaultsinthecurrently dominant form of physical education, my next task will be to spell out in detail ‘the inexorable forces of history’ that have led us to where we are.
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