Physical education down under: Fusion or confusion

At the International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance (ICHPER-SD) Conference held in Wellington in October 2006, the authors presented a keynote titled: Physical Education Down Under: Fusion or Confusion. This presentation was somewhat unusual as it took the form of a three act play. The story line was based around a final year teacher education student (Digger) who had a passion for physical education – doing it, studying it and wanting to teach it. In the first two scenes the story evolved around Digger planning for an in-class assessment – a 10 minute presentation on an issue relating to physical education and/or sport (in school). Digger was a dogmatic character who relished the opportunity to engage in arguments with his lecturers and fellow students about matters to do with physical edcuation. Although a ‘novice’ this helped him develop a good understanding about the purpose of physical education and its place in the school curriculum. The setting for the third scene was a lecture room at the university where the students were to give their presentations. To ensure the students took this task seriously, the Professor made it a competition. The prize for the student with the best presentation was a trip to the ICHPER-SD conference. Five minutes into the scene Digger was asked to step forward to deliever his presentation to the Professor and ‘Lady PENZ’. It was titled ‘Food for Thought’

"Physical education", "health and physical education", "physical literacy" and "health literacy": Global nomenclature confusion.

The title “physical education” (PE) is the traditional taxonomy used to represent the education discipline. Health and physical education (HPE) is regarded to be an all-encompassing health-dimensional title that has been recently embraced by various education systems around the world. Hence, it can be argued that PE and HPE are often used interchangeably by educationalists, portraying a similar meaning and understanding. This can be regarded as internationally confusing, as historically PE and HPE have represented different and at times paradoxical discourses and ideologies. Amongst the ambiguity of which title to use, PE or HPE, new terms of branding such as “physical literacy” and “health literacy” have re/emerged. The purpose of this interpretivist study is to identify if associated terms used for the original PE label are a help or hindrance to practitioners? Participants were asked an open-ended question relating to PE nomenclatures. The data gathered were analysed and findings confirmed that practitioner confusion does exist. It is suggested that children are first and foremost “physically educated”; therefore a strong, clear and comprehensive grounding in quality PE is essential for teachers and students

Social Cultural Factors Influencing Women’s Participation in Sports as Perceived by Female Students of the University of Ilorin

This study investigated the socio-cultural factors influencing women’sparticipation in sports as perceived by female undergraduates in the University of Ilorin. Two hundred female undergraduate students residing in school halls of residence were involved in the study. These were selected using simple randomsampling. A twenty-two item questionnaire based on  socio-cultural factors influencing female participation in sports was administered to the respondents. The findings were that culture, family background, religion, peer grouping and gender influence females’ participation in sports. In view of this, it was recommended that government should encourage participation in sports by providing scholarship and other incentives to female athletes who excel in anysports competition while mass media should organize enlightenment programmes that will mitigate the socio-cultural factors hindering women’s involvement in sports.Keywords: Student support services; Sports participation; Gender

Women and children first? Child abuse and child protection in sport

Child welfare and women's rights both feature prominently in contemporary debates on equal rights. Whereas gender equity has been a policy objective for the past thirty years in sport organizations, however, child abuse and protection have only recently emerged as a sport ethics issues. Arguably, child protection has now leapfrogged over gender equity as a policy priority. The chapter opens with a discussion of the role of children in sport in relation to opposing ideologies of social control and personal freedom, and outlines the development of child protection and gender equity initiatives in sport, including the establishment of the not-for-profit Women’s Sports Foundation (UK) and the first national women in sport policy in England, and of a dedicated Sport England/NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU). The shift in theoretical focus from ‘women’ to ‘gender’ has been accompanied by a widening of the general social policy attention away from solely heterosexual interests. Sport organisations have responded comparatively slowly to the new rights agenda for gay men, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people but it is argued here that the arrival of the CPSU not only gave huge impetus to the institutionalisation of child protection in sport but also forced sports bodies to address ethics and equity agendas more forcibly than they had done before. In this way, the issue of child protection has acted as a kind of ethical Trojan horse in sport. The paradox of child protection in sport, however, is that it has simultaneously drawn public attention to issues of abuse and exploitation and deflected attention away from the specific issue of women’s rights in sport

Interpreting and Implementing the Long Term Athlete Development Model: English Swimming Coaches’ Views on the (Swimming) LTAD in Practice

The LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development) model has come to represent a sports-wide set of principles that significantly influences national sports policy in England. However, little is known about its impact ‘on the ground.’ This study is concerned with how national sporting bodies have adapted the model to their specific requirements and how local interpretation and implementation of this is operationalized and delivered. Interpretation and implementation of the LTAD model used in English swimming was investigated through interviews with six elite and five non-elite swimming coaches in the north of England. While there were concerns with aspects of the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) regulations governing competition for age-group swimmers, the major concern expressed by participants was with over-emphasizing volumes of training, leading to the neglect of technique

Staff Training in Aquatics for Individuals with Disabilities: The Quest

Trained instructors in general programs have the ability and resources to initiate and follow through with developing water safe individuals who are capable swimmers. Specific staff training to prepare individuals to facilitate aquatic participation for individuals with disabilities is currently extremely limited. The purpose of this article is to examine the barriers to specialized staff training in aquatics for individuals with disabilities, to suggest necessary staff training content, and to propose topics for further research in the area of staff training. Seeking development of quality staff training programs for those working in aquatics for individuals with disabilities is the quest

The theory of planned behaviour predicts self-reports of walking, but does not predict step count

Objectives This paper compares multiple measures of walking in two studies, and the second study compares how well Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) constructs perform in predicting these different measures. Methods In Study 1, 41 participants wore a New Lifestyles NL-2000 pedometer for 1 week. Subsequently, participants completed a questionnaire containing measures of the TPB constructs and two self-report measures of walking, followed by two interview measures of walking. For Study 2, 200 RAF trainee aircraftsmen wore pedometers for 2 weeks. At the end of each week, participants completed the questionnaire and interview measures of walking. Results Both studies found no significant association between questionnaire measures of walking and pedometer measures. In Study 1, the interview measures produced significant, large correlations with the pedometer measure, but these relationships were markedly weaker in the second study. TPB variables were found to explain 22% of variance in intention to walk in Study 1 and 45% of the variance in Study 2. In Study 2, prediction of subsequent measures of behaviour was found to be weak, except when using a single-item measure of walking. Conclusions Recall of walking is poor, and accurate measurement by self-report is problematic. Although the TPB predicts intentions to walk well, it does not predict actual amount of walking, as assessed by pedometer. Possible reasons for these findings include the unique nature of walking as an activity primarily used to facilitate higher order goals. The use of single-item measures may exaggerate the effectiveness of the TPB model for walking, and possibly other forms of physical activity.</p

STUDY THE ROLE OF MASS SPORTS AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN A HEALTHY EGYPTIAN SOCIETY

A healthy society is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. The enjoyment of highest attainable standard of health in one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, political belief, economic or social condition‖ Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO), 1946. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has provided a definition of development as "development of the people for the people by the people" (UNDP, 1993). Egypt has been long considered as one of the most attractive countries to visit because of its historical treasures. Egypt instituted several sport-for-all initiatives in its post-colonial modernization. These included a government sports council in the 1960s and the establishment of a Ministry of Youth and Sports (MYS) in 1999. The MYS oversees national parks and seaside areas as well as a large-scale fitness mobilization walk/jog events. A major goal of MYS was to develop and maintain youth centers in all of Egypt's metropolitan areas that would service young people's needs in mass sport and physical activities(e.g., basketball, soccer, volleyball).With Egyptian population up to 80 million there are projects related to sport- for- all, events, and or organized programs (cooperative or competitive ) for large groups , including the general population participating in clubs, on playing fields, in gymnasiums , community centers and community recreation programs around Egypt. These were enough for the future of mass sport participation in a great nation with a great history in sport. The International Sport Management Questionnaire (ISMQ), created by Waters (1996), in order to determine the status of sport development in Egypt it was necessary that the ISMQ be translated in to Arabic. This would ensure that Egyptian‘s mass sport and activities leaders- all of whom speak Arabic as their ―mother tongue‖- would have every opportunity to completely understand each of the 51 question as posed specifically for mass sport and activities (and its development) and answer with accuracy, confidence, and reliability. The translation of the ISMQ was carried out by Aly&amp; Elmahdy who are associated with this present study, then distributed to 66 Egyptian mass sport and activities leaders at different youth centers, clubs, recreation departments, in 24 out of 26 cities in Egypt. Raters were asked to provide answers to closed- and open – ended questions (n=51) on the ISMQ, which ultimately resulted in scoring. (Maximum=33 points) of eight factor components: objectives, legislation, organization, implementation, physical resources, human resources, research and evaluation, and contribution to healthy nation building. Analysis of data was through descriptive statistics (frequency distribution using a histogram graph that shows the frequency distribution of variable to evaluate the mass sport and physical activities distribution). The results showed that Egyptians practice recreation, mass sports and physical activities as a tool to promote health and prevent disease. Running, soccer, and team sports are mostly practiced in the southern part of Egypt while in the north west of the country people mostly practice aquatic sports such as beach volleyball, swimming, surfing, speed boating , fishing ,rowing, scuba diving, sailing, etc. Because of population increases over the last decade facilities like parks, schools, clubs, beaches, water facilities, and youth centers are insufficient to meet the needs of the population. In addition, poor access to private clubs doesn‘t help Egypt‘s middle class to participate in mass sports programs and activities as long as those clubs have annual membership fees. Most of the facilities for mass sport and physical activities are located in the suburban areas cities such as Cairo, Alexandria, and Ismailia. Further south there are fewer mass sport programs and physical activities and opportunities for the Egyptian population

Effect of Class Content on Practice Time in the Physical Education of Elementary and High School Students

The article focuses on the efficient use of time in providing high quality physical education in schools. We explore the research base identifying effective physical education teaching in schools, in terms of academic learning time and other time-related variables in physical education lessons. We compare students’ activity levels in two types of physical education sessions which differ with regards to lesson content (technical lessons and games lessons), and to the educational level in which the sessions are given (three stages of elementary education and high school education). A total of 112 lessons involving ten class groups and 255 elementary and high school students were observed using the Placheck method (Siedentop & Tannehill, 2000). T tests were used to compare the academic learning time engagement levels of technical classes with physical education games classes. In the technical lessons, the students were active 45.6% of the time during the session, while in the games lessons the students were active 53.2% of the time. This difference is significant (p=0.002). These differences were not significant in the sessions taught in the first and second stages of elementary education. We conclude that scope for students to play a lead role in the physical education session is a determining factor in their activity level during the final stage of elementary education and in high school education. It is therefore recommended that physical educators periodically re-examine not only teaching behaviours, class structures and teaching formats, but also the types of activities they include, in order to provide effective teaching and learning environments for their students