Moving beyond sport in primary physical education

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Routledge Handbook of Primary Physical Education in Nov 2017, available online: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315545257-2 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.It is almost impossible to separate primary physical education from the notion of ‘health’. From policies to pedagogies to curricula, primary school PE is persistently positioned as a field that will, in numerous ways, enable students to live healthier lives. As the first line of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) document Quality physical education – guidelines for policy-makers asserts: “sport and physical education are essential to youth, to healthy lives” (UNESCO, 2015: 4). However, the ‘marriage’ between PE and health is not necessarily a straightforward, or even happy, relationship

They can't catch so what's the point in teaching them to play a game?

This is an accepted manuscript of a chapter published by Routledge in An Introduction to Primary Physical Education on 28/05/2012, available online: https://www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-Primary-Physical-Education-1st-Edition/Griggs/p/book/9780415613095 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Everyone has at some point been involved in playing games. Whether it is playing the full codified sporting version or more impromptu games played in the school playground, whatever the format and location, games form an integral part of our sporting culture (Jarvie, 2000). Games retain distinct identities, shaped not only by their rules, equipment and playing surfaces but also by distinctive terminology and metaphoric language (Blanchard, 1995). These game cultures can be mystifying, particularly for those who do not have an undying passion for them, or for those for whom games are a distant, but an all too often painful memory, of wet, cold, wintery days of obligatory participation at school. Games can pervade popular culture, with many people considering themselves an unofficial expert. Even the most reluctant follower of team games can become an expert when our national sides are playing, particularly in World Cup competitions

Celebrating the work of PGRs in Human and Health Sciences

The School of Human and Health Sciences is justifiably proud of its research. World renowned staff examine issues as diverse as criminal profiling, wound care and child protection. Emerging themes for research in the school range from examining mental health and well-being to innovative approaches to understanding crime, from the study of national identity to examining beliefs in witchcraft and possession. This diversity in research areas is reflected in the work of the postgraduate researchers (PgRs) registered for research degrees under the supervision of academic and research staff of the school. In order to showcase this research, the School hosts an annual research festival in which PgRs can either give an oral presentation of their work, or produce a poster. The launch of this new e-book is a showcase of research from the second annual festival in 2016

Knowing primary physical education movement culture

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by PublicationBackground: Mind-body dualisms create particular difficulties for researching and justifying learning and knowledge within PE practices. These issues are compounded in the UK by prevailing cognitivistic ideas of education, knowledge and learning. Crum (1993) suggests reconceptualising PE as movement culture as a potential solution to the limitations created by dualistic positions within education. How knowledge and learning within movement culture is positioned, however, was left underdeveloped by Crum. The aim of this thesis is to explore an embodied, action position on knowledge and learning, as a potential solution to this issue. Purpose: This thesis is driven by two purposes. The first; to examine and discuss how John Dewey’s theorising of knowledge and learning within experience provides a theoretical position on knowledge and learning within movement culture. The second; to utilise this position to explore how pupils’ and teachers’ actions within primary PE lessons constitute and negotiate the movement cultures within their school. Findings: In adopting a position which dissolves mind-body dualisms, movement culture allows the practical work of PE lessons to be considered as contexts of knowledge production. This opens up our understanding of different ways of knowing in PE through pupils’ epistemological ‘action-in-PE-settings’. Rather than creating another hybrid of educational ideology by objectifying what to ‘do’ or ‘know’, movement culture keeps the ‘who’ of participation in PE practice in view. Such a position is achieved because pupils are seen as ‘coming to know’ through their immediate and continuous experiences of sports and physical activities both in PE and beyond the school gates. By dissolving traditional dualisms within educational ideology, movement culture allows ideologies and assumptions about learning in PE to be decoded and managed. It also provides a framework to explore subject-matter for learning and analyses some of the disconnections which exist within PE practice. Conclusions: Reconceptualising PE as movement culture is not intended to create a logic of practice to which I claim PE should ascribe. In this thesis, movement culture offers a position from which to consider the continuity between PE and pupils’ lives within and outside of the school gates. Such a standpoint can challenge our ideas as to what subject-matter could be within PE and the possibilities of learning outcomes other than those that focus on performance sport or bodily training for fitness. From a research perspective questions arise in relation to understanding very young pupils’ experiences of knowing within PE and how learning and knowledge are embodied across other subject areas. Addressing such questions may help to support new understandings of learning and knowledge within schools that are concurrent with developing new methodologies and research tools. These may in turn support the continuing development of pedagogical practices

Lived experiences of undergraduate Physical Education students studying gymnastics and dance education

The focus of this study was to understand undergraduate students’ experiences of gymnastics and dance education within the scrutiny of modular learning in Higher Education. A phenomenological position was adopted in order to understand the wholeness of students’ experiences whereby identities are constituted through their lived lives. This allowed us to understand the students’ identities as relational to the learning and assessment context and their lives within and beyond the university. Open-ended interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of students who consented to share their experiences. Data were analysed using Merleau-Ponty’s theorising of identity as an embodied cohesion or habit between pre-personal and personal existence. This is revealed through opaqueness and transparencies of consciousness which in this study were revealed through the seven identities of the participants; Negotiating and surviving White space, Strategic masculine competitor, Seeking reassurance, Racially strategic to be unique, Seeking dependence to achieve, Strategically insular and Willing explorer. These identities help to shed light on the tensions Higher Education students may experience when confronted with new learning situations in which they are to be assessed. We concluded that getting to know students, and the opacities and transparencies of their identities, could be of great value in shaping their be-ing as students. In striving to understand the habitual behaviours of students, it is possible to understand how the subject-matter being taught might be received by students within the wider context of their be-ing-in-the-world

Negotiating the Daily Mile Challenge; looking-like a walking break from the classroom

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published by Routledge in Sport, Education and Society on 11/12/2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2019.1700106 The accepted manuscript may differ from the final published version.The purpose of this study was to privilege the views of both pupils and staff in one school’s adoption of the Daily Mile Challenge (DMC). Listening seriously to the views of pupils, who are often the unheard subjects in whole school exercise interventions, the aim was to understand the meanings derived from the requirement to practice the DMC. Data are drawn from non-participant observations, 4 individual teacher interviews and 4 pupil focus groups with a total of 12 students. In order to understand the function of the DMC to its participants, a socio-cultural position was adopted using Dewey’s ends-in-view to analyse the data. This process revealed that complete adaptation of the DMC in name and form created an indeterminate space both for the teachers and pupils; an in-between space of not-classroom, not-break-time, not-running and not-a-mile. This allowed the DMC to be completed when teachers could fit it into their teaching, which was not on a daily or a regular basis. This in-between negotiated space formed the overarching landscape of the DMC. For the teachers, promoting purpose through moving in an orderly fashion was characterised by looking-like the DMC. Within this end-in-view, the pupils had to find an acceptable way to take a moving break. Rather than address unfounded concerns about fitness and risks of obesity, the adoption of the DMC in this school has inadvertently highlighted an important need; for pupils to have an outside break from pressurised classroom performances and to have more opportunities for quality social interactions.Published versio

Curiosity killed by SATs: an investigation of mathematics lessons within an English primary school

By taking both pupils’ and teachers’ actions as the point of departure, this study aimed to understand governance within a primary school classroom. Video footage was recorded in an English primary school in which mathematics happened to be the focus. This data was analysed to identify the directions of both governance and self-governance and to help understand the consequences for pupil and teacher subjectivities. Our findings revealed the central role of national testing and inspection policy in constituting staff as ‘evidence hunters’ and pupils as ‘confessant and unafraid producers of evidence’. Both staff and pupils were complicit in creating sufficient space for everyone to fulfil their obligation to be accountable to the school’s senior leadership team (SLT), school inspectors and national attainment tests. As a consequence, mathematical knowing was simplified into a discipline of reproducing testable calculation, in which other possibilities of mathematical knowing were foreclosed