This study set out to produce a working document for teachers and headteachers
in Coventry schools. This working document was written to
offer guidelines for physical education departments in the design and
implementation of their own curriculum and to raise their awareness
of the role that physical education can perform in schools.
It details recent trends and issues in the community and describes in
particular the philosophy of Coventry Education Authority. This philosophy
is reflected in the L.E.A. document 'Comprehensive Education
for Life' (Coventry 1982), and the working document responds to this
publication, in particular, to its commitment to life-long education
and the pursuit of active-learning styles. The implications these
local and national trends have for physical education departments were
examined and detailed in the working document.
Twenty-five interviews were recorded on tape and provided a data ·base
for analysis. Themes were drawn from these interviews and it was possible
to articulate major lines of development that key people in the profession
were identifying. Drawing upon the evolutionary development of the
document, interviews and seminars with key people in the field, it was
possible to identify major aspects of work that· ought to be developed
in physical education if the profession was going to translate important
aspirations into a guide for action.
The study helped to evolve a framework which describes a direction for
the physical education curriculum and also what it can sample and focus
upon. By recording this development in the working document, physical
education departments were then encouraged to explore this framework
and from using examples of current practice described in the document,
developed their own programmes.
Finally the working document presents a collection of teaching and learning
processes in current practice which help the teaching of physical education
focus upon the individual's personal development. Throughout the document,
suggestions for evaluating the curriculum, teaching and learning are
proposed, and physical education departments are challenged to review
their curriculum
