Physical Activity in Physical Education: Pupil Activity Rating, Reason and Reality

Abstract

This paper reports research that has focusedon relationships between physical activity and physical education in the United Kingdom. How teachers might involve pupils, and pupils might involve themselves, in appropriate levels of activity during physical education was explored using pupils’ perceptions of physical activity level as a focus for teaching and learning in games. The research highlighted that attempts to integrate skills, knowledge and understanding relating to physical activity with ‘other learning’ in physical education need to consider a complex range of factors that influence pupils’ understandings of, and ability to, self‐monitor their physical activity level in varied and often unpredictable activitysettings. This paper draws attentionto the need for teaching concerned with physical activity levels to engage with the broader contexts of teaching and learning in physical education, the social dynamics of lessons and schooling, and wider social issues shaping pupils’ thinking about themselves and physical activity.

KEY WORDS:

• Physical activity
• young people
• effort perception
• physical education
• pedagogy

Notes

¹ Martin Yelling School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough University, England and Dr Dawn Penney, Edith Cowan University, Australia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dawn Penney ¹

1 Martin Yelling School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough University, England and Dr Dawn Penney, Edith Cowan University, Australia.