Understanding the rationale for preschool physical education: implications for practitioners' and children's embodied practices and subjectivity formation

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of selected academic research literature that underpins contemporary preschool physical education. We highlight and interrogate diverse rationales and beliefs that serve to influence and structure preschool physical education in various forms. We speculate as to how preschool practitioners and children might engage in specific practices relative to these discourses. Our consideration of preschool physical education discourses relies upon a Foucaultian analysis of the major techniques of power and also raises possibilities of conceptualising subjectivity formation through his concept of the ‘technologies of the self’. Discourses related to motor skill development, play and physical activity, in particular, appear to be prevalent in the selected literature, along with a related pedagogical discourse concerning ‘structure and freedom’. These sometimes competing discourses arguably underpin competing agendas reflecting those who advocate supporting children's free play and those who propose more structured and interventionist practices in relation to young children's physical activity. We conclude that these diverse approaches lend themselves to interpretation and negotiation in the context of preschool physical education, with specific consequences for the embodied experiences and subjectivities of preschool practitioners and children.

Keywords:

• Physical education
• Preschool
• Discourses
• Foucault
• Pedagogy
• Play

Acknowledgements

We would like to express sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and helpful advice on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. In this paper, ‘preschool’ refers to children's educational experiences before they begin formal schooling (i.e. when they are generally aged three to five years). In many countries, ‘kindergarten’ is similarly defined. In the USA, ‘kindergarten’ caters for five- and six-year-olds in a preliminary year at elementary school before they enter compulsory education in Grade 1 (Bertram & Pascal, 2002). We include ‘kindergarten’ within our definition of preschool, and thus focus on children from approximately three to six years of age. The terms ‘early childhood’ and ‘early years’ concern children up to the age of eight years, be they at preschool or in the early years of primary school.