Rethinking the relationship between pedagogy, technology and learning in health and physical education

Abstract

This paper seeks to address two key questions: (1) how could a pedagogically driven approach to the use of DigiTech in health and physical education (HPE) benefit young people’s learning and (2) what steps are required to develop new DigiTech pedagogies? The paper is a response to the largely pessimistic views presented in this journal by Gard, Lupton and Williamson about the role of technology in HPE. In this paper, we argue that while we need to be aware of the risks, we also need to explore the opportunities for digital technologies (DigiTech) to shape HPE in new and positive ways. Specifically, we argue that a focus on pedagogy is largely missing from earlier discussions. In mapping the evidence-base on DigiTech against a three-dimensional categorisation of pedagogy – in the form of learners and learning, teachers and teaching, and knowledge and context [Armour, K. M. (Ed.). (2011). Sport pedagogy: An introduction for coaching and teaching sport. Harlow: Prentice Hall] – we are able to demonstrate the value of a pedagogically informed debate on this topic. The paper concludes by arguing for a ‘profession-wide’ debate to co-construct, trial and evaluate new ways in which we should – and should not – use DigiTech to optimise young people’s learning in HPE.

Keywords:

• Digital technology
• Pedagogy
• Emerging technologies
• Emerging practices
• Digital learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Ashley Casey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8232-5727

Victoria A. Goodyear http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5045-8157

Kathleen M. Armour http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1430-7420

Notes

1 Wearable technologies are variously described as ‘self-tracking, personal informatics, personal analytics or technologies of the “quantified self”’ (Williamson, 2015, p. 134).

2 An application programme is a computer programme designed to perform a group of coordinated functions, tasks, or activities for the benefit of the user.

3 A member of any of the various bands of workers in England (1811–1816) organised to destroy manufacturing machinery under the belief that its use diminished employment (Dictionary.com).