On the periphery of pedagogical practice in health and physical education (HPE): the importance of self-management skills for physical activity

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the article is to discuss, explore and advocate for the importance of self-management skills (cognitive and behavioural) for physical activity in health and physical education (HPE) in relation to the newly revised Australian Curriculum. This conceptual paper is presented as two halves. The first half presents an examination of the contemporary literature around learning about physical activity and fitness knowledge (PAFK). In doing so, I present the importance of physical activity and the role of school physical education in the development of cognitive and behavioural skills and the contribution these can make to HPE curriculum and pedagogy. The second half explores and interrogates the proposed sub-strand Making Active Choices of version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (AC: HPE). Here, I explore the literature as well as the proposed aims, rationale, content descriptions/elaborations and focus areas to ask questions of the legitimacy and value of PAFK and the role of self-management skills in contemporary curriculum policy. The contribution is timely, given the imminent development of the revised AC: HPE and its implications on curriculum and pedagogical enactment in primary and secondary schools here in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• physical activity
• concepts
• learning
• Australian curriculum

Introduction

Engagement in physical activity across one’s lifespan is seen as an important, worthwhile and valued pursuit (Arnold, 1979). Within schools, health and physical education (HPE) is the subject responsible for teaching students’ knowledge, skills and understandings about physical activity (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2022b). Objectives for the subject are diverse with Bailey et al. (Bailey et al., 2009) stating that HPE can impact student’s learning in cognitive, social, affective and physical domains. For the purposes of this paper, learning about self-management skills (cognitive and behavioural) during HPE will be the major focus. According to Ennis (2015) teaching students knowledge about physical activity, physical activity and fitness knowledge (PAFK) can empower students to become more physically active. PAFK includes the benefits of physical activity, how to perform movement safely and appropriately, and understanding why/where to participate/engage in physical activity. Moreover, learning cognitive and behavioural skills and how these processes apply to engaging in physical activity (Latham & Locke, 1991; Swann et al., 2021) should be seen as equally important to learning about knowledge of physical activity benefits or exercise effects within HPE.. can,

This paper is timely for several reasons: 1. there exists a shifting curriculum and policy landscape, with the development of a new sub-strand within the HPE curriculum called making active choices as part of version 9.0 of the Australian curriculum (AC) (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, 2022)¹; 2. irrespective of curriculum developments, there is new evidence that learning about physical activity including self-management skills has the potential to lead to important physical and psychological outcomes such as more physical activity opportunities (Wang & Chen, 2020; Zhang et al., 2021); and, 3. development of knowledge, skills and understandings about physical activity is often cited as an important objective for HPE curriculum (Cale & Harris, 2018; Pate & Hohn, 1994; Society for Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE), 2013; Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2022b). Furthermore, this article, seeks to make a contribution to the broader national/international literature on the role of knowledge and understanding (Cale & Harris, 2018), with a focus on the development of cognitive and behavioural skills (e.g. self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement). It is necessary to understand the place of these skills within HPE for several reasons: 1. Knowledge and understandings about physical activity are often posed uncritically, within the HPE literature, as the mechanism to affect behavioural change. Evidence from exercise psychology (Rhodes et al., 2019) however highlights that a disconnect exists between knowledge of physical activity benefits and physical activity participation. Therefore, self-management skills (such as those suggested throughout this paper) need to be explicitly taught alongside knowledge of exercise effects, benefits of physical activity and safety.2. There is new evidence about the place and role of both declarative AND procedural knowledge in learning about physical activity (Zhang et al., 2021) and 3. Governments realise the importance of skill learning not only for educative outcomes but also in the development of student’s and subsequently school’s health and wellbeing (Victorian Department of Education, 2023; Victorian Department of Education and Training, 2022).

The article presents literature on the importance of learning about physical activity within HPE curricula, including a brief historical account of cognitive learning as well as literature on self-management skills for HPE. It then seeks to engage and interrogate the revised ACHPE curriculum through concepts about physical activity (e.g. knowledge and understandings, physical activity benefits, self-management skills) as they are written in the content descriptions and content elaborations. Questions about the legitimacy and value of PAFK are considered. Using a frame of critique, I suggest that cognitive and behavioural skills are evident within the revised version of the curriculum, somewhat implicitly, and propose that one opportunity for making this more explicit is via the teaching of the cognitive and behavioural skill of goal setting. I conclude with a comment on the need to prioritise curriculum and pedagogies that give importance to learning physical activity in its multiple dimensions.

The importance of learning about physical activity

The formal (H)PE curriculum in most English-speaking countries espouses that students develop knowledge, skills and understandings to develop, perform and participate in lifelong physical activity (British Columbia Department of Education, 2023; United Kingdom Department of Education, 2013; Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2022b). For example, Metzler et al. (2013) state that an overall goal of PE should be to ‘ …  teach children and youth the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to lead an active and healthy lifestyle’ (p. 41). National standards statements from professional bodies such as SHAPE America also highlight the role of developing and demonstrating knowledge and skills in physical activity and fitness (Society for Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE), 2013). Similarly, the UK National Curriculum state that students’ should develop an understanding of physical activity and exercise that promotes fitness and an active lifestyle (United Kingdom Department of Education, 2013). According to Godbout and Nadeau (2022) one goal of PE is to provide knowledge skills and understanding of children and adolescents so that they become active adults that possess, self-direction, self-actualisation and self-regulation capacities to the management of their physical literacy. Knowledge about the facts of exercise, how to evaluate fitness, plan exercise and engage with self-management skills, such as goal setting and self-assessment are higher-order skills required to engage in physical activity and fitness throughout one’s lifestyle (Cale & Harris, 2018; Corbin, 2021; Ennis, 2011; Harris & Cale, 2018). Furthermore, burgeoning evidence from curriculum intervention work in the United States of America has found that secondary school student’s lack of engagement in fitness-enhancing physical activity could be linked to their poor understanding and lack of fitness knowledge (Zhang et al., 2021).

Re-emphasising cognitive learning

Historically within HPE, Gredler (1994) presented principles of cognitive learning in Pate and Hohn’s (1994) book on Health and Fitness through Physical Education. A decade later, Catherine Ennis once again raised the importance of cognitive learning in HPE during the C.H. McCloy lecture. Herein, Ennis (2007) described learning in terms of conceptual change highlighting how individuals think, reason and process information that expands, and plausibly modifies their existing knowledge base. Furthermore, Ennis wrote that ‘most conceptual learning occurs as a gradual accumulation of information through experience’ (p. 138). In addressing conceptual change, Ennis (2007) draws on constructivist approaches to learning and how this influences conceptual change or learning through the growth and restructuring of knowledge. Three levels of conceptual change are presented - enrichment (new knowledge is added and combined with previous knowledge), weak restructuring (process where a learner attempts to assimilate contradictory knowledge into their previous knowledge structure requiring conceptual reorganisation), radical restructuring (where conceptual structures must change dramatically to handle new or conflicting understandings).

To date, some studies within the HPE literature, in the context of learning about physical activity, have solely focussed knowledge acquisition (e.g. effects of exercise, benefits of physical activity) as opposed to the cognitive or behavioural skills (e.g. goal setting, social support) that can be applied to physical activity and fitness. However, over the past decade there exists burgeoning work that have begun to address this concern (Deng et al., 2021; Pasco & Ennis, 2015a, 2015b). How students come to learn PAFK should be of greater interest, with some nascent studies suggesting that PAFK has the potential to act as an enabling factor in the development of physically active behaviours (Zhang et al., 2021). Typically, within HPE, students may have been presented with activities or resources to be able to develop some cognitive knowledge during class. The inability to apply this beyond the classroom has been termed ‘inert’ knowledge. This describes the knowledge that students may possess but are incapable of transferring to practice, in other words, their inability to transfer this declarative knowledge to its procedural knowledge form. This continues to persist under two conditions: Firstly, the knowledge is absent or not presented in the most appropriate function for there to be transfer between the declarative and the procedural and secondly the classroom environment is not motivating, therefore a ‘cold motivation environment’ exists. As an example, during a common physical activity during HPE, such as the ‘beep’/PACER test (a measure of cardiovascular/aerobic capacity) within a fitness education unit, the teacher simply expects that by undertaking this performance measurement every year (or more than once a year) students will learn that developing aerobic capacity will lead to good health and thus a transfer of knowledge will occur from the declarative to the procedural, whereby students will develop healthy lifestyle habits. Unfortunately, when the teacher ‘rolls out the beep test’ [akin to throwing the ball out (Placek, 1983)] not only is there limited knowledge development or transfer, but explicitly the environment is not motivating. Zhang et al. (2021) demonstrated in their study with 291 middle school students that a majority of students were incapable of engaging in procedural knowledge to conduct fitness-enhancing physical activities. Despite this, some students demonstrated high declarative knowledge and high procedural knowledge. Other researchers, such as Pasco and Ennis (2015a, 2015b) and Wang, Chen, Schweighardt, Zhang, Wells and Ennis (Wang et al., 2019) have sought to understand students’ mental models or how their acquisition of knowledge during different learning tasks differed. Wang et al. (2019) concluded that whilst student performances with lower-level tasks did not directly contribute to knowledge gain, it did contribute to higher-level cognitive tasks thus indirectly affecting knowledge acquisition. Deng et al. (2021) investigated student’s conceptual understanding and cognitive architecture about aerobic and anaerobic capacity concepts. Using a mixed methods study, they reported on 291 students from 24 schools where cognitive knowledge was assessed via a knowledge questionnaire and conceptual learning structures were assessed using interviews. Results demonstrate the students do not possess knowledge of either aerobic or anaerobic capacity concepts. Furthermore, students tend to oversimplify the complex energy system interactions. Such findings suggest that teachers must present tasks and teaching and learning activities that draw on students’ previous conceptions and challenge misconceptions about these concepts to thus build knowledge and active connections to new knowledge being learned.

What are self-management skills and why are they important for HPE?

Self-management or behavioural skills consists of three basic processes: self-monitoring, self-evaluation and self-reinforcement (Karoly & Kanfer, 1982), collectively these are known as cognitive–behavioural techniques and they are important as they might be an effective approach for students to increase their engagement with physical activity more than simply providing knowledge (Cardon et al., 2009). The theoretical basis for these are based on the construct of self-efficacy, a confidence in one’s ability to perform a specific task or behaviour, which is an important construct of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997). Within HPE, the seminal work of Charles Corbin, as early as 1968, possessed components of behavioural skills for learning during HPE, this was known as the concepts-curriculum that later led to Fitness for Life and Project Active Teens (Corbin et al., 1968). Other research studies have included some components of self-management which include: the multicentre Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health [CATCH] (McKenzie et al., 1996) and Sports, Play, Active Recreation for Kids [SPARK] (Sallis et al., 1997). Research work with a focus on self-management skills during HPE, as a central research focus, has been undertaken by Trost and Hutley (2015) and the work of Haerens and colleagues (Haerens et al., 2013) in Belgium. More recently, Science, PE and Me!/Science of Healthful Learning projects (Ennis, 2015), Physical Activity-related Health Competence (PAHCO), (Haible et al., 2020)from Germany and the Physically Active Lifestyles (PAL) project (Harris et al., 2021) have also to varying degrees engaged with concepts and aspects of self-management skills. Self-management strategies include both cognitive and behavioural characteristics. Cognitive characteristics include: goal-setting, positive self-talk and self-praise whereas behavioural characteristics include record keeping, social support, self-reward. Lambdin and Corbin (2020) have suggested that such skills can be broken into three distinct characteristics: (i) skills that help you think about change, (ii) skills that help you make change and (iii) skills that help you maintain change (see Table 1).

Table 1. Self-management skills.

(i) skills that help you think about change	(ii) skills that help you make change	(iii) skills that help you maintain change
Self-assessment	Goal setting	self-monitoring
Building self-confidence	Overcoming barriers	Developing strategies
Developing knowledge	Time management	Preventing relapse
Improving self-perception	Social support	Thinking success
Building positive attitudes	Choosing appropriate activities	Thinking critically
	Improving performance	Positive self-talk
		Conflict resolution
		Saying no

Adapted from Lambdin and Corbin (2020).

Such affective and behavioural skills maybe important to develop if an individual seeks to engage in physical activity in later life (Trost & Hutley, 2015). Learning these skills must be a component of a contemporary and quality HPE program. As Corbin has written (2002) when highlighting the importance of the confidence/skill cycle ‘Learning skill build confidence, but confidence is needed to build skill. It is important to build skill learning and self-confidence’ (p. 133). Behavioural skills have the potential to empower students to become critical consumers of knowledge and strategies (Corbin, 2021). As part of developing such criticality, students need to also be taught that health and physical activity should not be solely the responsibility of the individual (Alfrey et al., 2019; Tinning, 1990). Furthermore, school HPE as a site for its development should provide space for students to learn and practice these skills whilst simultaneously acknowledge societal contexts associated with access to health and physical activity participation The rationale for engaging with self-management skills is that individuals that monitor their physical activity level and use goals to guide their participation are more likely to adopt and pursue a physically active lifestyle. Moreover, those that use social support have a better chance of engaging in positive physical activity behaviours (Corbin, 2021; Trost & Huttley, 2015).

The Australian context for HPE – version 9.0 of the AC

The original Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education (AC: HPE) was released by the ACARA in 2014 meaning that 2023 will be the tenth year this document has informed the teaching of HPE in this country. Each subsequent version of the curriculum was underpinned by a Shaping Paper (ACARA, 2012). The core principles, known as propositions, include educative outcomes, critical inquiry, strengths-based approach, health literacy and to value movement, that inform two underlying strands: personal, social and community health and movement and physical activity. According to Brown and Whittle (2021) implementation of the national curriculum was the responsibility of state and territory curriculum and school authorities, meaning that individual states, such as Victoria, made decisions about the extent to which the AC was to be enacted in the state. Reasons varied, but the flexibility that afforded individual schools developed for local contexts was considered a major rationale.

This latest version of the curriculum known as AC Version 9.0 was released in 2022 and subsequently approved by the Australian Education ministers in April 2022. In Victoria, notions of ‘adopt and adapt’ is the publicly facing position of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2022a). This process is supported by reference panels that ‘ … consider recent research in curriculum discipline areas and reflect on the current Victorian Curriculum F-10 and AC Version 9.0. The input from practicing teachers and discipline experts from each curriculum area is essential to this process’ (para 5).

The justification for an updated AC is that it is a ‘more stripped-back and teachable curriculum that identifies the essential content our children should learn’ (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, 2022). Summary of the key changes include:

the removal and reduction of content so the curriculum can be taught with depth and rigour, including a 21% reduction in the number of content descriptions, which describe what is to be taught and what students are expected to learn (para 1)

For HPE this means ‘ … strengthening the focus on students being physically active and increased content with a focus on activity in natural and outdoor settings’ (para 12).

In the revised statement on the aims of HPE, one of the five statements highlighted the importance of health and physical activity:

• HPE aims to enable students to: engage in and create opportunities for regular physical activity participation as individuals and for the communities to which they belong.

This revised aim directly relates to knowledge, skills and understandings and their development of content/discipline knowledge related to their physical activity participation and engagement.

Whilst the two curriculum strands remain the same: personal, social and community health and movement and physical activity, there exists updated informing statements for each. The new movement and physical activity strand states

The Movement and physical activity strand promotes appreciation of how movement in all its forms is central to daily life. Movement meets functional requirements and provides opportunities for active living. It is also a setting where personal, social and cognitive skills can be developed and refined. In the early years, the focus is on development of movement skills and physical activity participation through active play and minor games. The acquisition and refinement of a range of movement skills, concepts and strategies builds movement competence and confidence. This also develops the dispositions necessary for lifelong participation in physical activities.

Practical application is essential to the development of knowledge, understanding and skills across health and movement focus areas. Students should be provided with the opportunity to participate in weekly physical activity, as a minimum, as part of the HPE curriculum.

However, it is at the level of the sub-strands where change is most evident. The new sub-strands reflect the tightening of the content descriptions and focus on the importance of being physically active. Previously the three sub-strands were: moving our body, understanding movement, learning through movement. These have been replaced with moving our bodies, making active choices and learning through movement. Interestingly, there is currently limited available background information (May 2023) as to the rationale and background to the development of the new sub-strand.

For teachers to enact these content descriptions they are provided with additional information that are called content elaborations and these examples for secondary school HPE are available in Table 2. Teachers are also afforded the opportunities to use a range of contexts to teach these content descriptions and for the purposes of this article, two of twelve focus areas for the curriculum directly relate to engaging in and with physical activity. These are health-benefits of physical activity and lifelong physical activity. The focus areas provide the breadth of learning across Foundation to Year 10 that students require to demonstrate the knowledge, understanding and skills described in the achievement standard for each band of learning (see Table 3). The band-level descriptions and content elaborations provide guidance for how each focus area can be addressed in each band.

Table 2. Content descriptions and content elaborations for secondary physical education.

Content description (Levels 7 &8)	Example content elaboration	Content description (Levels 9 & 10)	Example content elaboration
participate in physical activities designed to improve fitness and wellbeing to investigate the impact of regular participation on health, fitness and wellbeing	• Designing and performing a fitness circuit they could implement at home • Researching and participating in new activities and how they can enhance health, fitness and wellbeing	participate in physical activities designed to enhance health, wellbeing and fitness, and design, apply and evaluate strategies for incorporating these activities into their lives	• Participate in a range of PA and evaluating individual responses • Performing a range of activities designed to improve fitness and how certain activities improve fitness • Setting realistic PA goals and designing and implementing these
participate in physical activities that utilise community spaces and outdoor settings, and evaluate strategies to support increased use of these spaces	• Designing and evaluating physical activity options that reimagine the use of community spaces • Promoting an understanding of minimal impact outdoor recreation in the local area	participate in physical activities that promote health and social outcomes to design and evaluate participation strategies for themselves and others	• Investigating community based PA campaigns and determining how they might fit in school-based campaign • Creating and evaluating proposals that promote the use of natural settings within the local community for PA
design and justify strategies to increase physical activity levels to achieve health and wellbeing outcomes	• Designing and monitoring a personal physical activity plan that proposes realistic strategies for increasing PA levels and reducing sedentary behaviours • Comparing their current PA levels to the national PA/sedentary behaviour guidelines and recommendation	design, implement and evaluate personalised plans for improving or maintaining their own or others’ physical activity levels to achieve fitness, health and wellbeing outcomes	• Using digital tools to design implement and monitor a personal fitness plan that includes timeframes, goals and specific activities that meets needs of individuals • Justify selection of PA included in PA plan linked to PA goals and wellbeing they wish to occur improve or maintain • Investigating target HR zones for a range of different people, how these can be measured and how they relate to health, wellbeing and fitness levels.

Table 3. Focus areas of the curriculum.

Health benefits of physical activity	Lifelong physical activity
Health benefits of physical activity addresses the impact regular physical activity participation has on individual and community health and wellbeing. The content supports students to develop knowledge, understanding and skills to make active choices. They explore influences on physical activity participation and choices.	Lifelong physical activities focuses on how participation in physical activity can enhance health-related fitness and wellbeing across the lifespan.

Interrogating the content descriptions/elaborations from a learning and self-management perspective

There is acknowledgement that the movement and physical activity strand (read HPE) of the curriculum has explicitly shifted its emphasis towards a broader health and physical activity agenda (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, 2022). This is exemplified by publicly facing statements of the curriculum body, ACARA that the updated curriculum is focussed on ‘ … strengthening the focus on students being physically active’ (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, 2022) (para 12). As teachers, teacher educators, scholars and researchers it is important that the profession consider how this will be both interpreted and enacted by primary and secondary HPE teachers within their schools and engaged with in teacher education and policy development and professional learning circles. To this end, there are several points worthy of interrogation. Firstly, what is conceived of as legitimate and worthwhile knowledge in physical activity and fitness? Secondly, where is the place of skills (read cognitive and behavioural skill learning) in this curriculum shift where there exists a strong knowledge/understanding focus? To achieve this and given the conceptual nature of this work, concepts of learning about physical activity (e.g. knowledge of physical activity, benefits of physical activity, exercise effects, safety issues, self-management skills) using a deductive orientation was employed to interrogate the aims, rationale, strands, sub-strands and content descriptions and content elaborations of the AC: HPE.

Is PAFK considered legitimate and is it valued within the revised ACHPE?

Historically within the profession, the dominant discourses of physical activity tend to revolve around the scientific paradigms of the body (e.g. anatomy, exercise physiology, etc.) and these get privileged through curriculum documents and through pedagogical practices of HPE (Johns, 2005; Kirk, 1990). Within this revised edition of the AC:HPE there is evidence for some optimistic change. What else tends to be placed on the margins in physical activity and fitness is the educational and learning opportunities beyond just knowledge about the benefits of PA and fitness, health outcomes and physical activity guidelines.

The updated content descriptions highlight two main conceptual areas: 1. Physical activity participation and engagement and 2. Broader beneficial outcomes for self and the community (e.g. fitness/health, social/community outcomes). For example, physical activity participation is acknowledged as being central in the making active choices sub-strand in the revised curriculum document. In fact, four of the six content descriptions across Level 7–8 and 9–10 in secondary school HPE (see Table 2) state that students should ‘participate in physical activities … ’, with other content descriptions focussed on designing strategies or plans for the promotion of fitness and/or physical activity.

At Level 7 and 8 the content descriptions state:

• participate in physical activities designed to improve fitness and wellbeing to investigate the impact of regular participation on health, fitness and wellbeing

• participate in physical activities that utilise community spaces and outdoor settings, and evaluate strategies to support increased use of these spaces

• design and justify strategies to increase physical activity levels to achieve health and wellbeing outcomes

And at Level 9 and 10 state:

• participate in physical activities designed to enhance health, wellbeing and fitness, and design, apply and evaluate strategies for incorporating these activities into their lives

• participate in physical activities that promote health and social outcomes to design and evaluate participation strategies for themselves and others

• design, implement and evaluate personalised plans for improving or maintaining their own or others’ physical activity levels to achieve fitness, health and wellbeing outcomes

In terms of legitimacy, these statements are likely to reaffirm a tension that continues to pervade the profession, that being should HPE be responsible for promoting physical activity at the expense of other objectives? Or should its focus be on the educational/learning aspect espoused by others such as Ennis? According to Haerens et al. (2013) there exist three counter points to an overt physical activity participation and engagement with a moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) focus: 1. There is limited time for HPE and those intervention and cross-sectional studies internationally highlight that percentages fall short of health recommendations, 2. Participation in MVPA may be counterproductive, as student experiences when MVPA is the dominant teaching strategy may be negative, and 3. PE has multiple objectives including the development of motor competence and students’ personal, social and emotional development. Given these points, teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy-makers should continue to advocate for openness of ideas and ultimately pedagogical practices that acknowledge broader ‘ways of knowing’ engagement with learning about physical activity within HPE. For the purposes of this article, broader ways of knowing include the shift from knowledge about physical activity (e.g. exercise effects, benefits of physical activity) to developing knowledge skills and processes about physical activity (e.g. self-management skills). Some scholars have discussed this as moves from declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge (Zhang et al., 2021).

Cognitive and behavioural skill learning

While the revised content descriptions nor content elaborations¹ are as articulate with clear statements related to self-management skills, they do however implicitly acknowledge the importance of these. The risk for teachers and students is that because content elaborations are optional and examples of what may be taught, it is plausible that students may not develop explicit declarative nor procedural skills in these areas.

One of the more common approaches in HPE in the teaching and use of self-management skills relates to that of goal setting, often framed through the Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-oriented (SMART) acronym. SMART goals historically have been informed by the seminal work of Locke and Latham (1990). Termed goal setting theory (GST (Locke, 1968)), the GST framework has been identified as a leading psychological strategy for improving performance (Locke & Latham, 1990) that ultimately leads to behaviour change, because an individual’s attention and effort are related to developing oneself in reaching that target. Needs to possess specificity, task complexity, feedback, commitment and situational constraints are all components of task performance embedded in GST.

In looking at the revised curriculum, there exists some curriculum statements (e.g. content descriptions and content elaborations) that are loosely focused on the self-management skills of goal setting required for successful engagement in physical activity planning and reflection. For example, at one of the three content descriptions at Level 9–10 state (see Table 2):

• design, implement and evaluate personalised plans for improving or maintaining their own or others’ physical activity levels to achieve fitness, health and wellbeing outcomes (Level 9–10)

Pedagogical approaches or examples of how teachers might teach this content within the revised curriculum sates that this can be achieved via:

• Setting realistic PA goals and designing and implementing these (my italics) (Level 7–8)

• Justify selection of PA included in PA plan linked to PA goals (my italics) and wellbeing they wish to occur improve or maintain (Level 9-10).

Empirically, findings from McDonald and Trost (2015) who examined a goal-setting intervention on aerobic fitness in 6th to 8th grade HPE found that students who received a lesson on SMART goal setting improved their aerobic fitness. As an outcome of the study, the authors stated that SMART goal setting is an appropriate educational and psychological strategy that can be embedded within PE to improve health-related physical activity and fitness in students. However, a recent critical review has questioned the use of SMART goal setting. If this review is confirmed through additional studies, it may call into question the curriculum, pedagogical and assessment practices that occur in HPE too. In their review of the use of SMART goals for physical activity promotion, Swann and colleagues emphasised that: 1. The SMART heuristic is not based on scientific theory, 2. Aspects of the SMART heuristic are not consistent with empirical evidence, 3. The SMART heuristic does not consider what type of goal is set, 4. The SMART heuristic is not applied consistently, 5. There is insufficient detail in the SMART criteria, 6. There is redundancy/repetition in the SMART criteria, 7. The SMART heuristic is not being used as originally intended and 8. SMART goals have potentially harmful effects for insufficiently active individuals, for example stress, anxiety and pressure, it may inhibit learning or individuals develop a zero sum attitude, that being goals might create an all-or-nothing scenario (Swann et al., 2022). The authors write of several important implications that need to be considered. First and foremost, that ‘ … goal-setting theory has evolved beyond performance goals as a one-size-fits-all approach’ (p. 46). Furthermore, according to Swann et al. (2021) ‘for participants in the early stages of learning (ie. School students, my italics) current practice in goal-setting may not be optimally effective’. Clearly, this has curriculum, pedagogical and assessment implications for what occurs in HPE. For example, the authors highlight the limited evidence ‘in the context of PA for learning goals’ (p. 46). I would extend this reasoning further by attempting to disrupt this interpretation and instead, suggest that the role of PE research and practice should include teaching and learning opportunities that incorporate the place of learning goals for learning about PA. Other approaches such as the development of ‘do-your-best goals’ or learning goals should also be considered alongside performance goals in the development of an individual’s self-management skills. This therefore also requires researcher’s, teacher educators, teachers and policy makers to develop appropriate educational resources to facilitate these ideas across the curriculum.

While it is to be commended that there is reference to self-management skills, much greater work is required to develop teachers’ and students’ skills in these areas. One rationale for the limited focus on these skills is that while self-management skills are seen as important in a child/adolescent’s development they are rarely taught explicitly in schools, perhaps due to other important foci or due to teachers’ lack of content and pedagogical content knowledge in this area (Cardon et al., 2009; Eldar, 1990; Trost & Hutley, 2015). This is an under-researched area of HPE teacher’s work, how they engage in cognitive and behavioural skill learning. As has been evidenced throughout this paper there exist examples of short-term interventions that have demonstrated positive outcomes, but this is yet to be considered as anything more than on the periphery of pedagogical practices for teachers’ in their teaching of physical activity and fitness.

Final considerations

While physical activity is seen as a worthy pursuit due to its position as both a context and content for HPE, physical educators must do more to enhance the learning opportunities for the students that they teach. These learning opportunities should include explicit teaching of knowledge about physical activity (e.g. declarative knowledge) and the cognitive and behavioural skills on how to become and remain physically active (e.g. procedural knowledge). This can be enhanced through balanced curricula that encompass content descriptions and content elaborations that consider knowledge and behavioural skills. Teachers should consider teaching and learning activities that engage with participation in and through physical activity to consolidate this knowledge and relate to the revised curriculum content descriptions of the sub-strand making active choices. Revisions made to the AC: HPE including the addition of the making active choices sub-strand, alongside more targeted and specific content descriptions have the potential to aid in this development both from a curriculum and pedagogical perspective for teachers. Work still remains for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy makers in developing teachers’ skills in the areas of self-management skill development given the developing research from both educative and psychological perspectives. Opportunities for ongoing professional learning for teachers are required. Researchers can develop a range of interventions and/or strategies (e.g. face to face learning, online courses) that seek to improve teachers’ knowledge and pedagogical practices. This is one part of an agenda focussed on improving the profession’s understanding of this content. Within Physical Education Teacher Education degrees, units/courses should be reviewed to ascertain how self-management skills related to learning about physical activity are taught and understood. To achieve these lofty objectives, a concerted effort is required by the HPE profession. If this work does not continue to develop, then students learning how to become and remain physically active, including developing goalsetting, or self-monitoring and self-regulatory skills will continue to remain on the periphery of pedagogical practices within HPE.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Dr Benjamin Williams, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Melbourne and Dr Cameron van der Smee, Lecturer in Education (Health and Physical Education), Deakin University for their collegial support and suggestions/ideas to strengthen the work in this paper.

Finally, if this paper poses interest for your work, please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss this paper and potential other projects, [email protected]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Trent D. Brown

Dr Trent D. Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Education (Health and Physical Education) at Deakin University, Burwood campus. He is currently the School of Education Higher Degree by Research Coordinator. His research interests are varied, but tend to sit at the interface of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment in primary and secondary schools and also in physical education teacher education (PETE) and professional learning.

Notes

1 Given the jurisdictional requirements here in Australia, each state/territory government will decide which part of the curriculum will be published in its state. The state of Victoria’s took a position that the AC: HPE would be ‘adapted and adopted’. However, at the time of writing it is unclear whether a consultation period will be held for version 9.0 of the AC: HPE here in Victoria.