The below took a very long time to manifest. It is a combination of work stress, doubts about alignment of what I want with what it should it be like to be a Physical Education (PE) teacher, fatigue, etc. Amidst all these, my last impetus to just sharing my thoughts below (jumbled up thoughts!) came after a discussion with a fellow teacher in the all-consuming discussion of what PE is and what it should look like. This type of discussions doesn’t come easily and requires a lot of passion in the area to maintain that conversation when it does take place. I say it not in the way of an arrogant gift to look into an area but more a self-suffering willingness to explore a lot of what is already seemingly status quo. Status quo not because it is perfect but because of the tremendous job requirements of a teacher in a school setting competing with the demands of the content area. Question that keep coming up in discussions like those above; “What is PE?”, “Why does a cognitive focus PE lesson seems flat and incompetent?”, “Why does a technique driven PE lesson seem soulless?”, “Why does a values driven lesson seem too artificial?”, “Why are our expected outcomes not coming out?”, “How is a detailed lesson plan (the type we were trained with) learner focussed when it is the teacher’s plan?”, etc. So on and on the thoughts swirl.

In approaching a teaching scenario, the above diagram, Fig 1, seems to suggest a possible start with Learner Outcome consideration before moving on to decide our intervention strategy, Teacher Input. Or is it vice versa? What process does Fig 1 best fits; 1) The teacher’s thinking process when approaching a learning design? 2) Or is it better to consider the opposite flow? And finally, 3) Should it be a cyclical process?

With this little exercise on trying to get the steps right, it seems to support that we are very structured people and we seek clear, chronological processes to make sense of our teaching. We add to this challenge by also wanting to be very specific with our teaching outcomes, e.g. values, affective, skills, etc.  In considering this linear question, a middle section is suggested that adds a layer to the usual input/output observation. Let me label the middle step mention in the diagram above as the middle link. I put forward the possibility that much of what we want from learners doesn’t start or end at their total action flow intention to implementation cycle but rather a part of it (somewhere in the middle?). This makes it very challenging when we approach a lesson design with that expected outcome when that outcome is actually a part of something else, perhaps the extremes of Fig1, rather than including also the middle link also. Isthe journey and destination synonymous? Are our teaching models, strategies, approaches, etc. considering all parts?

Recently, I came upon a question asked on social media regards what is skill, or to be skilful and what does it mean for Physical Education (PE). There is a lot of evaluation and judgement put into a word like skill and whatever follows after that as a breakdown of the skill in question. We seem to know what eventually we want to see coming out of learners (a usual possible interpretation of what a skill is), we work towards it as best as we can and most of time, we get variations of what we expect. To some extent, it is the same for popular concepts of thinking (e.g. Making thinking visible – as opposed to it not being emphasised in our task), affective (e.g. We want students demonstrating resilience – as oppose to them having the lack of it if we are not successful in your efforts), cognition (e.g. We want students to use their mind in the task we give them – as oppose to them not using it), etc. Are all this attempts to put the horse before the cart too explicitly? Without doubt, as experts, we can predict much movement outcomes when it comes to skills, values, etc.

At this point, I will say that learners cannot demonstrate Skills and Values in Physical Education (PE), being a bit extreme to try bringing across a point. At least, not for the type of skills and values that represent a process that we hope is life-long and ingrained deeply in the person and consequent actions of the learner. If it is teaching to mean demonstrating a particular physical/action-outcome based on teacher’s expectations, it is possible. Teachers may see skills and values as merely selected demonstrated outcomes hopefully representing a deeper learning and learners seeing it as something disruptive getting in the way of their intentions and expectations. Could it be that we are all focusing too much on the extremes of Fig 1, rather than including middle link?

So, my attempt now is to figure out what are we doing well and not so well when we start our intervention planning by looking at a predetermined exactness of the outcome we want and working backwards. What I do observe as being totally not considered many a times is the middle bit, what happens within the learner because of our interventions. I believe we usually make an assumption that whatever the leaner is expected to present is exactly what happens within the learner. For example, I want a learner to demonstrate good use of cognition in a physical task, therefore what needs to happen within the learner is good cognition. This totally doesn’t explain whatever physiological/biological processes that needs to take place within the person in sync with its interaction of the world. We can get away without considering this middle bit most times and the learner will just adapt and overcome in our task to present a similarity to what we are seeking, maybe using a learning process that is easily overlooked by us or different from what we expect.

Let’s take an example of learners participating in a modified tag rugby game as a demonstration of speed and agility for the teacher in a physical health and fitness session when the learners are actually just enjoying a game that have passing, interception and scoring! Both learner and teacher are satisfied with outcome but for different reasons. The learner goes through an incidental internal learning process created unknowingly by the teacher. This is an easy to accept circumstance because both expectations are in the physical realm and looks similar. What if we are endeavouring to teach fair play, or some affective component, and go through a lot of effort to present scenarios for learning as such. Both learner and teacher may think they reach their outcomes, only with the learners reaching one that is totally out of synch with the teacher, making the affective expectation significantly misdiagnose. In both examples, we took a cross-sectional definition of a process outcome to represent that outcome. 

The simple examples cited seems to point to the age-old issue of needing to know what you are teaching and assessing for confirmation. My interest here is what if we indeed have a missing ignored middle link and will never know what we are doing is really facilitating directly where we think we are heading towards. I will say that our usual expectations are broad enough that we can get away without acknowledging this middle link.

Let’s come back to the examples of wanting a skilful player, a thinking player or a player who shows specific affective characteristics.  We design elaborate lessons starting with these aims, hoping to see what we want to see. We go through with the lessons and usually find it hard to decide if we had achieved what we need to. There was a recent request for a study by a university that came to me, where researches will attempt look at classes (2 Sessions) and interview learners, in the hope of identifying values being taught. We are keen to know if we have taught the life-skills that we expect of Physical Education and Sports. I also have other colleagues in the fraternity looking very seriously at how values can be brought across by coaches in their sessions, including making it as part of coaching accreditation processes through observations and therefore a compulsory part of professional development.

My take is that it is tough. I come from the specific perspective that as long as we are not sure of or ignore the middle link, what we get are just cross-sectional outcomes without realisation of needed developmental processes accompanying skills, values, etc. In other words, the actual internal processes within a learner to achieve thinking, affective characteristics, values, skills, etc. may not be aligned to what we want as final outcomes.

So, what are possible alternative approaches to all these? One simplistic possibility is to really ask ourselves when we observe desired behaviours from learners or from role models, where we think it came from. The only answer not allowed is that it came from our direct instructions to display such behaviour.

For example, we see a young player assisting an opponent after a fall in a game. Is this behaviour an outcome of us telling players during training to do it, because of showing them a similar scenario clip on social media during a teachable moment, as a result of values friendly policy and structure in schools or is it due to a much longer, deeper involvement of a culture of respect for others, probably demonstrated and led by significant adults?

Using the same thinking flow, when we see a player demonstrate incredibly creative passing in a seemingly hopeless situation, is it because they went through drills on it, went through cognitive sessions where such similar (hardly possible to have exact ones) scenarios were played out or as a result of having experienced a rich enough learning environment that allowed such creativity to emerge, perhaps one where player is allowed to search solution space based on their abilities? The last two options can be very similar and I believe we have been using them implicitly without realising the impact of solution space exploration and putting more belief in our teacher effort in showing what is right or wrong.

Concepts like skills and values are just given fleeting definitions and the intervention strategies developed as a result are just too elaborately hinged on these simplistic definitions. We might be seeing skills and values as rather narrow cross-sectional exhibition of actions based on our own chosen context. Learners listen to our interpretations and that probably is the end of that process. However, learners do have intentions and motivation to do the business at hand, e.g. playing a game and accomplishing a task within it, i.e. scoring, intercepting, getting into appropriate positions, passing and everything else necessary to achieve their need and wanting to be involve. Affectively, learners do have their own value compasses developed through upbringing and daily living experience. The player with a shouting coach/teacher or a strict block practise regime training/PE session will not develop the behaviours we seek as expected. If anything, such behaviour might be observed despite our adult intervention.