‘Harmful and embarrassing’: The way HPE is taught needs to change, expert says

Humiliating beep and fitness tests, ‘harmful’ dodgeball games and exclusionary ‘pick your team’ exercises remain relatively common practice in schools, according to long-time HPE educator and lecturer Dr John Williams.

The expert in figurational sociology from University of Canberra says it’s time we got critical about how HPE education is being delivered on the ground.

“There’s very little, if any, learning that happens,” he tells EducationHQ.

“Instead, the kids learn that they don’t want to do the beep test because it hurts and it’s embarrassing in front of the rest of the class.

“So, there’s all kinds of practices that seem to persist … they’ve been involved in PE forever, things like dodgeball.

“And they’re just uncritically accepted as being OK, when in fact, they’re anything but OK.”

Although keen to emphasise that he’s not out to point the finger at overworked HPE teachers who might be just trying to survive in the profession, Williams says there’s an obvious gap between what’s included in the curriculum and what gets taught.

Take teaching children about personal and social responsibility for example, he says.

“Part of that is about teaching respect, caring for others, teaching about effort and those kind of things through movement.

“…but what [teachers] do is they tell the kids to be respectful. They tell them to be caring. They don’t actually teach them how to do that.

“So, the educational part is kind of out the window … and what happens in practice tends to be a very diluted [historical skills and drills] version of the curriculum,” he says.

You don’t have to look far to find the consequences of this, the expert suggests.

“If you ask someone in the street, 50 per cent of people, if not more – I’m just saying this anecdotally – will tell you how they’ve had a horrendous experience in PE,” he says.

And for those children who are forced to display their physical vulnerabilities in front of their peers and teachers early on, the result is often disengagement and notes from home excusing their participation come high school, Williams flags.

“The kids just switch off. I think by the time we get them in high school, (speaking) as a former high school PE teacher, all these kids have just lost interest – they’ve got no interest in it whatsoever.”

These issues are by no means new to HPE education either, according to Williams.

“I’ve had people say things to me like, ‘any kind of movement is better than nothing in PE’.

“I’ve had to say, ‘I don’t agree with that’, because it might be physical activity, but it’s not physical education.”

Vulnerable student groups including First Nations and gender diverse children, plus those with impaired movement, are at particular risk of harm and alienation due to poor PE instruction, Williams indicates.

However, he says there is a field of study that offers a clear framework and way forward for schools. It’s called figurational sociology.

Williams cites the work of Norbert Elias, widely regarded as one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th century, whose research he says helps us to see PE as a highly relational subject – one that’s especially rooted in student-teacher interactions and mutually dependent ties, with each player coming to the table with a different level of social power.

“I think teachers expect students … to want to be healthy, and expect them to want to be physical, and all those sorts of things.

“And there’s a compliance thing there as well, which I just don’t think is reflective of what reality is like.

“There needs to be a diminishing of the power balance between (HPE) teachers and kids…” he says.

At University of Canberra, Williams is drawing upon figurational sociology to train preservice teachers and runs a number of core units underpinned by the concept.

But there’s a challenge that awaits his students once they hit schools, he says.

“When we have our graduates who go in with evidence-based approaches and knowledge and so on about how to teach PE, they’re met with resistance in schools.

“They’re met with teachers who quite often will say, ‘Well, just forget what you did at uni, this is what we do in practice’.

 “And what they do in practice lacks purpose, it lacks learning intention,” Williams says.

Intent on addressing this scene, Williams has initiated connections and networking events between experienced HPE teachers and undergraduates in the hope of driving change.

“Now, if those high-performing teachers already in schools value what our students learn, and they try to see … that the students’ have got something to offer – they’re not coming in as an empty vessel….

“Until we address that perceived perception that universities know nothing and what’s important is what’s done in practice, [the vicious cycle will continue].”

Many HPE teachers are so passionate and involved in the subject that they risk being unable to cast a critical eye over how it’s taught, Williams contends.

“[They’re not] detached enough to have a look at what we’re actually doing and say, ‘Oh yeah, why am I doing this – the kids hate it’.

“If kids are not happy, they’re not going to learn anything.

“And if they go to a PE class where they’re embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated … it’s got to be much more than teaching skills and drills.”