Blogger of the Month
Rob Gray is an experimental psychologist and sports scientist at Arizona State University who hosts the excellent Action and Perception Podcast. His key focus is around improving performing and speeding up skill acquisition, two things that PE teachers and school sports coaches should be very interested in. Recent podcasts that have application to PE are How Should we Space Training to Optimize Skill Acquisition? and Simple vs Complex Motor Skills: Do Training Principles Generalize?. All PE Teachers should check out his back catalogue of episodes especially interviews with Damian Farrow on Practice Design, Gabrielle Wulf on the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning and Jenelle Gilbert on mental skills training. What I really like about Rob’s work is that he makes theory accessible and gives clear advice on how to go about applying practical, as well as a comprehensive links section to every episode.
Top 10 Articles of the Month
- Dummy’s Guide to Physical Education (PE) – NOT! by Balbinder Singh on the curse of knowledge, experience and simplifying complexity when teaching physical education.
- What is fun, anyway? by Andrew Beaven suggests that that is a growing census that fun is really important if we want children to find forms of movement meaningful, but there continues to be a lack of consensus on what fun actually is.
- When is PE not PE? When it’s School Sport by Dr Ash Casey reviews a paper which proposes that the increasing importance placed on elite sport is having a negative consequence on decision making with regards to physical education policy.
- Healthying Physical Education is an excellent podcast interview between Risto Marttinen and Mikael Quennerstedt about Mikael’s recent BERA presentation on Healthying physical education – on the possibility of learning health
- You can’t teach skills by David Didau makes an interesting proposal about knowledge and skills. From a PE perspective we can only teach knowledge like principles of play, tactics, methods of training etc. Otherwise we are creating environments for practice, play and preparation so skill acquisition can occur.
- By mollycoddling our children, we’re fuelling mental illness in teenagers is an article from Jonathan Haidt on how we should be trying to prepare children for the path, not preparing the path for children.
- Gym Class Is So Bad, Kids Are Skipping School to Avoid It is an Atlantic article that suggests that PE’s portrayal in popular culture is deserved but provides a platform for teachers who are trying to buck the stereotypes.
- The Professionalization of Youth Sports by Changing the Game tries to answer the question ‘should we be creating a professional environment in youth sport?’
- Play Everywhere: Teaching Physical Education for a Better World (Why and How) is a wonderful piece by Nate Babcock about how PE could make the world a better place, but it requires a paradigm shift in practice by teachers.
- Developing Meaningful Understanding of Games and Sport in Physical Education by Shane Pill is a blog article that expands upon his recent paper on using Gestalt Psychological Principles in making meaningful understanding in PE
General PE
- The Concept of Physical Literacy
- Effective Teaching In Physical Education
- Closed and Open Practice
- Advice For First-Year Physical Education Teachers
- Physical activity an academic heavy-lifter
- Learning through play: what are the benefits?
- Traditional PE just doesn’t cut it – it never has’
- Physical activity programmes in schools aren’t working – here’s why
- Guide to physical education and sport
- Communicating aims and learning goals in physical education
- Is physical activity enough to offset the effects of deprivation on children’s health?
Primary PE
- How to Setup Nets in Your Gym
- iPhys-Ed.com in 2018: A Year in Review
- “Parents should set example for children in leading healthy and active lives”
- Ron’s Reflections
- How We Express Ourselves, Dancing
- How to Teach PE with Station Activities
- 5-Minute Challenge – WOW your students!
- This Is How I Teach 4-Square
- How have primary schools benefitted from the sport premium?
- For the Love of Exercise – February Fitness Challenge
- Gratitude
- The 5 C’s of a Physical Literate Child
Secondary PE
- What is resilience in PE?
- Can ability grouping in PE improve children’s physical activity?
- Uniform solution to encourage school children’s physical activity
- “It’s behind you!”: Looking forwards as an alternative future for physical education
- Coaching tactics and techniques – some ideas from Charles Hughes
- Using Grehaigne’s concept of the Internal logic of the game to introduce volleyball in PE
Academic PE
- Mock Moderation
- BTEC Level 3 Skill Acquisition in Sport
- BTEC Level 3 Anatomy and Physiology Videos
- ACEs & TIPs
Research in PE
- Physical Education: the allegory of the classroom
- Working Memory Capacity Limits Motor Learning When Implementing Multiple Instructions
- The role of deliberate practice and play in career progression in sport: the early engagement hypothesis
- Application of a constraints-led approach to pedagogy in schools
- Mission impossible? Reflecting upon the relationship between physical education, youth sport and lifelong participation
- “Deliberate Preparation” as an Evidence-Based Focus for Primary Physical Education
- Remembering instructors: play, pain and pedagogy
- Children’s perceptions of factors that influence PE enjoyment: a qualitative investigation
- Communicating aims and learning goals in physical education: part of a subject for learning?
- Principles of nonlinear pedagogy in sport practice
- Life on Easy Street: The Persistent Need for Embodied Hopes and Down-to-Earth Games
- Developing the practising model in physical education: an expository outline focusing on movement capability
- Charting Physical Literacy Journeys Within Physical Education Settings
PE Podcasts and Videos
- Kieran Smith and Rondos
- Kieran Smith Talks Positional Play, Rondos, Designing Sessions
- The secret structure of great talks by Nancy Duarte
- Using Mental Models to Make Better Decisions
- Building Relationships with Aaron Beighle
- Simple vs Complex Motor Skills: Do Training Principles Generalize?
- Transforming lives by improving the quality of coaching practice” – a conversation with Prof Keith Davids
- Steve Kerr, Golden State Warriors Head Coach
- The Australian Physical Education Curriculum with Laura Alfrey
- Putting Physical Activity at the heart of school life
School and Youth Sport
- 2019 – The year of progress not perfection?
- 50 Years and Counting – The Journey Continues
- Rick Shuttleworth: Understanding the Learner and the Learning Process
- Now THAT’s a Rondo!
- Herb Elliot and Ralph Doubell – Some Lessons for Today
- Why Skill Acquisition?
- How To Disguise Your Drills And Avoid Overkill
- Creative Relationships in Coaching
- What is the Game Asking You to Do?
- Belonging
- How to help your children manage their ‘butterflies’?
- Not many answers…but learning to ask better questions
- Make the sport fit the child, not the child fit the sport
Other Articles of Interest
- Me V Me
- This Simple Equation Can Change Your Life
- Meulensteen: How to polish a diamond like Ronaldo
- Sir Billy Connolly: ‘I don’t fear death’
- The Surprising Benefits of Journaling One Sentence Every Day
- New American Psychological Association guidelines declare ‘traditional masculinity’ harmful to boys and men
- How to Actually, Truly Focus on What You’re Doing
- Don’t fall prey to the cult of wellness
- The Neuroscience of Creativity: A Q&A with Anna Abraham
