On Thursday, April 4th, I was asked to give a presentation on Teaching Physical Education (P.E.) from a sociocultural perspective to a group of young early childhood educators (ECE) at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto. Teaching students physical education has been and continues to be one of my passions throughout my 23-year career as an educator. I wanted to share with the young educators at Ryerson how to put theory into practice while teaching P.E.over the years and how it has helped me get to know my students and help them excel in the area of physical literacy.
Putting Russian Psychologist Lev Vagostsky's Sociocultural Theory (ST) into practice has always been my goal when teaching children P.E. from so many different cultures. In a nutshell, Lev Vogostsky believed that children were influenced by their external interaction and communication with an adult. He believed that children reach a higher order of thinking through the collaborative process between an adult (Teacher) and a child (student). Also that children experience continuous development, thus no set stages, at their own rate of development. Lastly, he explained how important it is to provide lessons to children that are in their zone of proximal development (ZPD), zone that educators refer to as the 'sweet spot in education,' a lesson that is not too hard or not too easy. It is called the zone of engagement.
ST became very popular in the U.S. in the 1980's. This way of thinking about children's development led to new teaching approaches such as cooperative learning or collaborative learning in the 1990's. When I graduated from the Ontario Institute of Child Studies (OISE) at the University of Toronto with my B.Ed. in 1996, the buzz word in education at that time was cooperative learning. We learned how to set up centers around our classes around different themes and/or topics that were cross-curricular. It was a beautiful thing...the students loved it! For the first time, each child was able to choose activities that were of interest to them and were able to decide how they were going to present their knowledge to their teacher at the end of the unit of study. Vygotsky stated that it was really important that teachers get to know their students well first, in order to provide lessons that were engaging to them culturally and academically yet also to provide lessons in their ZPD.
To take that theory and apply it in P.E. class is in my opinion a very simple process. First step before teaching P.E. is to put that sociocultural lens on yourself. As an educator we are taught from day one to self-reflect continuously every single day. Instead of looking at each student on how can you fix them, it is time to first look at yourself. Ask yourself the following questions:
What are my own attitudes about my culture and other cultures? What are my beliefs about physical education? How do I communicate with others in my culture? And how do I communicate with others from different cultures?
Bottom line is your own lens, your perspective affects how you teach kids.
In my talk, I share 4 personal teaching stories on putting the ST into practice while teaching P.E children ages 4-8
from different cultures. My stories take place in South Auckland N.Z., Eastern Arctic Quebec, Vancouver B.C. and Toronto Ontario.
To hear my personal stories, give me call and I would be happy to present at your school!
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