Precision in Physical Education (PE) – What is its role? As usual recently, my thoughts get built up mainly due to professional life impacting experiences that gets me reflecting on our profession. What came up to a bit of an extent recently is the existence of the perception that spending time on understanding theories, sciences, underpinnings, etc. may be considered as being not align to the reality of school business on the ground. Recent encounters very well meaning leaders in the profession suggest that the younger the age group, the more we need to just get about being efficient in daily ..read more

It has been many months of not visiting my personal blogging habit as a way to delve more comprehensively into a job that can very easily take on an event or activity management role. There has been more than enough lamenting here on our seemingly ‘babysitter’ job for ‘fresh air’ in between the more important business of academic, examinable subjects. In a recent sharing by our highest education trained in-charge person in the nation, much of the discussion revolved around taking care of the learners in the best possible way without a focus on wanting them all to be alike in objectives and ach ..read more

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 ..read more

Structures and Ecology: Linear facilitation processes vis-à-vis non-linear developmental processes. Is it possible to have a linearly focussed structure together with a realisation of non-linear development of the learner? I don’t think I like so much all these descriptors with the word linear (or non-linear) pegged to it. Linearity or the lack thereof suggest a unidimensional process, with temporal (chronological) urgency or not. This type of versus discussions puts many off almost immediately, especially those in teaching where everything is based on neat time-based structures. Structures b ..read more

Recently, few perennial issues were discussed, mentioned, lamented, etc. concerning Physical Education (PE) and the way we deal with it, in my learning space. The mention of such points may get you going as a teacher or result in a large sigh of exasperation that there are always folks trying to intellectualise the field of PE when it should be dead simple. Let me try elaborate a bit more on some of these recurring themes for me. Pedagogy, framework, strategies, theories, underpinnings, models, etc. These are words that practitioners may not have the effort and time bandwidth to differentiat ..read more

So recently, it has been crazy. The amount of administration to support teaching seems to have almost overwhelm actual direct teaching matters. It is almost seems that because there is less direct focus on teaching but nonetheless an incredible amount of very genuine and sincere efforts to prep for eventual teaching scenarios, we drop the metaphorical ball of ensuring learning takes place. The preceding words do sound like a tired teacher rather than reality. However, encouraging events that happened recently was one sharing at an ASEAN (Association of South East Asia Nations) sharing opportu ..read more

I find these two words, Redundancy and Degeneracy, keep cropping up in my mind as I explore and delve further into how people adapt to the world they live in to hopefully get a better idea of learning. The words sort of represent a short cut for me to understand much of what is sometimes said about skill acquisition and learning in PE. Probably without giving justice to a proper definition, Redundancy refers to the fail-safes we have in systems to prevent too much reliance on any one process. This is vital in artificial systems and seems to be likewise in us too as complex systems. Degeneracy ..read more

Physical Education and Physically Educate Recently, a few encounters got me revisiting a few problematic themes for me. In a student-led and designed activity for a leadership programme, a group of student leaders introduced the touch-rugby pass as “you can only pass the ball backwards”. These are students who went through our Physical Education (PE) system and the cue/rule they used was a direct observable expectation of a pass which they conveyed without modification to their peers. Quite a few of the students were throwing the ball by first turning around and passing it backwards, sti ..read more

I was watching a semi-pro football team training recently. They definitely spent a fair amount of time building up their capacity in various developmental aspects through different drills and activities. Especially in the area of set pieces and fitness from the short time I manage to observe. Different people were leading different groups. I can sort of make out who the coach, the physical trainer, the assistants, etc. were. They were working with the different groups with different expectations with eventual outcomes probably about contributing to overall play. Picking out any one activity ..read more

Illustration from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test After about three years of formally putting personal thoughts to paper in order to expedite a more deliberate reflection habit within myself and hopefully growing it in the community, what are my outcomes? I must say that every one of my articles were written as a result of an observation, some experience, some reading and connecting it to what I think I need to do better as a Physical Education (PE) teacher. The role of a PE teacher beyond tangible specific outcomes within specific sports/fitness domains deliverables are seems vague ..read more