Case Study:

Michele’s Health and Physical Education unit

Teacher: Michele
School: Miles Franklin Primary School
Learning Area: Health and Physical Education (HPE)
Year Level: 5-6

Context

Miles Franklin Primary School is an International Baccalaureate World School. It is a public primary school in the Canberra suburb of Evatt in the Australian Capital Territory with close to 500 students enrolled in years Kindergarten to Year Six. Most of the parent community is highly involved with their children’s education.

Many of the students are involved in competitive community team sports outside of school and students enthusiastically participate in school sports carnivals, School Sport ACT gala days, and other sporting opportunities that arise. About half of these students, and in many cases their parents, highly value sport performance. There are also a fair number of students who have very limited exposure to sports. For these students, the only real exposure to organized physical activity and sport is through the school PE program.

The pedagogical challenge

Michele’s pedagogical challenge within her PE lessons was to try to shift the focus of a game or physical challenge away from winning or self-glory (or being the best) to a focus on inclusion. Highly accomplished and/or highly competitive players tend to take over games and less experienced students withdraw when not included. The aim was to make engagement in PE more inclusive with highly competitive players meeting less sporty classmates ‘where they are at’ physically and strategically, without compromising their own sport culture of excellence in performance. This required a shift from a me culture to a we culture.

Theoretical Basis

Michele’s approach drew on the Kaupapa Māori framework for culturally responsive pedagogy. This framework is based on five principles:

Power is shared
Culture counts
Learning is interactive and dialogic
Connectedness is fundamental to relations
There is common vision of excellence

Links to the five key ideas

Strongly connected – Students were given time and guidance to explore each other’s ‘lifeworlds’ and begin to understand and value the difference in sport cultures.
Challenging – Learning to peer coach was an intellectually challenging experience and took some students way outside their comfort zone.
Positive cultural identities – Students learned to value the assets their peers brought to the team.

The action research question

How can sharing each other’s ‘lifeworlds’ and peer coaching improve respect, empathy and inclusion during Physical Education lessons.

Doing the action research

To investigate this question, Michele redesigned part of a unit of Inquiry investigating Fair Play. The central idea of this unit was: Following and adapting game rules and using teamwork allows for fair and inclusive play. The focus of the unit had been the importance of rules and playing fair with the main emphasis on teamwork. For the purposes of this action research, and to improve her teaching practice, the focus shifted towards students learning to be intentionally more inclusive.

The Australian PE curriculum covers the fundamental movement skills and their application during physical movement challenges, sequences, and sports as well as the communication and social skills necessary for teamwork. Two of the standards assessed in PE for years five and six are directly related to the desired outcome of this research. They are:

Propose strategies to demonstrate respect, empathy, and inclusion.
Describe contributions they can make as a group and team member to support fair play and inclusion across a range of movement contexts.

The new unit began with students exploring how to work together effectively as a team to achieve certain goals during a series of physical challenges with these questions in mind:

What strategies can a group of students generate that will demonstrate respect empathy and inclusion?
Can the students describe the contributions they can make as an individual member of the team and as a group to support fair play and inclusion.

During the group challenges students worked in mixed groups to tackle the challenges (chosen by the teacher to make sure there was a range of abilities). After the activities students then had a group discussion around: What happened? What went well? What didn’t? Why? Did teammates help each other? How? What skills were needed? Who had those skills? Did they share?

The next step was to work through a Lifeworlds Tracker sheet to learn about each other’s sports experience, expertise, and attitudes. This was a one-page document that the group filled out together. They wrote their names along continuums indicating their level of experience and how they felt about exercise and competitive sport. There was space at the bottom for each student to record some things they are ‘really good at’. The discussions generated within the groups during this exercise were productive.

During the next lesson students were explicitly taught how to peer coach respectfully including asking for consent before physically manipulating each other. Using peer coaching strategies and the lifeworlds information about each other, the students remained in the original mixed ability groups as they tackled new challenges to together over the following weeks which included medley style relays, teaching each other new skills and an organised competitive team game. The final lesson (and an assessment of sorts) in the unit was a group challenge called Survivor. This activity involved moving a variety of random equipment (deflated ball, chair, skipping rope, rubber chicken, mat, etc) and all the people in the group from one end of the hall to the other end without throwing or rolling any of it and without anybody touching the floor. To succeed, it was essential to collaborate using their knowledge of the assets within the group and the spirit of inclusion built in past few weeks.

Student outcomes

During the first lesson, there was a fair bit of frustration while trying to accomplish tasks and finding ways to support the ‘less skilled’ members. After exploring each other’s ‘lifeworlds’ the students realised there were huge cultural differences in how they each viewed exercise and sport within their group and that they would need to work out how to support each other better to succeed. The medley relay day was an opportunity to demonstrate respect, empathy, and inclusion by recognising and building on the strengths within the group. After some negotiation (and a few trials) most groups were able to settle on combinations that led to success.

Students absolutely loved the peer coaching lesson at all grade levels and were highly engaged.

Student comments to each other during the lesson included:

“Just give it a little more power and it will be perfect.”

“Wow! That was a great try, now just move your foot a little further back.”

Over the course of the unit, peer coaching and the concepts of respect, empathy and inclusion were emphasised in every lesson. During the last lesson (the survivor challenge) which also served as a self-assessment, students were actively engaged in discussing how to use various group member’s strengths and praising each other for showing respect, empathy, and inclusion.

Student comments when reflecting at the end of the unit:

“In our group we gave each other time to learn each new skill.”

“DT took our feedback and made really good use of it.”

“Oh my god. That was so fun!”

“Our group had a great mindset.”

Teacher outcomes

Through this action research project Michele realised she had been making some assumptions about how much the students knew about their classmates’ personal sport culture. What she had been viewing as a seeming lack of caring and support from skilled players for their less skilled peers actually stemmed from a lack of understanding of their peers’ experience and comfort levels or lifeworlds. Allowing time for this exploration and explicitly teaching students how to peer coach and how to provide support for each other greatly enhanced her PE lessons. She felt that sharing each other’s ‘lifeworlds’ and peer coaching improved respect, empathy and inclusion during physical education lessons.

Michele found the action research project enlightening and valuable. Reflecting on her own pedagogy (both by herself immediately following lessons and with other teachers during the workshops and even with the students at times) allowed her to focus on her own practise in a new way. In regard to the process of action research, Michele found that having some pre and post documentation in the form of written student continuums and reflections, in addition to the anecdotal evidence, helped to confirm the results that she was observing.

For her PE curriculum planning in the future, Michele plans take the time at the beginning of each new school year to give the kids time to connect with their new classmates and explore each other’s ‘lifeworlds’ to understand and value the sport culture and assets they each bring to PE class. She will continue to explicitly teach and revise how to peer coach effectively. The words respect, empathy and inclusion will continue to be a key focus in all PE lessons.

Conclusions

In relation to her pedagogy, Michele made the following observations:

It is always growing even after 40 years of teaching.
She realised she was making assumptions about student behaviour
Provide students time to reflect on their own sport culture.
Provide students time to get to know their peers’ lifeworlds.
Continue to use the words respect, empathy and inclusion.
Explicitly teach peer coaching and revise it every term.
Viewing sport as part of a child’s culture was valuable.

Michele’s learning about her students included the following:

Sporty students didn’t understand the lifeworlds of less sporty peers.
Sharing lifeworlds enhanced empathy and understanding.
Most of students loved learning to peer coach.
Peer coaching led to improved relationships and collaboration.
All were students were capable of showing empathy.
Inclusion carried over onto the playground at recess.

And in relation to Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Michele learned:

Allows you to re-evaluate some of your own time honoured traditions
Allows you to improve your pedagogy
Drives you to develop new approaches
Culture is more than just family background
Increased inclusion by peers allowed participation by the less skilled.

In future, Michele plans to:

Continue to explicitly teach Peer Coaching
Provide student time to explore each other’s lifeworlds
Use the words respect, empathy, and inclusion every day in PE classes.
Develop more research questions that will improve her pedagogy