Performance pedagogy at play: pupils perspectives on primary PE

Abstract

Physical education (PE) in England, has historically been and is increasingly seen as a subject in which political agendas can and are being enacted (Penney, 2008) as health, sport and /or leisure agendas compete for space against educational aspirations (Houlihan and Green, 2006). Against this backdrop, in 2012, the UK Government announced the launch of 'Primary PE and Sport Premium' (PPESP) funding (amounting to £450 million) for English primary schools, initially for three years (although later extended). Drawing on the theoretical work of Basil Bernstein, particularly his concepts, 'pedagogic device' (PD) and 'classification' (c) and 'framing' (f), this paper sets out to explore how, in a neo liberal outsourced world of primary physical education (PPE), pupils construct knowledge of PE. The analyses illustrate how a performance pedagogy appears to dominate the school setting this research took place in. There was a clear focus on sport rather than PE which in turns impacted how pupils saw PE and construct understandings of ability linked to PE, raising questions over the future direction of the subject.

Supporting Subject Justification by Educational Psychology: A Systematic Review of Achievement Goal Motivation in School Physical Education

“…Profiles combining high mastery goals and high performance or performance-approach goals partly also show an expedient character. However, any productive integration of these results into everyday school PE practice seems partially questionable due to an at least partially prevalent performance-pedagogical attitude of PE teachers and a popular PE-orientation toward sports, competition, and social comparison (e.g., Wolters, 2012;Coulter and Chróinín, 2013;Svendsen and Svendsen, 2016;Schierz and Serwe-Pandrick, 2018;Stirrup, 2018). For a practical meaning of these justifying results, a change of this basic PE-teacher habitus therefore seems to be both indispensable and promising.…”

Factors influencing a primary school teacher’s delivery of athletics

“…Sarah's strong emphasis upon practical performance and ad-hoc attempts to impart social and cognitive learning appears to support a Cartesian dualism -a view that the body is the 'doer' and the mind is the 'thinker' (Quennerstedt 2013;Grankvist, Kajonius and Persson 2016). In seeing the body and mind as separated, she may have felt her piecemeal attempts at developing pupils' holistic learning would stimulate the pupils' otherwise disconnected minds (Stirrup 2020). Such 'add-ons' may have also provided additional content to ensure she could 'teach' for the full duration of the lesson.…”

Parents’ Perceptions of Secondary Physical Education

“…Furthermore, Lleras (2008) found that participation in sports activities was associated with higher educational attainment and job earnings. Despite this, in a recent case study Stirrup (2018) highlighted that coaches, who were involved in delivering extracurricular clubs, fostered a competitive environment to ensure the school was able to perform to a high standard at school fixtures and competitions. This meant pupils were purposefully selected for the clubs and pupils who wanted to attend but did not perform to the desired standard were rejected.…”