By Richard Tinning.
Throughout the landscape of educational discourse there is frequent use of the strange word pedagogy –English pedagogy, pedagogies of inclusion, productive pedagogies and even physical education pedagogy. The purpose of this article is to explain the term pedagogy, how it is used in PE (physical education) and how the idea of pedagogical work might be a useful concept for thinking about teaching and learning in the area of HPE (health and physical education).
The term pedagogy (pronounced with a hard g and then a soft g) is considered by some (or many) to be an ugly term and rarely used by teachers. Some argue that pedagogy is an academic discourse about education that is largely sustained within the walls of universities and in the pages of obscure academic journals. Nowadays, however, the term has leaked to mainstream educational discourse and it can be found in many official documents of the education sector.
The roots of the term are to be found in the ancient Greek word pedagogue which referred to a man (always a male in those days) who had the oversight of a child or youth and who led the boy (only boys) from home to school. How the term pedagogy is understood in Anglophone countries is different to how it is understood in Continental Europe or Scandinavia. For example, to some in the Czech Republic, pedagogy is considered a pejorative term connected to the ideological state apparatus of the previous communist regime. In Sweden, it is common to hear pedagogy in connection with family and child-rearing practices.
There are multiple ways in which the term pedagogy is used within PE – to some, pedagogy equates with teaching PE. For others, it is synonymous with instruction. This slippage or lack of conceptual clarity is at times confusing and makes definitive distinctions between these terms difficult.
Dictionaries (for example, Oxford English Dictionary) give a clear and useful definition of pedagogy – ‘the art or science of teaching’. Indeed, this is a popular concept of pedagogy, especially in the USA. However, throughout the 1970s and 1980s it was the science of teaching that became the dominant way of thinking about pedagogy in PE. Although teachers might not think of their work as a science, educational researchers from the behavioural psychology tradition considered that pedagogical practice was underpinned by certain behavioural principles that can be observed, measured and amenable to scientific study. The instrumental focus on technical issues related to improving the practice of teaching was characteristic of much of the early work of researchers in PE.
Another way of thinking about pedagogy is as the process through which knowledge is acquired. Thinking about pedagogy as a process allows teachers to move beyond a technical focus on teaching strategies and ask questions relating to whose interests are served by particular curriculum choices and pedagogical practices.
When teachers ‘do’ pedagogy, they engage in certain practices, the purpose of which is to pass on or reproduce knowledge (such as how to play soccer or doing the front crawl stroke). The idea of purpose or intention is important for pedagogy. Someone may learn something from an experience or an encounter with a device or piece of equipment (for example, a young child finds a football in the backyard and, through trial and error, learns to kick the ball), but if there was no explicit intention to pass on knowledge (by a teacher, coach, parent, or other pedagogic agent) then there has been no pedagogy. Moreover, it can be said that as a consequence of pedagogy, it can be assumed that certain pedagogical work is done.
Pedagogical work
Pedagogical work, therefore, foregrounds the consequences of pedagogy. It is not concerned with what particular pedagogical practices are said to do, but rather is concerned with what knowledge, ways of thinking, dispositions and so on are actually (re)produced in/through particular pedagogical encounters. The term (re)produced is used to denote that there is both reproduction and production of knowledge happening here.
Most of what teachers do in PE (embedded as it is in the learning area of HPE) produces pedagogical work relating to three interrelated dimensions; physical activity, bodies and health. For example, when teachers do pedagogy for physical activity, it inevitably does pedagogical work on the body. Kids learn about their bodies (what they can and cannot do) in part through their learning of physical activities that form part of school PE.
One of the advantages of considering pedagogy as a process of knowledge (re)production, rather than simply the art and science of teaching, is that it enables teachers to shift their attention from a focus on the technical aspects of teaching strategies (not that these are unimportant) to a broader consideration about the consequences (both obvious and not so obvious) of the pedagogical encounters themselves. Think for a moment about primary school children engaged in a swimming lesson. The purpose or intent of a lesson might be to teach about how to do the front crawl stroke. Some (hopefully most) of the kids might learn what is intended, but maybe some also learn that breathing in this stroke can give you a mouthful of water, or that keeping their head under the water is scary. Such learnings are not what is intended, but nevertheless they can be a very powerful influence on a child’s desire to continue that activity. Think also of the swimming lesson in a secondary school context. Such a lesson will, inevitably, be a site for learning something about one’s body (it looks okay, it is too skinny, too fat, too immature, or whatever). Accordingly, the pedagogy of the swimming lesson might also result in pedagogical work on the body that was not in the teacher’s lesson plan.
Importantly, however, pedagogical work on/for bodies, physical activity and health is no longer (nor has it ever been) the sole preserve of HPE. Other ‘cultural players’ such as the media, government agencies, health promotion campaigns and the fitness industry also have vested interests (and these are not necessarily bad) in (re)producing certain knowledge about bodies, physical activity and health. Health promotion campaigns can be considered as a pedagogy designed to teach people about the importance of doing regular physical activity. In the recent 10,000 steps/day program, for example, the explicit message is walk more for health. In this case, the intent of the health promotion pedagogy is similar to that of school HPE, which attempts to (re)produce knowledge about the importance of physical activity for health. HPE is very much about educating the active, healthy citizen of the future.
However, just like the example with the swimming lesson, the pedagogical work of health promotion pedagogy is not always as the designers might hope for and it is possible that some learn that walking is important to improve their health but they still choose not to participate. Maybe the pursuit of the target 10,000 steps is too daunting and this puts them off?
Sometimes, however, the knowledge that other cultural players might reproduce in/through their pedagogy is not consistent with that which is taught in HPE. When this is the case, it is usually left to the students to negotiate a path of meaning through the myriad of confusing messages about the body, physical activity and health. However, the pedagogies of HPE have the potential to equip young people with the knowledge to navigate an informed pathway through competing knowledge claims in regard to physical activity, the body and health.
Engaging the ‘ugly’ word pedagogy and understanding something of the pedagogical work it produces provides a useful focus for teachers reflecting on their practice and its intended and unintended consequences. By focusing attention on the process through which knowledge is (re)produced, teachers can place their work in a broader context and this can help in setting realistic expectations for student learning.
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