Summarised Readings

Readings to summarise

Tinning, R & McCuaig, L (2006). Chapter 1: Making a certain Citizen: Schooling and HPE. In Teaching Health and Physical Education in Australian Schools. Prentice Hall. French's Forest. N.S.W. 

 What does it mean "To develop a certain type of citizen". What are we looking to produce as a commodity in our society? What are we looking to create as an ideal in society? These are important questions raised when I read this article. How does PE or PT fit into this creation of a state?
Essentially, PE has been used for the purpose of survival, social control and military fitness and in Queensland it stated that the purpose was to create good health as a way to stem off disease.  Governments of the past needed our schools to produce "fit male soldiers”, in the schools own systems. Physical education was to be fostering masculine courage, strength and loyalty and aggression were seen as crucial to the new male breed coming up. Women were generally seen as being weaker and not able to do what the men were for fear of injuring themselves and their female constitutions and must learn women’s work and place in society.

There is a focus in many countries on creating the right type of citizen.
Some are concerned with the use of technology and this impact it has on the lives of the youth and the Nintendo citizens we are becoming and others are concerned with moral panic over what our young people will become. Governments are concerned with the health of our populations because an unhealthy population is a non-productive population and can cost many billions in health care and lost production.




Burrows, L. (2008), Fit, fast, and skinny New Zealand school students talk about health

After reading this article I saw how we view ourselves and how we are viewed by others as something that is embedded in our culture and society from an earl age and one that changes and evoloves as we age but the ideas remain the same, "thin is good, fat is bad".Healthy eating and exercise regimes are prolific with our young people both in school and outside the school system. The results of the questionnaire that this is based on, is how children perceive their bodies and health. We are constantly being told about the sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy eating choices that pervade the youth culture, and how we are all getting fatter by the day. This has seemed to have grabbed at the consciousness of the country and one can say the world. With the news, other media, government and TV shows like “The Biggest Loser” and others saying how lazy and unhealthy we are.

For this survey children across a broad socio-economic and cultural range were chosen and all had the same general answers to the questions, food and exercise were seen as the key strategies for getting healthy. The older the children the more was emphasised about the “wrong foods”. Girls more than boys tended to be more conscious of weight and eating than boys were the older they got. The children were fully aware that they needed to eat right and exercise to be healthy, this idea dominated all in respect to what it means to be healthy. Children saw that they could assess someone’s health by looking at their size and shape; smaller is seen as better. Fitness is correlated with non-fatness it seems we are pre-occupied with appearances as indicators of health. The older children did associate being too thin with unhealthiness. Body aesthetics were the key components to whether someone was considered health or not by their peers or themselves. Self perception of their bodies was marked the younger children were generally happier with themselves but the older children were more critical and girls especially had a difficult struggle with self perception, only 30% always felt good and boys 51%. More than double the number of girls than boys felt the desire to get thinner.

The encouragement of students to negatively evaluate themselves and their bodies in school is seemingly done without thought, with lunchbox checks, and diet and exercise diaries and calculating a child’s BMI in class, how do these affect our dysfunctional relationship with food? The students also need to understand the social, emotional, spiritual and cognitive areas of HPE too!

Tinning, R. Developing as a reflective Teacher. (online course reading. Retrieved from moodle)

Weare all reflective in one way or another about our teaching and this is important in how we improve and adjust what we do over time in our school and our lives. 
Schon said we can reflect in action (reshaping as we do, what we are doing) or reflect on action (Thinking back on what we have done). We all need reflection to grow personally and professionally, this is what helps us to gro as educators and as people.
we must learn to reflect and this is not neccessarily a natural phenomonem. Personal reflectioncan also be a measure of ones own confidence in ones self and not accepting direct authority over their lives from outside sources.
Gore found different types of reflectors in his study:

1. The recalcitrants for whom reflection was irrelevant
2. the Acquieenscents who reflected because they were expected to
3. And the committed reflectors who saw personal value in it.

She also saw different types of reflective questioning that needed to cover a wide range of issues:

• Ethical, social, political and moral.
• Values, goals and relevance.
• Instructional, methods, stategies and materials. 

These different ways of thinking can change our perception through building on our own experiences.

But how do we become a reflective teacher, we need to ask questions of ourselves everyday like " What are the implications of what I teach and the way I teach?" and  " How can I teach better?" To do this we need to be able to justify our actions and our habitiual actions even more so be cause we do not use conscious effort to do such.

Gard, M (2006). HPE and the “obesity epidemic”.

It seems as if everything is in crisis, healthcare and obesity seem to be the catch cries along with “the cotton wool  generation”  or Generation “O” for obese. 50 years ago Western scientists began the talk of an obesity epidemic and that as Western health has improved, obesity has increased along with it. We have all been confronted with newspapers and reports claiming that our parents will outlive us because of our lifestyle or that there is the need for a “war on obesity” to go with the other modern wars like drugs and crime.

For many it seems the answer is simple, like the de-emphasising of the role of PE in schools and that is the key to obesity. Schools have taken up the challenge with passion with some ideas that range from dubious to dangerous. The word “crisis” puts fear into people and can cause reactionary procedures rather than the required action. While some researchers are claiming that being overweight and obese are massive health and societal problems other state that body weight by itself has no bearing on medical health other than cases of extreme obesity and being underweight can have negative health consequences too.  He does point out that this is evidence and not proof, just because scientists say it is so, does not make it true. Some say we are a society of “couch potatoes” or “cotton wool children”, there is a lack of evidence to support this and that the decreasing physical activity levels over the last decades may be an assumption, rather than a fact. There are perceived links with TV and computer use and obesity. We need to be sceptical of generalisation and be open to a range of ideas and perspectives on this issue, stay informed and open.

Tasker, G. (1994). Taking Action. (online course reading. Retrieved from moodle)

Tasker relates many ideas about the teaching of Health and Physical Education including the idea of  teachers as role models, how to create an effective learning environment and the steps to us when making and designing a lesson.  

Of the many covered topics or ideas, 'Establishing Ground Rules' seemed very relevant to us as we go out into this new profession. We all need a good basis in classroom management and some of us feel that we need more experiences in different types of managing and effective group management.  By getting the class and student to come up with their own ideas and rule for managing the class seems great and gives ownership to the students, I see this as age restrictive though.   We would need to keep it real and negotiate a set of effective rules that suit all and are fair to all.