Some Students Don’t Like PE: Experiences From Various Perspectives

1. Some Students Don’t Like PE:Experiences From Various Perspectives David A. Fitzpatrick, PhD. University of Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada

2. Four Studies/Questions • What is it like to be low skilled in PE or to experience physical awkwardness? • How do students who are low skilled or physically awkward cope with and avoid exposure in PE? • What is it like to teach PE to students who are low skilled or physically awkward? • What are the rewarding and disappointing PE experiences?

3. Possible Reasons for Negative PE Experiences • Low Skilled • Physically Awkward (DCD)* • Overweight/Obese • Illness/Disease • Disability • Shy about public display of Body • Adolescent Puberty • Embarrassing Incidents/Experiences* • Bad day • Other

4. Incorrect Assumptions of Teaching PE • Because PE teachers likes physical activity, assumes everyone likes physical activity. • Because PE teachers are relatively skilled assume all others are skilled. • PE Teachers teach only to the skilled. • Some assume “Anyone can teach ‘gym.” • PE is playing games and free play. • PE requires little or no preparation

5. Justifying The Studies • We may not fully appreciate what it is like to have a negative PE experience. • We may benefit from personal insights of others. • Need for more tactful teaching and coaching. • Research has not identified a definitive instructional intervention for low skilled students.

6. The Target Experience • What is it like to have a negative PE experience? • Personal accounts • Reflections • Thoughts, feelings, and actions

7. Methodology Hermeneutic Phenomenology • A qualitative research method, that seeks to describe, explain, and understand the meaning of human experiences.

8. Awkwardness in the Media “The only thing the Craine boys are good at catching are subtle nuances and the occasional virus” (Niles Craine on Fraser) e.g. Craines learn to ride a bike!

10. Calvin and Hobbs “Today at 3:00 PM is PE Class, also know as state sponsored terrorism” (Calvin).

11. Study One The Lived Experience ofPhysical Awkwardness:Adults’ Retrospective Views

12. Describing Awkwardness • “When other people that say … they can't play, … it means they can't play very well. If I say I can't play, I can't play!” • “There are people who are athletes, and people who are non-athletes, and then there is me.” • “Baseball was the worst. It happened to be a combination of all the things I did badly … I couldn’t throw. I couldn’t bat. I couldn’t catch. That doesn’t leave much.”

13. Four Main Themesof Experiencing Awkwardness “Failing and Falling” “Hurt and Humiliation” “Worrying and Wondering” “Avoiding Awkwardness”

14. Failing and Falling • “I would quite often trip over my own feet and not be able to run.” • “I was not steady…. I could not bend over like other kids … and pick something up. I’d fall over.” • “I was on the ground more times than I was up.”

15. Hurt and Humiliation • “I was embarrassed about falling down.” • “In a position where other people can laugh at you … definitely embarrassed.” • “I had to take my turn at serving. I was totally humiliated, being so unskilled.”

16. Worrying and Wondering • “Others … were able to do it … What’s my problem?” • “I don’t know why I’m not better at this, like most kids.” • “Why can’t I throw a ball like a regular human being?”

17. Avoidance Awkwardness • “I would come up with a sore stomach to get out of it.” • “On field days I ... was doing other things like selling tickets or ice cream.” • “I took three Sciences, three Maths, two English, and Russian History so there wasn't room for PE.” • “I even took singing lessons (and I can’t sing) opposed to taking phys. ed.”

18. Study Two Avoiding PE: A Subversive Activity How do Some Students Cope And Avoid PE?

19. Physical Education is Public The child is in a position of being “acclaimed or humiliated by an authority from whose decision there is no recourse and in a group from which there is no escape (Wood, 1983, p. 220).

20. Cognition and Avoidance “I was a klutz, but I was a thinking klutz, so I learned how to hide most of it.”

21. Compliance/Trying hard Supportive others Selective participation Pseudo participation Hiding within activity  Humor Emotional Response Pretending Illness Misrepresentation Doing other things Actively avoid Refuse/Rebel Give Up/Do not try Didn’t care/Accept it Avoiding AwkwardnessVaried Involvement Uninvolved Involved

22. Supportive Peers • “I fell and she actually stopped running and came back and helped me up and … ran with me the rest of the race” • “Quite often the kids would … they just grab me by the arm and basically pull me along so I wouldn't fall.”

23. Pseudo-Participation • “Just run around and as long as you don't get the ball, you don't worry about getting ‘swacked.’” • “I never … [swung when I batted] … because kids are no good at throwing. You always got four balls.

24. Distraction/Doing Unrelated tasks • If there were something I could do instead of gym, I was doing it. • I joined the yearbook committee … as an alternative to intramurals. • I did a school history compilation. I missed a lot of PE.

25. Illness and Avoidance • “I even pretended that I was sick”. • “I remember writing notes to get out of gym”.

26. Not Seeking Assistance • “It might have been a good thing to go and ask the phys. ed. teacher … for some help … but I never.” • “I would rather just struggle along with it on my own.”

27. About Teachers • “I wasn’t too enthused with the teacher … one of those phys. ed. geniuses, a real physical jerk…. It was her life.” • “Teachers really seemed to focus on the people who were good.” • “No one ever taught me … “I had no help from my teachers." • I didn't like the teacher's attitude, she always shouted at me.

28. Study Three The Experience of Teaching Students Who are Physically Awkward

29. Teaching Awkward Students: Questions of Interest • Do teachers recognize these students? • How do teachers feel about instruction? • How do teachers interact instructionally? • What invariant and variant themes arise? • What further questions arise?

30. Invariant (Consistent) Themes • Knowing the Students • Empathic/Perceptive Awareness • Accepting/Answering the Challenge • Wishful Thinking/Hopeful Expectation • Frustrations • Successes and Rewarding Results

31. Identifying AwkwardnessDo Teachers Recognize Awkwardness? • “Yes, absolutely, there’s no question…. They stick out like a sore thumb and teachers know that right away” (Dixi). • “I’ve got them identified fairly early”(Pam) • “I was aware pretty quickly” (Ken).

32. Veteran Teacher Feelings • Empathic and Perceptive Awareness • Feeling: • Badly • Unhappy • Sad • Frustrated • Hopeful • Optimistic

33. Empathic Awareness • “He was very unhappy, I could tell” (Cara) • “You can tell when they don’t have that success, the … [lack of] …confidence, the …[low]…self-esteem” (Dan). • You could see that wasn’t a positive experience” (Dixi).

34. The Challenge • “Every PE teacher I ever had tried to teach me this, and I can’t…. You’re wasting your time…. I dare you to teach me” (Ken’s student). • “Everyone who walks out of this … [gym] … today is going to know how to do this” (Cara). 

35. Wishful Thinking andHopeful Expectations • “You’d like to think that everyone would come into your program and totally love phys. ed. and be successful and then go on and enjoy physical activity.” • “I wish I could convince him to find one thing that he’d really like” (Pam).

36. Feelings of Frustration • “I felt frustrated that I hadn’t set it up in order for her to get success” (Pete). • “I felt a little bit frustrated because you expected kids to get on with something you were teaching” (Dixi). • “The frustrating part … is … once they move … into a junior high school … they may do nothing physical” (Pam).

37. Barriers to Teaching • “Our failure to recognize the need to teach skills, really hurts kids” (Ken). • “Some children get lost in the shuffle” (Pam) • “The problem is in not having the resources to run a quality programs” (Dixi). • There’s no accountability. • There are no curriculum police (Dixi).

38. Effective Instruction Guidelines • Warm and Orderly Environment • Realistic, High, Achievable Outcomes • Promote Student Choice and Control • Structured Instruction • Demonstrate Expectations • Group Students and Use Stations • Ask and Encourage Questions • Maximize Practice and Success • Circulate and Monitor Progress • Provide Feedback (Vogel & Seefeldt 1988)

39. Promoting success Encouragement Choice Individual attention Physical guidance Modifications Individual activities Peer Teaching Groups/Partners Volunteers Pull out programs Practice Mass participation Gradual competition Strategies Employed

40. Warm Orderly Environment • “Once you developed rapport … they trust you … don’t feel threatened … don’t feel singled out and then you have a starting point” (Ken). • “The biggest impact for me is being sensitive to the student’s feelings … when they’re trying something” (Pete).

41. Promoting Choice • “Everybody, if given choice, would be better at something.” • “Choices give them a much better chance of finding what they like and feeling some enjoyment from it” (Dixi)

42. Finding A Way to Teach • “Equate it to the math teacher who can’t understand why … [students] … can’t get a question.” • “What do I do, say it louder? That doesn’t work.” • “You have to have all of the kids be successful” (Cara).

43. Teaching Skills Steps by Step • “We can’t be play leaders, we have to be physical educators and recognize where skill deficiencies are and break things down and teach them” (Ken). • “We did achieve some success by breaking the skill right down” (Pam). 

44. Taking the Time • “He got extra attention … intensive individual instruction” (Dixi). • “In teaching … it takes a fair amount of time for mastery to occur” (Pete). • “I see it as a kid who going to need a little more of my time” (Ken).

45. “We Have Ways of Making You Learn” • “We’ve grown a lot as a profession … Now there’s more accountability…. Everyone’s better included” (Dixi). • “We do not treat Joe-Hockey Player any different than Rita-Trip-Over-Her-Feet-Every-Two-Seconds” (Cara). • “Everyone plays (Pete).”

46. Rewarding Results • “We found something he was good at…. Others were giving him praise. It meant he was more accepted” (Cara). • “Even though I was terrible, I always had fun … when she was my teacher” (Dixi’s student).

47. Knowing When Not to Teach “I had a sense that she didn’t want me to spend too much time … because she didn’t feel like she was making that much improvement or she was being singled out” (Pete).

48. Finding Humour • “My teaching partner and I … would bet lunch on our ability to teach him something” (Dixi). • One awkward student interaction • I said, “You seem to be having a problem.” • She said, “Oh I am, I’m ambidextrous and I don’t know which hand to use,” • I responded “I think ambidextrous means equally good with both hands.” • She laughed and said, “I’m such a klutz.” (Dixi).

49. Conclusions • Are they physically awkward, or physically uneducated? (Wall, 1998) • Students and teachers are telling incongruent stories(Fitzpatrick, 2003). • Regardless, “They Have to be Carefully Taught” (Evans, 1975).

50. Study 4 Negative Experiences in PE Experiences in Physical Education:A Reflective Retrospective A Longitudinal Study