Educational Value and Models-Based Practice in Physical Education

TLDR

A models‑based approach has been promoted to overcome limitations of traditional physical education, yet educators often fail to achieve the diverse benefits it promises. The article demonstrates the educational value of models‑based practice through two examples—Sport Education and a proposed Physical Literacy model. The authors examine Sport Education, an ethics‑informed pedagogical model, and propose Physical Literacy as a new existentialist‑based model. They conclude that a models‑based approach combined with a reconstructed notion of educational value can provide a philosophically grounded future for physical education that supports diverse individual and social educational goods.

Abstract

Abstract A models-based approach has been advocated as a means of overcoming the serious limitations of the traditional approach to physical education. One of the difficulties with this approach is that physical educators have sought to use it to achieve diverse and sometimes competing educational benefits, and these wide-ranging aspirations are rarely if ever achieved. Models-based practice offers a possible resolution to these problems by limiting the range of learning outcomes, subject matter and teaching strategies appropriate to each pedagogical model and thus the arguments that can be used for educational value. In this article, two examples are provided to support a case for educational value. This case is built on an examination of one established pedagogical model, Sport Education, which is informed by a perspective on ethics. Next, I consider Physical Literacy which, I suggest, is an existentialist philosophical perspective that could form the basis of a new pedagogical model. It is argued, in conclusion, that a models-based approach along with a reconstructed notion of educational value may offer a possible future for physical education that is well grounded in various philosophical arguments and the means to facilitate a wide range of diverse individual and social educational 'goods'.