An Ecological Dynamics Conceptualisation of Physical ‘Education’: Where We Have Been and Where We Could Go Next

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An Ecological Dynamics Conceptualisation of Physical ‘Education’: Where We Have Been and Where We Could Go Next

                                                    Photo by Sandro Giacon on Unsplash


🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

  1. The paper starts by introducing the theories of learning movement skills and their influence on pedagogical approaches in PE. In PE children are educated through movement. To teach effectively we have to have an appreciation for how movement emerges.
  2. The cornerstones of an Ecological Dynamics approach to teaching PE leading out, planning for uncertainty and skill adaptation are discussed in detail
  3. There are some brilliant examples of how this approach could be implemented through swimming, gymnastics and basketball. These are quite idealised but provide some good food for thought

🤝Impressions

I thought that this was a really interesting and highly thought provoking paper. While some of the concepts may sound like a very idealised way of teaching and may not suit every environment moving towards the ideas of ‘ex-ducere’ is important for teachers. If the goal of PE is to promote physical activity beyond the school gates the way we are teaching needs to promote this.

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

This paper should be read by all PE Teachers, teachers and coaches working with children.

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

  • Long term aim of the subject is to promote physical activity beyond the school gates. To do this we need to provide young people with functional movement skills that enable them to explore opportunities for physical activity in their community.
  • When planning teachers need consider in advance how the activities and ‘designed’ environments can encourage the exploration and emergence of skills.
  • Competition is a catalyst for learning and should be carefully designed into the programme. Inclusion is paramount so this needs to be at an appropriate level for all students.

📃Takeaways for coaches

  • In PE children are educated through movement. To teach effectively we have to have an appreciation for how movement emerges.
  • From the ecological view the goal of education is to ‘lead out’. Individuals are lead out into the environment to discover information that “supports and enriches actions in a continuous and nonlinear, reciprocal process”
  • Affordances are always present and there to be perceived. It's whether the individual is attuned to them or has the action capabilities to act on them.
  • Children learn to move and discover information. As they become more skilled they progressively refine the exploration so they detect richer and more reliable info to support action.
  • Learning is about becoming more attentive, response and engaged. Learning is an interactive process facilitated by educators that guide their attention towards crucial information to inform their movements
  • We can guide the attention towards the more useful sources of information through carefully designed practice tasks.
  • Non-Linear Pedagogy has principles that respect the non-linearity & non proportionality of learning
  • Recreating an affordable rich environment can support the emergence of new functional movement skills for children.
  • It’s acceptable and in fact desirable that students solve the same task goal in a number of different ways.

🥇Top Quotes

💡 From this ecological worldview, learning involves self-organisation of capacities through exploration, invention and adaptation of possibilities for action in different contexts and environments 

💡 An ecological dynamics approach views movement as emerging from a self-organising relationship formed between an individual, the task being performed, and the environment in which it occurs 

💡 What this implies for physical educators is that, in interacting with a dynamic environment, there is no one ‘ideal’ way of doing for each child, but that several stable performance solutions can emerge depending on development, experience and skill levels 

💡 It is an approach that views learning as a process of progressively becoming attentive and responsive, but also engaged as learners do not react, but (inter)act and experience things; this is engagement, facilitated by educators carefully guiding the attention of children toward critical environmental features to be interacted with (

💡 Further, the long-term aim for the subject becomes realistic, that is to lead out and encourage children to engage in physical activity beyond the school gates. This process involves providing children and young people with functional movement skills that enable exploration of physical activity opportunities in their community.

💡 An enriched learning experience, on the other hand, will create an abundance of stable coordination states (reflecting the exploitation of degeneracy in perceptual-motor systems) that are resistant to perturbations during performance, yet retain inherent flexibility for (re)formation if contexts require 

💡 However, it is important that the teacher understands that in this type of lesson, it is acceptable, even highly desirable, for children to display different movement solutions to the same task (exploiting system degeneracy) and that regression in skill is inevitable when altering constraints such as equipment. 

💡 However, it is important that the teacher understands that in this type of lesson, it is acceptable, even highly desirable, for children to display different movement solutions to the same task (exploiting system degeneracy) and that regression in skill is inevitable when altering constraints such as equipment. 

💡 Competition is important in providing the catalyst for learning and should be carefully designed into events; however, unlike street ball, we strongly support inclusion, and we also argue that fairness means providing opportunities for individuals to display their talents and not be humiliated 


🔍Resources 

Detailed Notes

Here's the link to my detailed breakdown of the paper. I go through each section of the piece and pick out the parts that stick out to me 

Link to full paper
Check out the full paper below

Reference

Rudd, J. R., Woods, C., Correia, V., Seifert, L., & Davids, K. (2021). An ecological dynamics conceptualisation of physical ‘education’: Where we have been and where we could go next. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 26(3), 293-306.


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