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COPYRIGHT 2004 International Reading Association Inc.
"WHO knows something about how to dribble a basketball? Certainly someone knows something. All right then, the first step is to...." For many physical educators, this kind of prompt is what they consider to be student involvement; it is what they regard as the text and content of physical education (PE). This is the "roll out the ball" stigma that permeates many PE classes.
Physical education has been in decline because of the mistaken belief that the body and mind are separate and thus PE does not have much to contribute to mental function (Landers, Maxwell, Butler, & Fagan, 2001). Landers et al. theorized that sports and games present opportunities to develop thinking and reasoning skills because children are naturally inventive (inventing is a high form of thinking) and creative (modifying games to meet circumstances demonstrates a natural creativity). Without adult interference, children formulate rules and strategies, choose sides, and adjudicate disputes. "They learn to cooperate and get along with teammates to optimize team performance, they learn agreed-upon rules and sometimes learn 'set plays' of their own creation or out of a play book" (Landers et al., p. 343). Such unstructured activities make students literate in PE as they construct meaning in social contexts. Landers et al. contended that physical educators need to bear in mind this natural inclination of children when planning the PE curriculum; they also suggested activities that can be used to develop children's multiple intelligences. Skills learned in physical education, they said, "can be generalized beyond physical education and sport examples so that students realize their applicability in other academic subjects and other areas of their lives" (p. 349). PE can then begin to have an impact on students' lives so they can become lifelong learners and lifelong "movers" (Buell & Whittaker, 2001).
Can PE teachers bring about this restructure in thinking, this transformation in PE teaching and learning? Some PE teachers already in service may require the assistance and mentoring of literacy professionals--reading or language arts teachers in the secondary high schools. From such interaction and collaboration between PE teachers and professionals who have the knowledge and experience with literacy across the curriculum, powerful teams can be created to promote the best learning situations in the subject areas. In addition, those responsible for planning teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities need to begin (or continue) the task of preparing preservice PE teachers to view physical education as a thinking subject and to prepare enriching lessons that integrate alternative texts and activities with that curriculum.
The command-style teaching in physical education, interspersed with periods of student involvement, has not only stifled creativity in movement but has also precluded opportunities and possibilities for making PE a subject with a physical and an intellectual component. Modern society's increasing dependence on electronic entertainment does not help either. Nevertheless, although physical educators cannot change the prevalence of electronic devices, they can strive to make movement, thinking, and activity a meaningful part of students' lives. To be successful in PE, mind and body must be seen as inseparable.
One main objective in many new PE curricula is to foster the principles of active living in all students. Active living is considered engaging in physical activity as part of a daily routine (Alberta Learning, 2000) and acknowledging the health benefits of such activity (i.e., taking stairs versus using the elevator). Until PE becomes a mindful subject (one where students become involved in the cognitive realm in addition to the physical), physical educators will need to justify and defend their current programs against the stereotypes surrounding PE. We believe, however, that students and PE teachers will discover the subject's depth using alternative texts to study PE. Through such texts, students can learn how to transact with information from an affective (aesthetic) and cognitive (efferent) stance while using literacy processes as a means of learning the content of PE, and making connections to other disciplines where links exist naturally. When taking an aesthetic stance (Rosenblatt, 1980) feelings are important, as is bringing to the content visual images, associations, family values, individual beliefs and experiences, and the five senses. When taking an efferent stance it is important to set aside personal associations and feelings and focus on the meaning presented by the facts (Rosenblatt). Texts can be anything from a discussion to a musical score, from a film to a piece of sculpture, from a road sign to a magazine article, from a poem to a computer game, and from a painting to a footprint.
Physical education and content literacy
In this section we focus on the literature related to developing content literacy in physical education. We review briefly the ways in which educators have attempted to explore the height, depth, and breadth of physical education to date. The terms height, depth, and breadth have been associated with vocabulary development (Russell, 1954) to signify respectively the range or quality, increasing precision or nuance, and multiple meanings acquired in word knowledge. In this article we use the terms in the following way: height--developing a range of skills associated with PE, depth--the increasing understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of the body of knowledge within PE, breadth--understanding the multiple meanings and the extension of the body of knowledge to other subject areas.
There are several articles in the literature on bringing language into the gymnasium. Sanford-Smith and Hopper (1996) wrote that language arts and PE share common structures and principles. They explained that body movement (in relation to the environment) in physical education is similar to word management (in relation to the topic) in language arts, and strategies (ways to play sports) are similar to strategies (ways to use words) in language arts. Techniques (for developing and refining skills and tactics) in PE are similar to techniques (for manipulating language for a specific purpose, structure, word choice) in language arts.
In a similar manner, language can be extended to include the language of movement and dance. Hanna (2001) highlighted how dance provokes the same brain centers as sign language, using the same coding to create meaning. Steps, gestures, and order are equivalent to words, sentences, and...
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