This blog provides a ‘starter-pack’ of actions you can take to begin exploring Meaningful PE. You may already relate to or be using lots of the ideas we mention – that’s a good start because Meaningful PE is a coalition of theoretically grounded ideas that represent good practice. What sets Meaningful PE apart is that it is a coherent framework that helps teachers prioritise meaningfulness as the main driver (or filter) of physical education decision-making. Meaningful PE brings intentionality to a teacher’s decisions, providing a vision, an outcome, and a pedagogical frame for a coherent approach to teaching. Below is some advice on how to get started with Meaningful PE. This advice is drawn together from a range of projects and experiences that we have engaged in with teachers. For this reason, we hope that many of the ideas are practical, make sense, and sit ‘within reach’ for most teachers. We advise you to start small, with one idea, one action, and/or one feature in one lesson. We have tried to include concrete directions and examples. Hopefully, some of these fit with what you already do, and you find something here that piques your interest to explore in your teaching. Click on the links included for more information.
1. Start with yourself. Reflect on how you position meaningfulness within your vision (or philosophy) for physical education and how you make decisions based on this. Meaningful experiences can operate in a positive cascade: each meaningful moment/ session/unit/season/year can help children become aware of and bank positive experiences, building momentum towards positioning physical activity participation as an important part of their everyday lives and contributing to the improvement of the quality of their lives.
As a starting reflection consider these questions:
a) What are my priorities for teaching PE?
b) Do children have meaningful experiences in my PE lessons? How do I know?
c) How might children describe my priorities in PE? Would their descriptions fit with mine?
d) If meaningfulness is something I already prioritise, how do I do this with intention and regularity?
You can read more about how the team involved in Meaningful PE figured out their individual and collective visions here.
It is important to explain to the children that you are prioritising meaningfulness and exploring Meaningful PE pedagogies and invite them to contribute to a conversation about this; this helps them see what is valued and prioritised in your teaching and can be prioritised in their learning. Encourage the children to share meaningful physical activity stories from their lives and bring in photos of important physical activity experiences for a class display.
2. The features of participation that are important to children – including fun, making or being with friends, feeling competent, ‘just-right’ challenge, and personal relevance – are a good starting point to make changes to your practice. You can read more about the features here. Pick one feature to focus on first based on what children need or is important to them (you can look through some of our blog posts from 2016-2017 for greater depth on each feature). Maybe you already use some features but feel that they could be made more explicit when you talk with children? Maybe you see some potential in placing more emphasis on one of the features to help you make decisions? Regardless of which one you choose, talk to your students about this feature. This helps to develop a shared language and understanding of what that feature feels like, sounds like, and looks like in PE. Create and display your shared language of meaningful experiences in the gym. Prioritise this feature in your teaching decisions and reflect on your success. Keep in mind that some activities are better suited to spotlighting certain features and that each child might have a different interpretation of what it means to them. For example, what some children find fun others might find boring. What is important is that your approach allows each child to figure out what is important to them and gives opportunities to prioritise these. When you and the children have figured out this feature add a second one to compliment what you see. Again, make this feature explicit in what happens and what matters in PE.
3. Meaningful PE demands a democratic approach where children have a say in what happens in PE. Mostly, attention to meaningfulness attends to the processes over products of PE; if the processes are right, the products should be too. Start small in using a democratic approach by accommodating individual preferences so both you and the children can learn together how to share perspectives, listen, and respond in ways to make PE better. You can seek participant perspectives on their preferences through conversations, questionnaires and surveys, peer interviews, a ticket out the door, and written tasks. This resource provides useful beginner student voice activities for PE. Click here for a great example of democratic approaches being implemented by Ty Riddick.
4. A Meaningful PE lesson looks a little different from a typical lesson format that tends to be structured as warm-up/ activities 1-3/ cool down. To teach using Meaningful PE you need to reprioritise what is important in each lesson. Teachers who value moderate to vigorous activity (MVPA) in PE over anything else make decisions to keep students moving as much as possible. Alternatively, teachers who want to help their students make sense of their physical activity experiences in ways that influence their physical activity lives inside and outside of the school need to give dedicated time to reflection activities. We believe movement time is often worth sacrificing for reflection so that students become aware of the meaningfulness of their experiences and seek out further experiences outside of PE. Some of the markers of a Meaningful PE lesson are goal setting, reflection, and self-directed learning opportunities. Here are some ways you can intentionally include them in your lessons:
a. Goal-setting: At the beginning of lessons/units, it is worth sharing your learning purposes and giving children the opportunity to set personal goals. Sharing and refining these goals with friends can help children’s investment and understanding of their own learning. Opportunities to review these goals at intervals can help children track and see their progress which can be very motivating and provide direction toward an optimal level of challenge.
b. Reflection: Reflection on experiences, both during and after activities can help children become aware and make sense of their experiences and develop a language to describe those experiences. Use reflection consistently with students using the shared language you have developed. Reflection can be teacher-led, small-group, or individual. Given the PE context, drawing attention to the physical aspects of participation – how it feels, smells, sounds – makes sense. We highly recommend reading some excellent blogs by teachers who have embedded reflection, such as those by Ty Riddick, Mel Hamada, Andy Vasily, and Leticia Cariño .
c. Self-direction: Child-directed activity is not ‘free time’. Framed within the parameters of a shared learning purpose, set open-ended tasks that allow children to self-direct their learning. For example, making a game that practices the skill they are learning. Children love to feel in charge and when scaffolded appropriately, generally make great decisions to help their learning and enjoyment. Again, choice and self-directed learning does not mean ‘anything goes’ but when given parameters and guidance, these things can help to make PE meaningful for many children.
What to read next:
These blogs provide explicit detail on what the Meaningful PE approach is/ is not: https://meaningfulpe.wordpress.com/2021/11/08/what-meaningful-pe-isand-is-not-part-one/ https://meaningfulpe.wordpress.com/2021/11/23/what-meaningful-pe-isand-is-not-part-two/
This slide deck includes more information and lots of links. Click here to access: https://meaningfulpe.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/getting-started-w-mpe_270423.pdf
This blog has been written by the Meaningful PE team using a compendium of ideas from a variety of people and sources. We have tried as much as possible to acknowledge those people and sources throughout the blog.
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