Health and Physical Education Preparing Educators for the Future

This chapter presents ways to approach the many decisions around ‘how’ to teach health and physical education. Pedagogy is a term that encompasses both the science and art of teaching. In many ways, it is under-defined and often reduced to teaching styles and forms of management that assume homogenous student populations. However, the concept of ‘pedagogy’ moves us beyond the technical logic of transmission toward more holistic notions of teaching ‘practices’ that include various sets of ‘sayings’, ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’. When thought about in this way, teaching and learning in health and physical education become as much about knowledge produced in the processes of interaction as an end-point in the learning of particular knowledge and skills. Importantly, we must realise that the teacher is not neutral in these processes, nor is the learner an empty vessel. Rather, both bring multiple histories, experiences and backgrounds to the learning space, which significantly impact curriculum and subsequent learning. Accordingly, understanding pedagogy as sets of practices opens up possibilities for thinking about teaching and learning. It helps us to make sense of the complexity of teachers’ work and the multiple decisions made every moment of every day.