Rethinking fitness in primary schools:

Considering the place of Jump Jam and running

Darren Powell

Auckland PENZ Leadership Symposium 2011

darrenapowell@yahoo.co.uk

1. Introduction and Overview2. Fitness at your school?3. Research background – NZ and

overseas4. Children’s understanding of fitness,

fatness and PE5. Is there a better way?6. Fitness challenge7. Time to share...then reconnect

Overview

1. What fitness activities do you do at your school, how many times a week and how long is each session?

2. How are your fitness sessions arranged (class/syndicate/school/ability)?

3. What do your children think fitness is?4. Why do you do fitness at your school?5. What do your students learn through fitness?

Do the answers to these last three questions interconnect?

Fitness at your school

There are global concerns regarding children’s bodies and behaviours:

Fatness/obesityFitness levelsSedentary behaviour Physical activity levelsEating habits ‘Couch-potatoism’

Why ‘do’ fitness? Global perspectives

Schools are seen as a key site to “stem the tide” of the childhood obesity epidemic (Taylor, 2007, p. 2).HPE is considered an ‘obvious solution’ (Gard, 2011)and in some circles, an obvious cause of childhood obesity (Crister, 2003).However, many of these assumptions are increasingly being contested and critiqued...

The prevalance of obesity and epidemic status (Gard, 2011)

If children are more inactive than past generations (see Gard & Wright, 2005; McDermott, 2007).

Whether physical activity is beneficial to the health, BMI, or fitness of children (see Boreham & Riddoch, 2003; Harris, Kuramoto, Schulzer, & Retallack, 2009; Twisk, 2001).

Whether PA levels, BMI or fitness as children is linked with that of adulthood (Flegal, Tabak, & Ogden, 2006; Twisk, 2001).

If PE can ‘programme’ children to be physically active: “no link between school physical education and either the long-term health, body weight or physical activity levels of children has ever been established” (Gard & Wright, 2005, p. 4).

Uncertainty of evidence regarding...

The prevalence of obese children in NZ did not change between 2002 and 2006/07, nor has children’s mean BMI (Ministry of Health, 2008, p. 106).

Maddison, Turley, Legge, & Mitchelhill’s (2010) NZ PA survey demonstrated that 754 children (aged 5-9) spent on average 195.5 minutes per day engaged in moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA).

NZ studies that have attempted to improve children’s fitness have rarely improved muscular power, aerobic performance, speed, flexibility, or body mass of the children (e.g. Hamlin, Ross, & Hong, 2002; Kidling, Wagenaar, Cronin, McGuigan, & Schofield, 2009).

The ‘truth’ about couch potato Kiwi kids?

disordered eating, bulimia, and anorexia (Evans, Rich, Davies, & Allwood, 2008; Gard & Wright, 2005; Tinning & Glasby, 2002);

size discrimination (Rich & Evans, 2005); ‘fat phobia’ (Sykes & McPhail, 2008); an “impoverished engagement with physical

culture” (Burrows, 2005, p. 14), including excessive exercising (Zanker & Gard, 2008);

children understand health as equating with body size, shape and weight and a moral imperative to live healthy lifestyles (Burrows, Wright, & Jungerson-Smith, 2002).

Can HPE do more harm than good?

Not so much about which side of the debate around children’s fatness/fitness/PA is ‘true’ or ‘right’

My concern is that one side is regularly taken as a common-sense, taken-for-granted truth, even though there is much uncertainty in the evidence

There are now many policies and practices to make kids fitter, more active and less fat that are uncritically taken into schools.

If we acknowledge that links between children’s fatness, fitness, PA are complex and uncertain, then we can at least question what practices are taking place in our schools.

This uncertainty led me to my Master’s thesis topic....

Certainty vs Uncertainty

Auckland, decile 8 co-ed state school with just over 270 students from years 1 to 6. 80% of students born outside of New Zealand.

School PE programme based on aquatics, interschool/intraschool sports, and fitness.

Year 5 class 28 children in total, including 13 girls and 15

boys.

‘Running in circles’: Children’s lessons in PE, fitness and fatness

Fitness: Jump Jam x 3 /week.First two sessions: Seniors in hall following DVDFinal session: Whole school following students and teachers

Sometimes around the field, sometimes around the block.

Stretches at start, walking ‘cool-down’ at end.

After lunchtime – Cross country training

During Jump Jam/cross-country sessions over one week, the children participated as per usual and took photographs - 421 in total.

The following week I talked with each of the 6 child-researchers (60-75 minutes) using semi-structured interview technique.

The aim of this study was not to generalise how all children in NZ understand fitness. These interviews were about the children’s voice in expressing their own perspectives on their experiences. This is what they told me...

Participants and process:Six children (three girls and three boys) from a range of ethnicities were asked to be official fitness researchers. All six were nine years of age.

Complex tensions that made fitness “good and bad all at the same time” (Sammy):

Summary

“I like a lot of things about fitness. Like, I like Jump Jam on the good songs. Something I do like about to cross country is how you get to do...all of these different cool exercises at the beginning” (Jimi)

Some of the children described Jump Jam as being enjoyable and fun based on the choice of song and the moves performed for each song.

Tension #1: Fun vs Fatigue

All of the children I interviewed shared stories of how fitness created moments of fun and fatigue, pleasure and displeasure, excitement and boredom.

Fatigue was articulated in two ways.

First, as boredom and weariness of particular songs, routines and/or movements that the children felt were repeated too often.

Shreya, reflected on her photograph of Jump Jam below by saying “we have copied them so much we know it...maybe we can make up our own and we may try different things...”

Fatigue

Second, fatigue was expressed in terms of physical tiredness, a feeling that was seen in mostly negative terms:

Shreya: I like when you can run and you can exercise a little bit but the part I don’t like is you get really tired...

Darren: What do you mean by tired? Can you describe how your body feels?Shreya: Like I don’t want to do it anymore, I’m tired, I just want to sleep or sit down, or, yeah...Darren: Why aren’t you allowed to have a sit down when you’re tired?Shreya: ‘Cause that won’t help.

I think it’s sort of like training and exercise. (Georgia)

Getting exercise. (Sammy)It’s a kind of sport. (Joseph)A type of exercise that's good that helps you.

(Jimi)Walking is fitness. (Daisy)

Fitness as a means to an end – a process

For the most part the children talked about fitness as an “an activity that you do or an activity that helps you exercise and maybe lose weight or something along the lines of that...” (Shreya).

“Getting fit basically just means like non-fat....fit means, in a way, getting like non-fat, like, just helping your body to get skinny. It’ll also let you fit through the door”. (Daisy)

Georgia stated that children needed to get fit because it “sort of makes you lose weight”.

Joseph said fitness “makes your body like, healthy and like, doesn’t make you like, that fat”.

Jimi described fitness as being “good for your body because if you don't do exercise you get really fat”.

Fitness as an end – a product

A fit person was someone who looks “skinny” (Daisy) or had “big muscles” (Sammy).

Conversely, an unfit person would look “non-skinny” (Daisy), or “fat” (Joseph/Daisy/Shreya).

Darren: If I had a photo of a whole lot of different people, could we tell if they were fit just by looking at them?

Jimi: Yes.Darren: What would a fit person look like do you think?Jimi: A person that has lots of muscles.Darren: Anything else?Jimi: Not really.Darren: What about a person who was unfit…what

would they look like?Jimi: They would be really fat, sit on the couch all day.

The children were sure that they were doing fitness lessons to get fit = skinny. Sammy and the other children found it difficult to express what they learnt in fitness lessons:

Sammy: Um...(long pause)...moves?Darren: Haven’t you already learnt the moves? Once you’ve

learnt the moves, what do you learn after that?Sammy: More moves?Darren: What about cross country? What do you learn in cross

country training?Sammy: Um...(long pause)...I...I learn...I learn....um...(long

pause)...I’m not sure.

Shreya, Joseph and Georgia told me that indicators of success, learning intentions and assessments were never used with fitness lessons.

What do you learn in fitness lessons??

When the children talked about getting fit or fitter, they were referring to getting thin or thinner; fitness was directly related to bodily appearance: being thin, getting skinnier, forming ‘big muscles’ and/or avoiding fatness.

It seemed normal for the children to desire thinness, avoid fatness, and to talk about their bodies and behaviours in terms of body dissatisfaction, monitoring of eating and exercise, guilt over inactivity, exercise for weight loss, and a fear of fat.

The children’s responses also indicated they lamented the lack of differentiation, individualisation and ownership of the lessons; fitness lessons had a concrete ‘one-size-fits-all’ teaching technique that children were expected to obediently follow.

Key points:

Is it our responsibility to challenge these understandings of fitness and fatness, and to be critical of practices that create and/or maintain this emphasis on shaping children’s bodies and behaviours???

We can encourage children to create their own dance or aerobics routines, using their own choices of moves and movements.

We can support children to create games, scavenger hunts, orienteering courses, and ‘amazing races’ where they can sprint, jog and rest while experiencing joy and meaning, rather than repetition.

We can work with our students to develop physical education experiences that are not only more fun, but more meaningful, creative and educative.

We can critically examine our PE practices, like Jump Jam and cross country, and consider how we may create, maintain or challenge children’s understanding of PA/PE/fitness as a solution to fatness.

What can we do?

If you could change anything about fitness...“I would make fitness less tiring and more fun” (Shreya).

“choose our own actions...get to create your own. But when you follow you’re just copying...but inventing your own moves, I think it’s more fun than copying” (Joseph)

 

Darren: So why is that more

interesting than running around a

field?

Georgia: I think it’s more interesting

and more fun and you’re allowed to

run everywhere instead of running in

circles.

Georgia explained how she would rather play a game her and her friends made up called Spider, than cross-country running:

The children provided over 70 interesting ideas to make fitness lessons more fun, creative and meaningful than Jump Jam and cross-country. Here’s one of mine…

How could I base a PE unit on this?

Running

Cooperation

Creativity

Communication

CatchingThrowing

Jumping

Challenging

FunChild-centred

Interesting

Original

In a small group:1. Brainstorm (3 mins)2. Choose one idea

(students’ needs?) and develop it further using the unit plan.

3. Share your fresh idea with group (1 min).

4. When you have taught this unit, share it with group on new page.

Rethinking Fitness Challenge:

Fresh ideas for a 15 min PE lesson or series of 15 min sessions...

Consider various movements (running, throwing, skipping, dancing) Consider different contexts (unit themes, festivals, cultures, games, events)Consider learning intentions for all students.

To create and plan for a series short PE lessons to be taught with your students this year or early next year.

1. Base your plan on one of the ideas just brainstormed (or my idea).

2. Fill in the parts of the unit plan first, then complete the rest if/when you have a few minutes spare.

3. Keep asking “What are all of my students’ learning needs?” and “How will each lesson connect my teaching with their learning?

4. Keep asking “Can this unit be more educational, meaningful, creative and/or enjoyable for my all students than traditional fitness sessions?”

At the end, each group will share key ideas from their unit plan with the rest of the group – 1 min max!

Rethinking Fitness Challenge:

If any of the issues, ideas, research or debates interest you OR if you want to continue developing your PE programme and our PE community, please join my Facebook page:

Powell PE: Rethinking fitness in primary schools

Rethinking and reconnecting

1. Type here

2. Click here

3. Click Like!

Now you will be ready to post new ideas, successes, stories about your PE/fitness experiences, as well as commenting on others’, receiving links to useful resources, and creating a NZ PE community of passionate primary teachers!

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Burrows, L. (2005). Do the 'right' thing: Chewing the fat in physical education. Journal of Physical Education New Zealand, 38(1), 7-16.

Burrows, L., Wright, J., & Jungersen-Smith, J. (2002). "Measure your belly": New Zealand children's constructions of health and fitness. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 22(1), 39-48.

Critser, G. (2003). Fat land: How Americans became the fattest people in the world. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Evans, J., Rich, E., Davies, B., & Allwood, R. (2008). Education, disordered eating and obesity discourse: fat fabrications.

Oxon, UK: Routledge.Flegal, K. M., Tabak, C. J., & Ogden, C. L. (2006). Overweight in children: definitions and interpretation. Health Education

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levels in primary school children. Journal of Physical Education New Zealand, 35(1), 47-54. Harris, K. C., Kuramoto, L. K., Schulzer, M., & Retallack, J. E. (2009). Effect of school-based physical activity interventions

on body mass index in children: a meta-analysis. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 180(7), 719-726. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.080966

Kidling, A., Wagenaar, R., Cronin, J., McGuigan, & Schofield, G. (2009). Design and assessment of a school-based circuit training programme for the promotion of physical actvity, fitness and movement competency: A report for Sport and Recreation New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: AUT University

McDermott, L. (2007). A governmental analysis of children 'at risk' in a world of physical inactivity and obesity epidemics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 24, 302-324. Retrieved from http://journals.humankinetics.com/ssj

Maddison, R., Turley, M., Legge, N., & Mitchelhill, G. (2010). A national survey of children and young people’s physical activity and dietary behaviours in New Zealand: 2008/09. Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland.

Ministry of Health. (2008). A portrait of health: Key results of the 2006/07 New Zealand health survey. Retrieved from http://www.moh.govt.nz

Taylor, R. (2007). Obesity in New Zealand children: a weighty issue. Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association, 120(1260), 1-3. Retrieved from http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/

Tinning, R., & Glasby, T. (2002). Pedagogical work and the cult of the body: Considering the role of HPE in the context of the new public health. Sport, Education and Society, 7(2), 109-119. doi: 10.1080/1357332022000018814

Twisk, J. W. R. (2001). Physical activity guidelines for children and adolescents: a critical review. Sports Medicine, 31(8), 617-627. Retrieved from http://adisonline.com/sportsmedicine/pages/default.aspx

Zanker, C., & Gard, M. (2008). Fatness, fitness, and the moral universe of sport and physical activity. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25(1), 48-65. Retrieved from http://journals.humankinetics.com/ssj

References