Tom and Emma’s PGCE Podcast

Podcast Episode 12- Physical Literacy with Fiona Diffey Friday 8th February 2019

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/emma-toms-pgce-podcast/id1428879037?mt=2

I was contacted by two colleagues who run a PGCE Podcast series and asked if I would like to contribute to one of the episodes.  The purpose of this PGCE podcast is to chat around various topics linked to both being a PGCE student as well as different theoretical concepts that might be significant to different subject areas or Initial Teacher Training and Education (ITTE) in general.

The invitation to contribute to this Podcast series come off the back of a professional development presentation I delivered back July 2018. Within this presentation I introduced colleagues to the concept of Physical Literacy and how it was being used to underpin the work of the Health and Well-being Area of Learning and Experience (AoLE); one of six pillars of learning to make up the new National Curriculums for Wales.  To put this into further context, Wales is currently embarking on a large-scale national school improvement reform and has introduced a range of policies to improve the quality and equity of its school system (OECD, 2017).  Changes are being seen in curriculum reform and assessment, an overhaul of the Initial Teacher Training and Education (ITTE) system and all national qualification.  With the four core purposes of Ambitious Capable learners, Ethically informed citizens, Health confident individuals, Creative, contributing collaborators underpinning the delivery of the curriculum, existing subjects are being grouped within 6 AoLE of which Health and Well-being is one.  With the driving force of this educational reform ensuring it is the child at the centre of the education process and as educationalists we see the child as a ‘whole’ (encompassing the cognitive, effective, and physical domains), the work of the HWB AoLE was drawn to the concept of physical literacy.  The AoLE’s job was to bring together content that is currently taught between Physical Education and Personal Social Education (PSE) under one umbrella. In doing this it has challenging a lot of pre-existing ideas of the role that PE has to play within the existing education system.

Within this podcast I look to address what the concept of Physical Literacy is and how when embedded as an underpinning philosophy of a training teacher we are look to challenges the existing and historical perceptions of Physical Education.

Fiona Diffey