Sport literacy: it’s not just about learning to play sport via ‘textbook techniques’

Abstract

Physical education (and sport teaching in particular) is often viewed as a marginal subject of less importance than other more ‘academic’ school subjects. While most physical education programs continue to emphasise mastery in sport skill, many students are unable to develop the expected competencies in the time provided by the unit of work. Those students with pre-developed ability prosper at the expense of less experienced, less skilled students (O’Connor 2006) in a teaching environment grounded on textbook techniques. As sport constitutes the substantive content for most middle and secondary years physical education programs this paper will present sport literacy as a conceptual framework for learning through, about and for sport in physical education (Pill 2009). This framing is designed to improve the core learning experiences of all students in physical education through more educationally valid and socially equitable sport teaching in physical education. It contains the ambitious agenda of creating discussion about the place and purpose of sport as a substantive site of and for learning in physical education by challenging the normative paradigm of textbook technique teaching.