It's all about connection

A few weeks ago, I observed an enthusiastic and committed pre-service teacher deliver a basketball lesson. The learning objective was ‘how to defend’ and the justification given as to why the class was learning this, was that ‘it will help you win more basketball games’. Pause and reflect - what assumptions was the student teacher making about the year 8 group that he was teaching? What was he communicating about the purpose and place of sport in young people’s lives? I’ll return to this below. 

This is the first of a series of short posts discussing the problems that miMove is designed to solve. To find out more about miMove and explore how it would fit in with and support your work, use this link.

miMove was created to move the dial when it comes to challenges that the Physical Education community has been grappling with for many years. Most of these can be filed under the broad category of inclusion, but broad categories are not necessarily helpful in encouraging us to innovate when it comes to policy and practice. The devil is often in the detail. We need to have the headspace to be more granular. This piece considers what we actually do that leads to so many young people not forming a connection with physical activity and therefore, not reaping the benefits that physical activity can bring to their lives. 

miMove, as the name suggests, belongs to, and centres the young person - after all, it is their physical activity journey that we are trying to support. So what do these journeys look like and how do we design curricula and select pedagogical practice to meet the learning needs of all young people? 

So much practice in PE tends to be dominated by performance sport - the idea that progress is about ‘getting better’ at a particular activity. Most of these activities are sports, so ‘good’ usually means ‘better than others’ or ‘likely to win’. This is clearly reflected in most assessment criteria, including those used in the practical components of examination PE. Skill acquisition and ‘game effectiveness’ are elevated and celebrated, with other forms of knowledge such as ‘understanding’ thrown in to provide a ‘safety net’ for the ‘less proficient’.

This was clearly evident in the trainee teacher’s basketball lesson mentioned above. It is certainly a reflection of his PE learning and probably a reflection of the underlying and often unexamined thinking behind so much of what we do. For many decades we have structured PE to prepare young people for a very specific way of relating to sport and physical activity. This largely involves competitive sport that takes place in organised, structured spaces i.e. clubs, leagues etc. It usually involves paying for club membership and in return you get coaching, training sessions and the opportunity to compete. This serves a minority of young people really well. For many it is entirely irrelevant. Most people do not take part in competitive sport. Their relationship with sport, physical activity and indeed their own bodies is not that of an athlete/sportsperson.

The recent Sport England Physical Literacy Consensus statement defines physical literacy  precisely as ‘our relationship with movement and physical activity throughout life.’ And the very recent SHAPE America revised standards for PE now includes teachers knowing which students ‘choose to engage in physical activity.’  I genuinely believe most PE practitioners wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments. We want to support all young people find a place for physical activity in their lives. How we do this is the problem that miMove helps solve. Colleagues in English and Maths use detailed data on pupil progress. miMove allows PE practitioners to do the same by easily accessing data-sets that are pertinent to our goals. It also gives us the opportunity to define success more broadly and simply as a young person who is fostering a positive and sustained relationship with physical activity.

And because miMove captures young people’s physical activity experiences both in and out of school, it gives you previously inaccessible data, quickly, cost effectively and in real time to help you celebrate all your students’ activity irrespective of level of performance or activity type.

miMove is not a ‘programme’ or curriculum model that tells you what to do. You’re the professional. You make decisions about what to teach and how to teach it. miMove is a powerful tool that sits in your corner and for the first time, makes it possible for you to get much deeper evidence of impact whilst hearing and seeing every student. It lets you celebrate your progress and allocate resources to support those most at risk of losing out. 

Find out more - book a free 1:1 call  to have your questions answered and see how miMove can  support your work, save you time and allow you to work more effectively.