Nurturing Positive Values and Attitudes through PE

PE provides students with essential lifelong learning experiences for developing them to be self-directed lifelong learners and fostering their whole-person development, enabling students to have all-round and unique development in the areas of ethics, intellect, physique, social skills and aesthetics according to individual potential. Apart from achieving educational goals highlighted in the 6 strands, nurturing 7 priority values and attitudes (including “Perseverance”, “Respect for Others”, “Responsibility”, “National Identity”, “Commitment”, “Integrity” and “Care for Others”, and other positive values and attitudes if appropriate) are recommended as important learning-to-learn skills for all key learning areas including PE aiming at promoting their life-long learning capability. Through purposeful and systematic curriculum planning, implementation and assessment in PE, students can acquire skills and knowledge with desirable values and attitudes through PE.

Positive values and attitudes nurture from PE not only help students to develop a healthy lifestyle and positive learning attitudes, but also equip them with good qualities to meet the requirements of their future workplace. The concepts and nature of “Positive Values and Attitudes” and how these can be developed through PE in schools are relatively unfamiliar for most PE teachers. Opportunities and platform have to be provided so that PE teachers can be shared and nurtured for incorporating these skills and innovations in their school PE curriculum.

Thus, organization of the Summer School for PE Teachers 2017 aiming at developing PE teachers with knowledge and skills for nurturing students’ “Positive Values and Attitudes through PE” is a timely initiative. As teachers are key players in any reform movements as they directly involve in learning and teaching for the students. Accordingly, they have been urged to improve the quality of teaching and to be prepared to be reflective and innovative in their teaching. They have to possess new knowledge in their subject area for facilitating more student-centred learning. They were asked to incorporate new methods of instruction and to introduce new approaches for promoting students’ learning towards the educational goals in the current education reform by means of “Action Research”. The Summer School for PE Teachers 2017 aims to help and familiarize PE teachers with knowledge and skills in “Nurturing Positive Values and Attitudes through PE”. It also helps to build up knowledge-based sharing culture. The major objectives of the Summer School for PE Teachers 2017 are formulated as follows:
  

a)	To familiarise PE teachers with the latest development in PE, in particular, “Nurturing Positive Values and Attitudes”;
b)	To disseminate good practices and share the experiences among PE teachers with particular emphasis on how students’ positive values and attitudes can be nurtured through PE; and
c)	To deepen PE teachers’ professional knowledge of learning and teaching for promoting students’ learning

From observation, PE instruction in schools is dominated by the teacher directed, didactic and drill-based instruction. Obviously, these types of teacher dominated instructions are relatively less capable of developing students how to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information and to be innovative for improvement of motor performance. As a matter of fact, relatively little opportunities are provided for students to be questioned, analyze the problems on motor problems that they face and to be inventive in their practices in the context of PE. It appears to be the timely initiative to revisit the current curricular practices in PE so that students’ positive values and attitudes can be promoted and nurtured.    Many scholars believe in creative teachers and creative teaching. Teachers are key component for promoting positive values and attitudes in schools. PE teachers’ ability to create an optimal environment, structure learning goals, experiences, activities and select appropriate methods plays a vital role for nurturing positive values, attitudes for students in PE (Hsu, et. al., 2014; Mcbride, 1991; Momchilova & Ilchev, 2016; Park and Heisler, 2001; Schwager & Labate, 1993; Zachopoulou et. al., 2006). For structuring learning experiences of these skills in the PE curriculum, teachers must be willing and be capable of planning, organizing and evaluating relevant learning experiences for their students. As a matter of fact, relatively few programmes for cultivating these values and attitudes are currently initiated in the local PE curriculum. It is an appropriate time to look into the issue and to see how the concept of values and attitudes can be promoted in the field of PE. Thus, through the initiation of this project, PE teachers can be acquainted with necessary skills and knowledge of structuring relevant learning experiences for “Nurturing Positive Values and Attitudes” for the students through a variety of professional development programmes namely conference, experience sharing seminars and workshops.

Reference:
Hsu, W., Pan, Y., Chou, H. and Lu, F. (2014). Measuring student responsibility in physical education:   examination of CSR and PSR models. South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education & Recreation, 36(2), 129-136.
McBride, R.E. (1991). Critical thinking- An overview with implications for physical Education. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education. 11, 112-125.
Momchilova, A. and Ilchev, I. (2016). Interactive methods in physical education and sport lessons for         development of communication skills for the fourth grade students. Research in Kinesiology, 44(1), 3-12
Park, R.J. and Heisler, B. A. (2001). School programmes can foster creativity through physical education.     Education, 95(3), 225-228.
Schwager, S. and Lubate, C. (1993). Teaching for critical thinking in physical education. Journal of Physical   Education, recreation & Dance, 64, 5, 24-26.
Zachopoulou, E, Trevlas, E. and, Konstadinidou, E. (2006). The design and implementation  of a physical    education programme to promote children’s creativity in the early years.  International Journal of Early Years Education. 14(30), 279-294.