Physical Education Curriculum

Physical Education as an Academic Discipline

In the 1960s, physical education was primarily viewed as a teaching field in higher education, with the exception of one specialization, exercise science, which fueled the drive to be “more academic.” At the time, there were no systematic research programs in place other than some positivist-oriented research. Attempts to create a theoretical structure for the field began at this time.

More changes were on the horizon as well, driven at least in part by the need for academic credibility in higher education and the success of exercise science with its established body of research. The most notable change, following the path of exercise science (increasingly referred to as exercise physiology), was the development of other subdisciplines, such as sport psychology, sport sociology, sport philosophy, biomechanics, and motor learning. Borrowing from the parent disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, physics), each of these subdisciplines, among others, began to adopt their own unique research methods, theories, and language, facilitated by the gradual emergence of multiple paradigms and tentative steps toward qualitative inquiry and critical theory research. Emphasis at this time was on affiliation with the “parent discipline” and away from the practice of physical education. As a result, the field of physical education began to look more like other academic disciplines, but in the process became fragmented, with each subdiscipline becoming increasingly isolated from the others. These beginning trends in the 1960s quickly became the field's primary structure, a development that has grown since then. One consequence of all of these changes, because of prioritization of the subdisciplinary structure over practice, was the reduction of status of practice-based activities in higher education, leading to a loss of the term physical education at many institutions of higher education. It was replaced by subdisciplinary terms such as kinesiology, creating distance between what was physical education in higher education and what remained as physical education in schools across the country.

The Growth of Curriculum Studies

Although these issues were problematic and warranted attention (and still do), this new structure provided an opportunity for curriculum studies in physical education to begin to carve out its own niche. Physical education teacher education (PETE) already had a research base, the aforementioned body of systematic observation studies. A new term, sport pedagogy, which was intended to focus on physical education instruction research, cropped up in the field's lexicon. Unlike most of the other subdisciplines, PETE and sport pedagogy attempted to bridge the gap between what was left of university physical education and what was going on in schools. Physical education, many argued, was both a discipline and a profession. However, in the eyes of some academics, their work was that of “second class citizens” in a fragmented field.

Although the door had opened for specialization in physical education, the development of curriculum studies in physical education lagged behind PETE and sport pedagogy. The struggle for identity and recognition continued into the 1980s, but during that decade, research on teaching in physical education was finally included in the Big Ten conference on research in teaching physical education at Purdue. However, curriculum studies were [Page 648]more or less ignored, a point punctuated by one highly recognized physical education scholar who argued against inclusion of curriculum scholarship in one of the leading physical education journals. Undaunted, Ann Jewett, a pioneer in physical education curriculum studies at the University of Georgia almost single-handedly paved the way for a series of biennial curriculum conferences. The American Alliance of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance soon followed with creation of the Physical Education Curriculum and Instruction Academy, which met (and still meets) yearly, recognizes one distinguished curriculum-instruction scholar each year, invites a recognized scholar to speak, and includes a social gathering of curriculum-instruction faculty. Although not focusing exclusively on curriculum, these developments helped legitimize curriculum scholarship in the field. Meanwhile, the prestigious American Educational Research Association established a special interest group in physical education that also holds yearly meetings and sponsors several awards for scholarly work.

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