From all of us @meaningfulpe

In our most recent work around Meaningful PE, we have tried to focus our attention on pedagogies that teachers can use to support them in prioritizing the meaningfulness that students experience in their physical education classes. The two sets we have identified are democratic and reflective pedagogies, as these often lead to students having experiences that are appropriately challenging, involve positive social interactions, are fun, enable improved competence, or that they see as helping them learn things they find personally relevant (amongst a whole host of other things). Within democratic pedagogies, those that might be loosely classified as ‘student voice’ are particularly powerful in supporting the meaningfulness of student experiences.

As our research team has begun to give more thought to student voice pedagogies, we find ourselves once again relying on the many teachers we engage with to share their thoughts, ideas, and experiences of using these pedagogies. So in a roundabout way, our focus on student voice has meant that we are relying more closely on teacher voice to help us understand what is going on. And this is the main point of this blog post. We are very proud and pleased (and a little shocked if we are honest) that many teachers around the world seem to have found some of the things we have shared about Meaningful PE as being useful to their practice and to the quality of their students’ experiences. But what we have shared about Meaningful PE – all of the evidence, all of the innovative strategies, all of the descriptions of what seems to make sense or work (or fail) – has come from the very hard and generous work of teachers. In fact, in many ways we feel that we are following the lead of some teachers who are using Meaningful PE in ways we never would have imagined. Their expertise and knowledge of their students, subject matter, and pedagogy is helping us learn about and imagine what is possible. And while we try to acknowledge teachers’ input as much as we can, this micro blog provides an opportunity for us to do that more emphatically.

And so to those teachers who have taken the time to get in touch with us, to share an example or insight or question or more, we want to take the time to acknowledge that we aim to do with you what we ask that you do with your students: listen, reflect, respond, and listen some more. And of course we want to say thank you for being so generous with your time and expertise to share your worlds and those of your students with us. And hopefully we can continue to learn with you and from you and many more teachers with whom you work. Please know that for us, the teacher’s voice is essential in helping grow better educational experiences for children.

We would like to acknowledge those teachers who have taken the time to share but often that leads to a mistaken or innocent omission. So please just know that if you have shared anything with us that you and your work are valued in deep and, dare we say, meaningful ways.

This microblog post was a featured post in #slowchathealth’s #microblogmonth event. You can search for all of the featured posts here. Please do follow each of the outstanding contributors on social media (including LAMPE the collective authors of this post) and consider writing a microblog post of your own to be shared with the global audience of slowchathealth.com

Pair this blog post with the following:

How to Facilitate Deeper Connections to Physical Activity by Jordan Manley

Supporting Meaningful PE in Health Education by Allisha Blanchette

The Power of Meaningful and Joyful Experiences by Leticia Cariño

Check out the book: Meaningful Physical Education: An Approach for Teaching and Learning