Philosophy of Physical Activity Education (Including Educational Sport)

This text is designed to help you, the reader, develop an early philosophic perspective of physical activity education (including educational sport). In the process you will also come to understand selected aspects of the field’s historical background as a developing academic field and discipline. The field is called sport and physical education in the United States currently. However, as we move along in the 21st century, it is still designated as physical and health education in Canada. The term used most often to name the field worldwide is physical education and sport. Despite its obvious importance, there has been a gradual decline of physical activity education philosophy (including educational sport) within the professional curricula of physical activity educators/coaches. This appears to have taken place since the adoption in the 1970s of an almost pure (analytic) philosophical approach to the detriment of almost any applied philosophic endeavor. As you develop an understanding about your chosen life work, I hope that you, as a prospective professional educator, in what I am calling physical activity education and (educational) sport, will be stimulated to examine yourself–your beliefs!–more carefully than ever before. If you will do this conscientiously, the result will be an under–girding personal philosophy that is sound, consistent, and logical. The resultant (life) philosophic stance should then be a position that is as consistent as possible with the part of your overall philosophy that relates to your chosen profession as an educator. Almost 50 years ago I wrote similar words in expressing the thought about the need for a text such as this one. I still believe firmly that THERE IS A GREAT NEED FOR THIS BOOK. As was the case then, all around us we still find programs that are the results of inconsistent and illogical thinking. This criticism is not leveled only at “sport and physical education “ in the United States (or physical and health education as it is typically called in the schools in Canada). It is evident wherever we look within the entire educational system. Whichever way the wind blows, we are still apt to find the shaky educational reed inclining. Prospective physical activity educators and coaches of sport within education need to “what they stand for” in the 21st century.