October 28, 2024 • 37 mins
Compared to colleagues in other subjects, the PE community tends to lack data and evidence to support all our hard work. In this webinar, I'll explain how capturing mission aligned data helps raise the status of the subject.
The webinar will consist of a short presentation followed by an open mic conversation to ask questions and share practice.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Sort of established that we're working towards this goal. And again, I should always reference
(00:18):
it, this is a Swedish academic called Mikael Kvinnyshsted. And he says the only real sustainable
aim for PE is that the kids want to do more. And we've spoken before, more PE, more physical
activity, more sport, they want to be more active. They have any experiences that trigger
their motivation, their enjoyment, all the other stuff that makes them want to do more.
(00:44):
Okay, so how do we know if we're doing that? And there's loads written and discussed, and people
at schools up and down the country and around the world every day, figuring out why we've spoken
plenty about rationale for PE, why we're doing what we're doing. And that's contentious,
(01:06):
as people got different views. And that's healthy, it's a good thing. And then is there alignment
between what you think you want to achieve, and then how you do it? So what does your curriculum
look like? What does your program look like? Is it really aligned to your why? So we see,
(01:27):
I've been really fortunate to be in teacher education, so I work with loads and loads of
teachers. And I've seen some great programs that are really aligned. And I've also seen some stuff
that's disaligned. So, you know, if we're really looking about around positive experiences, etc.
And we're aligning that to who? There's big questions to be asked, like, if we fitness test
(01:50):
children, is that providing a positive experience? And if so, to which young people? And, you know,
we've all worked with young people, where fitness testing is actually humiliating and really,
really unpleasant experience. So how does that align with the why of trying to turn kids onto
physical activity? Am I advocating that kids should never experience any physical discomfort?
(02:15):
No, they should experience physical discomfort when they're socially, psychologically, physically,
mature enough to make sense of that. And that provides them with meaningful experiences.
I sort of digress. So please keep me on track, Jordan. Otherwise, we're going to go all over the
place. And then it's like, well, how, how do we deliver that? But here's the thing tonight. The
(02:38):
evidence is the bridge is the glue that links everything together. One of my favorite academics,
educators, is a guy called Dylan William. And he talks about your evidence, which is often
associated with assessment as well. But we come on to that in a minute, that your evidence is the
(03:00):
read, it gives the analogy of a pilot. And the pilot is working really hard to fly the plane.
And the plane is going from Seattle to New York. And without good evidence, the pilot does it,
you know, follows all the protocol, take off flight control, landing. And then, well, the
landing is in Hawaii. Why is it landing in Hawaii? Because the pilot hasn't been looking at the
(03:27):
evidence throughout the journey. So if our goal is to get the kids to a place where they've got
real strong attachment to physical activity, and using their bodies in ways that are meaningful
for them, being physically active. And you get to whatever it is, sixth grade, eighth grade,
(03:49):
10th grade. And you're seeing that a lot, a lot of the young people you're working with are not
engaging or are beginning to engage less. We've got some choices. And, you know,
I don't wish to be like, draw upon stereotypes, but there's two types of teacher is one type of
(04:09):
teacher say, those kids, they can't not motivated to do anything. And then there's the reflective
teacher who will really look at what's going on and think, Okay, what can I do about that? No,
there is a conversation about controlling the controllables, you're not going to change the
whole world. We're up against some very big factors that we probably haven't got a lot of
(04:31):
control of. But we can control our curricula, we can control the pedagogy, we can control the
quality of the experiences that kids have in our gyms, we can control who we praise when we praise
them and what we praise them for. And all of those things are small, regular, consistent things that
we could do to say to kids, I see you, I hear you, and I recognize your efforts. The challenge then
(04:56):
is how do we capture the evidence? And why do we want to capture the evidence? In the title,
I use the word advocacy, we need to begin to shout for ourselves, we need to begin to give
draw attention to our own successes. And we can only do that if we've got evidence. And everybody
(05:17):
who's listening to this call knows what counts as evidence when it comes to talking to administration
and talking to different stakeholders in education. We need to have the numbers. You can't just say,
oh, I think my kids are having a good time, or they're really enjoying the activity. One,
that's not actually your job just to entertain the kids. They need to be making progress,
(05:41):
progress towards what that goes back to our why, progress towards developing and engaging in
regular physical activity. So how do we collect the evidence? And again, I'm sort of using evidence
and assessment interchangeably, I guess assessment would be more the process that we go through
(06:01):
and the tools that we use. And the evidence is, is how is that recorded? I hope that makes sense.
Jordan, you tell me if that's not clear or you disagree. No, that makes sense. Okay, so the evidence
is that the outcomes are tangibles. Okay. So again, last week we spoke about the four
(06:27):
standards or a holistic approach to physical activity, physical education, or, you know,
when Jordan and I talked to each other, we regularly refer to the four different domains.
So standard one, young people need to make progress in the physical domain. They need to
become better movers over time. There's lots of conversations around what a better mover is,
(06:50):
but I'm just going to park that. Otherwise, again, it's going to be far too long.
Standard two, they need to apply knowledge and understanding. Now, look what I've done here.
I've said that the evidence for standard one and two is interlinked because I'm not sure
that these two could be separated in what you observe. So if you take a young person who's
(07:13):
developing the physical of shooting a basketball better, more accurately, more consistently, then
yep, they could possibly do that in absolute isolation, just from the free throw line,
just shooting. But even then, there's still some applied knowledge and understanding.
(07:34):
If you want, as soon as you put that in context, then you've got questions around
when does the performer, when does the young person choose to shoot, when do they choose not
to shoot? Are they able to maintain technique, consistency in situ, in a game activity,
albeit modified, etc. So the way we capture evidence is one, we watch.
(08:01):
Two, some people might choose to test that test. I'm not going to go into what the test could be.
For me, a great test would be, let's play 3v3, repeating real life,
ecologically accurate activities and repeat challenges. So the young person can see the
progress they make over the course of repeat challenges. Again, not really the crux of what
(08:27):
we're talking about today, but we're going to capture some record of the young person's progress,
the student's progress, and that could be recorded video footage, it could be recorded
journaling, it could be recorded by the teacher, it can be recorded by a student. And this is my big
challenge today, is who does the evidence collection? And almost every time that we talk about assessment,
(08:56):
we almost always think that that is something that the teacher is the main agent of.
And that can sometimes be problematic, it can be challenging for the teacher,
it can be seen as a burden for a teacher, because it's workload, there's stuff to do. Jordan and
(09:17):
I, and Jordan talks far more eloquently than me about this around what does an assessment and
evidence-based model look like that's driven by the student and then validated and moderated by
the teacher? We're really flipping stuff and that's a very exciting conversation. And I think
it's probably fair to say it's the direction of travel. I think we're going to have to go down
(09:42):
that route, especially with the technical tools that we've got available to us these days.
Okay, standard three, the young person, the student needs to make progress in developing
social skills in and through activity. I think this is really challenging to collect strong
evidence of, unless we center the young person. And that needs to come through reflection.
(10:09):
So then we've got self-assessment and peer assessment. So if we break these social skills
down, let's take a social skill around an aspect of being in a team with someone,
which might be clear communication. Now, again, we can have a discussion, is clear communication
(10:33):
a social skill or is communication a skill in its own right? But if we ask what does,
what does great teamwork look like, I think we can agree, I hope we can agree that communication
is in there somewhere, clear, concise, sometimes empathetic, appropriate for the situation, etc.
(10:57):
So who is in a position to judge has a student ex exercised or developed the ability to communicate
clearly? Well, probably the person listening to that communication, the teacher might hear some of
that. But on a reflective journal, we can ask young people to say, okay, you are in a team
(11:20):
with three other people today, highlight two things that each of them did that represented
quality, high quality communication in today's volleyball lesson. Okay. So the volleyball
becomes the vehicle for delivering progress for enabling progress in social skills. Last week,
(11:43):
we spoke about standard four. And how do we any the wording that's used in that's used in standard
four, young people choosing to participate and engage in physical activity. Big challenge. How
do we get the data, the evidence, the assessment processes on a round standard four. And in last
(12:07):
week's webinar, I gave an overview of the tool that I've developed called my move, and how the
young people drive that it senses their experiences. They can I'm not going to show another demo this
week, go back to last week and go to the second half of the webinar, and you'll see how my move
(12:30):
works with young people engage in recording, journaling, hosting, all the physical activity
they take part in in and out of school. For some kids, that would be high performance sport. And
for others, it will be really unstructured informal physical activity experiences. Whatever it is,
it's absolutely valid. And it is evidence that they are making progress in standard four. I think
(12:57):
it's fair to say that if they're not active, then not only are they not making progress in standard
four, but they're not going to be developing the other three. And that was a key point from last
week. So why do we need the evidence? And this is how we begin to transform and elevate our practice
(13:18):
and I would go so far as to say elevate the status of the subject area. There will not be an HPE,
especially a PE teacher on this call, who has not experienced assumptions or stereotypes around low
status subject. Whether that's having your facility taken away because administration thinks that
(13:44):
something else is more worthwhile or more important, whether it's kids missing or being
authorized to miss class, PE class, because they need to do something else that is more important,
the list goes on and on and on. And we can play to that narrative if we're not careful and if we're
not equipped with good evidence of the impact that we're having, not just anecdotal evidence.
(14:10):
We will play to that narrative and this is contentious and there might be some people listening
to this who really disagree and by all means reach out and challenge. We will play to that narrative
if we justify our existence as either a break from the rigors of academic work for the students.
(14:32):
It's not hard for admin to say that's why we have recess. Or we will play to that narrative as a low
status subject if we keep talking about kids having fun. They have a lot of fun in PE. Now please
don't hear me wrong. I'm not anti-fun. I'm not saying kids should never have fun. Personally, I think
(14:55):
as they progress, they should be able to articulate much deeper emotional responses and have the language
to explain what that meaningful connection is. For some kids, very hard physical work is really
satisfying. I'm not sure it's fun. I'm not sure they would say it's fun, certainly not in a situation.
(15:18):
Why am I arguing that fun is not necessarily a useful concept for us and it perpetuates low status,
even though last week we spoke about a meaningful PE framework and fun is one of the five or six
(15:40):
indicators there. I would challenge that because fun sounds frivolous. If you're a principal of a
school or you're an administrator in a school and you're hearing someone say, oh, the kids have so
much fun when they come to my class, is that enough? If they're having fun and they're making
really good progress and that is then ensuring that they're developing certain behaviors or it's a
(16:04):
trigger for learning about behaviors, learning what they consider to be pleasurable or unpleasant,
then okay, but that's fun in the context. It's not fun as a sufficient outcome.
So if we've got evidence from the point of view of the students, it allows us to celebrate their
successes and their successes will be our successes and it allows us to support students better.
(16:29):
We saw on my move platform earlier this week, we saw a kid in grade seven
host, I really hate PE. I really don't like it when the ball comes to me.
Now that's priceless, absolutely priceless. And I had a reasonably long conversation with the teacher
(16:50):
who was so pleased that he captured that evidence straight from the student capturing the student's
voice on there. Now that student can go on a journey with the teacher. The teacher can support
that student and in four weeks, see if they can get that student to go on a journey with the teacher.
And in four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, 20 weeks, however long it's going to take.
(17:16):
If that attitude has changed and that kid feels a sense of belonging and connection
to physical education, then that is absolutely priceless. And that teacher, I would argue,
has earned their payslip that month 100%. They are worth their weight in gold.
So we can only get that if we start to capture evidence from a range of sources.
(17:42):
And it allows us to really redefine and work towards our values,
to redefine what we're celebrating. So with good evidence and my move delivers this sort of data,
these are some of the categories that we can celebrate. And I will go through them.
I'm going from less active to active. The hardest thing to do around the world,
(18:06):
that is the big challenge. There will be petages up and down the countries who are inspiring kids
to go from less active to active. We don't ever shout about that. Who's got the data to say,
we started the semester and we'd identified 30% of our student cohort who were less active.
Of that 30% by the end of the semester, the number in that cohort halved. Strong, clear,
(18:33):
concise data based on evidence that is captured. In that case, I would argue we capture it through
my move. You might have other ways of capturing. Overcoming barriers. I was talking to a teacher
today who's worked in a school with a large Muslim population. Their kids have got challenges
(18:56):
in their life, not because they're Muslim, but because their lives are complex. It's low socioeconomic
area. So we've got intersectional complexity. And a lot of the kids after school go to Islamic school
from like 4pm to 6pm. They go to Islamic school. Now, if they're still with a busy schedule,
(19:17):
if they're still managing to get activity in, and don't hear me wrong, some of these
Islamic schools have breaks where they have physical activity experiences. But if they don't,
and they're still managing to commit to the pursuit of physical activity, their enjoyment of it,
they're overcoming serious barriers. If they're 12, 13, 14 year old kids, that is a real high
(19:40):
five moment. That's a moment to say, you've got a busy life. You've got stuff in your life that I've
never had in my life. And I'm going to give you a real, like real well done, because you're doing
a really great job in your context. Sustain an activity, building streaks that consistency piece,
helping others and responding to help. There's two sides to that, right? We can help others,
(20:04):
we can lead. We also need to be open to help. Those are really positive traits we can capture.
We need the numbers we need to be able to see. And we need the qualitative testimonials to
engage in informal activities. They're off the radar. But how great is it when a kid goes out
on their skateboard? Who knows? Like as an athletic director, we don't know that because
(20:28):
it's not a school varsity contest. But I would argue, and in a future webinar, we've got celebrating
all forms of activity, I would argue that this should be hierarchically flat. Being in an
all state team is high performance, great for those kids. Going out on a skateboard, it could be
(20:51):
high performance, could be entirely recreational, could be entirely social. It's all good.
Trying new activities. For a lot of young people, that is a serious undertaking that comes with a
lot of challenges, the uncertainty of going into a different space to move in a way that you've never
(21:11):
moved before. Or to exactly as I just said, to go to new settings, maybe where you don't know
anyone. So we need to capture that. So this is some data that's taken from last semester,
from one of the schools that's using MyMove. I'm just giving you a flavor of the evidence base
(21:31):
that the teacher had. So in that school, 120 students were using MyMove. Straight away,
we know that in that semester, the kids recorded 71,000 minutes of activity. Now that in itself,
okay, we can celebrate that. We can certainly celebrate it if next semester, that seven has
(21:52):
turned to an eight, and they're now doing 81,000 minutes of activity. Straight away, that teaches
like activity has gone up 10,000 minutes over the course of this semester. And we did that because
we implemented X, Y and Z strategy, or we listened to what the students were saying. We could get a
little bit deeper where the students are active. And I've just taken some real headline data here.
(22:17):
So of all the activity, 59% of it was in PE. But 28% was outside in free in free play. So in
informal activity, with relatively few kids outside of school, engaged in formal club-based
activity. And this is split by gender a little bit. So here, males are just under 3% informal
(22:44):
activity, but about a third in informal activity. And interestingly, when it comes to girls and
young women, almost 10% were involved in formal activity, and a quarter in informal activity.
So educating for the sort of experiences that kids are having is potentially a really challenging,
(23:07):
but also a very interesting question. This is some of my favorite data that was unearthed by
this particular school. The quality of the experience. So on my move, the kids rank the
quality of the experience great through to horrible. And this was all of their activity in
general. So you can see it's like 81% was good and great. But here's the deal. When it came to PE,
(23:33):
it was just above that. So of all the activity, these teachers are saying 83% of our all of
our student experience in PE lessons were good or great. Now that in itself is well worth shouting
about. But it's also a platform for saying, okay, how do we move forward? What do we do about
(23:58):
this 18% 17% of kids who are not finding our lessons good or great. And that's conversation,
it's engagement, it's relationship, it's inquiry. It's engaging in those processes. And that,
I guess, is student centered learning, not student appeasement learning, student centered learning.
(24:25):
There was 703 reflections, free written reflections. And these are some to finish off that caught my
eye. So this is around the qualitative evidence. I went through a late night walk with my family
in my neighborhood. It was incredibly relaxing. And I spent a lot of time with my family that I
couldn't spend because of school and work. Now, if we're applying a meaningful PE framework,
(24:51):
these statements shelter us. So this is about physical activity for strong social connections.
Look at lovely language. It was incredibly relaxing.
My dad loves cricket. I got a bond with him over it. Plus, I love watching it. So playing it was
(25:14):
even more fun. As the word I was talking about before fun. But again, look at the context,
social relationships, family relationships, what a great word to use around sport and physical
activity. I bond with my father. And then through that, this kid has developed a love of watching
(25:36):
cricket. It was super fun to play basketball. Open gym gives me a chance to relax and just play what
I love. If you need to put statements in front of other stakeholders in your school to justify
what you're doing, why have you got open gym at lunchtime or whenever this kid went to the gym?
(25:57):
This is exactly why. And again, this is a high school. So we've got young people who clearly
value their opportunity to relax and they're associated and relaxed with informal activity.
Notice the absence of adult voice when the kid went out for a walk.
(26:20):
Or when the kid went to open gym. These are not coach sessions. Now, again, please don't hear
me wrong. I'm not saying that we don't have any technical input, but we should also really value
giving young people space where they can express themselves and where they can relax. Absolutely
valid. Probably very healthy too. I love this. How honest is this? My fitness goal this year is to
(26:47):
lose fat. Okay, there might be lots of conversations around why and what support that might be needed.
But okay, this is a high school student. My fitness goal is to lose fat and regain some self confidence.
I don't know what you would hear and see when you make of that.
(27:07):
Personally, I find it heartbreaking that fatness is related to a lack of self confidence.
But hey, this is the world that this kid lives in. It's the world that many of us live in.
I'm aiming to be more healthy, calorie counting and diet and active through the day, muscle training,
flexibility, cardio to give me a sense of accomplishment.
(27:32):
Can we get a sense of accomplishment detached from having to lose fat? These are really deep
conversations that are triggered by kids disclosing, volunteering this information,
because for reasons that we don't fully understand, but we see it a lot, when they're engaging with
their device or a screen, they have a lot of trust and confidence to share. There's probably
(27:58):
also an intention that this is read, heard and responded to. Now, you might be saying,
well, okay, I can't do that. I haven't got time for that. That's another conversation for another
time around. But the point is we capture the data. If we can help this kid through professional
(28:24):
information, instruction, relationship building, etc. And we capture that again, great evidence,
evidence of this kid's progress and evidence of teaching effectiveness.
A fitness goal I want to work towards is running mile. I really don't know how to start, though.
(28:46):
What is the job of a phys ed teacher? That there is such a nice way in here. Hey, Katie,
kids, names, Katie, Katie, I saw your post. It's not complicated, Katie. Let's just start off,
walk and run. Tell me how you get on post it on my move. I'll follow your progress. One sentence.
So all of this is around us having better, deeper, high quality information
(29:16):
for us to shout about our work. Now, like some people who might be listening to this,
I talked for many years here in London and I was reticent to share a lot of the successes.
I didn't think it was particularly needed. I think didn't think it was exceptional.
(29:38):
I thought I'd go to work, I'd do an honest day's work and I'd take the wins and there'd be some
losses along the way, too. I'm not sure that was the right call. If I spoke to my younger self
about that, I would probably say, Greg, you probably should have made a bigger deal about the
really good things that were happening with me and my team and the students we were working with.
(30:04):
It's your call, your information. I guess the challenge coming out of this webinar presentation
is what evidence you're capturing to base your information on. And if you want to check out
how my move can support that, support your students' journeys so that they all hopefully
(30:25):
develop a positive relationship with physical activity, please reach out on the HPE or via
email Greg at MyMoveApp.com. Jordan, any comments or questions? Again, I probably was too long.
I think it's great. I mean, we got through so much connecting through, talking through, again,
(30:50):
standards, looking at framing up what we intend to do, why, and then how, and talking about linking
our practice with evidence all the way through to evidence-based practices with your grading,
getting kids to articulate what they are making progress with, what feelings they're having within
(31:11):
their physical activity. All of those things, I think, are laying a foundation for a real
really meaningful and helpful experience in a PE class for young people. And then we get all the
way through at the end to really wrap it with advocacy, and I want to share something that
(31:32):
happened yesterday. Yesterday we had a site visit. We had 60 to 70 teachers, students, administrators
from the New England area, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont. We had New Hampshire. These teachers were
with the NGLC, Next Generation Learning Challenges, and they are doing learning excursions across the
(31:57):
country. They're visiting schools where they believe that they stand to learn something
about what school could be. And our school is lucky enough to be chosen as a site for these teachers
to visit. And I got to sit in on a panel. I got to listen to some of my students talk about their
journey at STEAM. And it was really, really powerful and emotional for me. But then also,
(32:24):
I got to sit on a panel and teachers and administrators asked us questions about our
experiences. And the last question that was asked was about state-level accountability
through state testing. And the scores that are attached to kids and therefore placed upon schools
to say this school is a low-performing school, this school is a high-performing school,
(32:47):
and how it even gets internalized down to the teacher and their beliefs about themselves. If
their scores come back not as good as they had hoped. And my wife's a fifth grade teacher,
and that's something that she deals with, is that time of year when state testing scores are released,
but the question was to us, is like, hey, like, how do you resolve this tension of living in
(33:15):
this more abstract space where students are collecting their own evidence and they're
articulating it to you. And they're getting at some of these ideas around learner-centered approaches
that aren't as hard, you know, check yes or no forms of assessment. And how does that reflect
(33:37):
in your state testing and how do you all deal with that pressure? And so it came to me first,
and my first instinct was to do just what you said. I honestly deflected a little bit and was
like, you know, like, I'm just the PE teacher, I don't have a state accountability test. I'm
going to defer that to our science and math and whatever. And instantly, I knew that I could
(34:03):
have answered that question better. I was just trying to not suck up the air in the room.
But everyone answered and it came back around to me and I was like, I really want to revise
what I said. I was just trying to be a little self-deprecating there.
I was like, but everything that I do makes these kids better at what they do, makes these teachers
(34:27):
jobs easier. You know, these kids who come into a PE class and they are happy, engaged, motivated,
social, active, all of those things make students better learners. They're going to go to their
next class happier, more energized, more motivated. And so when I'm thinking about the evidence that
(34:50):
I need to support my practice, I'm going to, you know, this kid, Mitchell, walked out of my classroom
today, we were in the weight room and Mitchell doesn't care much for the PE class. But he stepped
aside as the bell rung and he's going out to the bus today. And under his breath, he said, Hey, Mr.
Manley, today was really cool. And you know, that kid has been really disaffected by school.
(35:17):
He came to me as a ninth grader, like telling me straight up, I don't want to be here. I don't
want to be in school. I really don't want to be in your class. And just like you said earlier,
the celebrating like include more inclusive celebrations, like just to be able to introduce
Mitchell to the weight room today changed a lot of the way that that he felt. And I'm getting to
(35:44):
know that through collecting these reflections of my move. But also, you know, once they are
reflecting in my move, they feel so much more comfortable just approaching me and saying it to
my face, because they know I read it, because I'll bring it up in a conversation. And so rather
than that conversation being held on our phones, now it's turning into real life. Because they know
(36:07):
that I'm reading it, they know that I care enough. And so they will come to me with it in the hallway,
before school, after school, like all of these things. When we're talking about laying this
foundation that our standards sit upon in the systems that we're using to collect evidence.
It really starts with this understanding of who these kids are, where they're at in their lives.
(36:32):
And for me, as a PE teacher, that's what I want my daughters to experience. I want their PE teachers
to know them. And I want them to empower their journey. So everything that we talked about today
really, really hits home with me. And I really appreciate everything that you gave us today,
Greg. I am all welcome. And that was a really lovely wrap up. And I'm not even going to,
(36:57):
I was thinking about lots of things we were just talking about. But hey, I think whoever's listening,
thank you very much.
Sort of established that we're working towards this goal. And again, I should always reference
(00:18):
it, this is a Swedish academic called Mikael Kvinnyshsted. And he says the only real sustainable
aim for PE is that the kids want to do more. And we've spoken before, more PE, more physical
activity, more sport, they want to be more active. They have any experiences that trigger
their motivation, their enjoyment, all the other stuff that makes them want to do more.
(00:44):
Okay, so how do we know if we're doing that? And there's loads written and discussed, and people
at schools up and down the country and around the world every day, figuring out why we've spoken
plenty about rationale for PE, why we're doing what we're doing. And that's contentious,
(01:06):
as people got different views. And that's healthy, it's a good thing. And then is there alignment
between what you think you want to achieve, and then how you do it? So what does your curriculum
look like? What does your program look like? Is it really aligned to your why? So we see,
(01:27):
I've been really fortunate to be in teacher education, so I work with loads and loads of
teachers. And I've seen some great programs that are really aligned. And I've also seen some stuff
that's disaligned. So, you know, if we're really looking about around positive experiences, etc.
And we're aligning that to who? There's big questions to be asked, like, if we fitness test
(01:50):
children, is that providing a positive experience? And if so, to which young people? And, you know,
we've all worked with young people, where fitness testing is actually humiliating and really,
really unpleasant experience. So how does that align with the why of trying to turn kids onto
physical activity? Am I advocating that kids should never experience any physical discomfort?
(02:15):
No, they should experience physical discomfort when they're socially, psychologically, physically,
mature enough to make sense of that. And that provides them with meaningful experiences.
I sort of digress. So please keep me on track, Jordan. Otherwise, we're going to go all over the
place. And then it's like, well, how, how do we deliver that? But here's the thing tonight. The
(02:38):
evidence is the bridge is the glue that links everything together. One of my favorite academics,
educators, is a guy called Dylan William. And he talks about your evidence, which is often
associated with assessment as well. But we come on to that in a minute, that your evidence is the
(03:00):
read, it gives the analogy of a pilot. And the pilot is working really hard to fly the plane.
And the plane is going from Seattle to New York. And without good evidence, the pilot does it,
you know, follows all the protocol, take off flight control, landing. And then, well, the
landing is in Hawaii. Why is it landing in Hawaii? Because the pilot hasn't been looking at the
(03:27):
evidence throughout the journey. So if our goal is to get the kids to a place where they've got
real strong attachment to physical activity, and using their bodies in ways that are meaningful
for them, being physically active. And you get to whatever it is, sixth grade, eighth grade,
(03:49):
10th grade. And you're seeing that a lot, a lot of the young people you're working with are not
engaging or are beginning to engage less. We've got some choices. And, you know,
I don't wish to be like, draw upon stereotypes, but there's two types of teacher is one type of
(04:09):
teacher say, those kids, they can't not motivated to do anything. And then there's the reflective
teacher who will really look at what's going on and think, Okay, what can I do about that? No,
there is a conversation about controlling the controllables, you're not going to change the
whole world. We're up against some very big factors that we probably haven't got a lot of
(04:31):
control of. But we can control our curricula, we can control the pedagogy, we can control the
quality of the experiences that kids have in our gyms, we can control who we praise when we praise
them and what we praise them for. And all of those things are small, regular, consistent things that
we could do to say to kids, I see you, I hear you, and I recognize your efforts. The challenge then
(04:56):
is how do we capture the evidence? And why do we want to capture the evidence? In the title,
I use the word advocacy, we need to begin to shout for ourselves, we need to begin to give
draw attention to our own successes. And we can only do that if we've got evidence. And everybody
(05:17):
who's listening to this call knows what counts as evidence when it comes to talking to administration
and talking to different stakeholders in education. We need to have the numbers. You can't just say,
oh, I think my kids are having a good time, or they're really enjoying the activity. One,
that's not actually your job just to entertain the kids. They need to be making progress,
(05:41):
progress towards what that goes back to our why, progress towards developing and engaging in
regular physical activity. So how do we collect the evidence? And again, I'm sort of using evidence
and assessment interchangeably, I guess assessment would be more the process that we go through
(06:01):
and the tools that we use. And the evidence is, is how is that recorded? I hope that makes sense.
Jordan, you tell me if that's not clear or you disagree. No, that makes sense. Okay, so the evidence
is that the outcomes are tangibles. Okay. So again, last week we spoke about the four
(06:27):
standards or a holistic approach to physical activity, physical education, or, you know,
when Jordan and I talked to each other, we regularly refer to the four different domains.
So standard one, young people need to make progress in the physical domain. They need to
become better movers over time. There's lots of conversations around what a better mover is,
(06:50):
but I'm just going to park that. Otherwise, again, it's going to be far too long.
Standard two, they need to apply knowledge and understanding. Now, look what I've done here.
I've said that the evidence for standard one and two is interlinked because I'm not sure
that these two could be separated in what you observe. So if you take a young person who's
(07:13):
developing the physical of shooting a basketball better, more accurately, more consistently, then
yep, they could possibly do that in absolute isolation, just from the free throw line,
just shooting. But even then, there's still some applied knowledge and understanding.
(07:34):
If you want, as soon as you put that in context, then you've got questions around
when does the performer, when does the young person choose to shoot, when do they choose not
to shoot? Are they able to maintain technique, consistency in situ, in a game activity,
albeit modified, etc. So the way we capture evidence is one, we watch.
(08:01):
Two, some people might choose to test that test. I'm not going to go into what the test could be.
For me, a great test would be, let's play 3v3, repeating real life,
ecologically accurate activities and repeat challenges. So the young person can see the
progress they make over the course of repeat challenges. Again, not really the crux of what
(08:27):
we're talking about today, but we're going to capture some record of the young person's progress,
the student's progress, and that could be recorded video footage, it could be recorded
journaling, it could be recorded by the teacher, it can be recorded by a student. And this is my big
challenge today, is who does the evidence collection? And almost every time that we talk about assessment,
(08:56):
we almost always think that that is something that the teacher is the main agent of.
And that can sometimes be problematic, it can be challenging for the teacher,
it can be seen as a burden for a teacher, because it's workload, there's stuff to do. Jordan and
(09:17):
I, and Jordan talks far more eloquently than me about this around what does an assessment and
evidence-based model look like that's driven by the student and then validated and moderated by
the teacher? We're really flipping stuff and that's a very exciting conversation. And I think
it's probably fair to say it's the direction of travel. I think we're going to have to go down
(09:42):
that route, especially with the technical tools that we've got available to us these days.
Okay, standard three, the young person, the student needs to make progress in developing
social skills in and through activity. I think this is really challenging to collect strong
evidence of, unless we center the young person. And that needs to come through reflection.
(10:09):
So then we've got self-assessment and peer assessment. So if we break these social skills
down, let's take a social skill around an aspect of being in a team with someone,
which might be clear communication. Now, again, we can have a discussion, is clear communication
(10:33):
a social skill or is communication a skill in its own right? But if we ask what does,
what does great teamwork look like, I think we can agree, I hope we can agree that communication
is in there somewhere, clear, concise, sometimes empathetic, appropriate for the situation, etc.
(10:57):
So who is in a position to judge has a student ex exercised or developed the ability to communicate
clearly? Well, probably the person listening to that communication, the teacher might hear some of
that. But on a reflective journal, we can ask young people to say, okay, you are in a team
(11:20):
with three other people today, highlight two things that each of them did that represented
quality, high quality communication in today's volleyball lesson. Okay. So the volleyball
becomes the vehicle for delivering progress for enabling progress in social skills. Last week,
(11:43):
we spoke about standard four. And how do we any the wording that's used in that's used in standard
four, young people choosing to participate and engage in physical activity. Big challenge. How
do we get the data, the evidence, the assessment processes on a round standard four. And in last
(12:07):
week's webinar, I gave an overview of the tool that I've developed called my move, and how the
young people drive that it senses their experiences. They can I'm not going to show another demo this
week, go back to last week and go to the second half of the webinar, and you'll see how my move
(12:30):
works with young people engage in recording, journaling, hosting, all the physical activity
they take part in in and out of school. For some kids, that would be high performance sport. And
for others, it will be really unstructured informal physical activity experiences. Whatever it is,
it's absolutely valid. And it is evidence that they are making progress in standard four. I think
(12:57):
it's fair to say that if they're not active, then not only are they not making progress in standard
four, but they're not going to be developing the other three. And that was a key point from last
week. So why do we need the evidence? And this is how we begin to transform and elevate our practice
(13:18):
and I would go so far as to say elevate the status of the subject area. There will not be an HPE,
especially a PE teacher on this call, who has not experienced assumptions or stereotypes around low
status subject. Whether that's having your facility taken away because administration thinks that
(13:44):
something else is more worthwhile or more important, whether it's kids missing or being
authorized to miss class, PE class, because they need to do something else that is more important,
the list goes on and on and on. And we can play to that narrative if we're not careful and if we're
not equipped with good evidence of the impact that we're having, not just anecdotal evidence.
(14:10):
We will play to that narrative and this is contentious and there might be some people listening
to this who really disagree and by all means reach out and challenge. We will play to that narrative
if we justify our existence as either a break from the rigors of academic work for the students.
(14:32):
It's not hard for admin to say that's why we have recess. Or we will play to that narrative as a low
status subject if we keep talking about kids having fun. They have a lot of fun in PE. Now please
don't hear me wrong. I'm not anti-fun. I'm not saying kids should never have fun. Personally, I think
(14:55):
as they progress, they should be able to articulate much deeper emotional responses and have the language
to explain what that meaningful connection is. For some kids, very hard physical work is really
satisfying. I'm not sure it's fun. I'm not sure they would say it's fun, certainly not in a situation.
(15:18):
Why am I arguing that fun is not necessarily a useful concept for us and it perpetuates low status,
even though last week we spoke about a meaningful PE framework and fun is one of the five or six
(15:40):
indicators there. I would challenge that because fun sounds frivolous. If you're a principal of a
school or you're an administrator in a school and you're hearing someone say, oh, the kids have so
much fun when they come to my class, is that enough? If they're having fun and they're making
really good progress and that is then ensuring that they're developing certain behaviors or it's a
(16:04):
trigger for learning about behaviors, learning what they consider to be pleasurable or unpleasant,
then okay, but that's fun in the context. It's not fun as a sufficient outcome.
So if we've got evidence from the point of view of the students, it allows us to celebrate their
successes and their successes will be our successes and it allows us to support students better.
(16:29):
We saw on my move platform earlier this week, we saw a kid in grade seven
host, I really hate PE. I really don't like it when the ball comes to me.
Now that's priceless, absolutely priceless. And I had a reasonably long conversation with the teacher
(16:50):
who was so pleased that he captured that evidence straight from the student capturing the student's
voice on there. Now that student can go on a journey with the teacher. The teacher can support
that student and in four weeks, see if they can get that student to go on a journey with the teacher.
And in four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, 20 weeks, however long it's going to take.
(17:16):
If that attitude has changed and that kid feels a sense of belonging and connection
to physical education, then that is absolutely priceless. And that teacher, I would argue,
has earned their payslip that month 100%. They are worth their weight in gold.
So we can only get that if we start to capture evidence from a range of sources.
(17:42):
And it allows us to really redefine and work towards our values,
to redefine what we're celebrating. So with good evidence and my move delivers this sort of data,
these are some of the categories that we can celebrate. And I will go through them.
I'm going from less active to active. The hardest thing to do around the world,
(18:06):
that is the big challenge. There will be petages up and down the countries who are inspiring kids
to go from less active to active. We don't ever shout about that. Who's got the data to say,
we started the semester and we'd identified 30% of our student cohort who were less active.
Of that 30% by the end of the semester, the number in that cohort halved. Strong, clear,
(18:33):
concise data based on evidence that is captured. In that case, I would argue we capture it through
my move. You might have other ways of capturing. Overcoming barriers. I was talking to a teacher
today who's worked in a school with a large Muslim population. Their kids have got challenges
(18:56):
in their life, not because they're Muslim, but because their lives are complex. It's low socioeconomic
area. So we've got intersectional complexity. And a lot of the kids after school go to Islamic school
from like 4pm to 6pm. They go to Islamic school. Now, if they're still with a busy schedule,
(19:17):
if they're still managing to get activity in, and don't hear me wrong, some of these
Islamic schools have breaks where they have physical activity experiences. But if they don't,
and they're still managing to commit to the pursuit of physical activity, their enjoyment of it,
they're overcoming serious barriers. If they're 12, 13, 14 year old kids, that is a real high
(19:40):
five moment. That's a moment to say, you've got a busy life. You've got stuff in your life that I've
never had in my life. And I'm going to give you a real, like real well done, because you're doing
a really great job in your context. Sustain an activity, building streaks that consistency piece,
helping others and responding to help. There's two sides to that, right? We can help others,
(20:04):
we can lead. We also need to be open to help. Those are really positive traits we can capture.
We need the numbers we need to be able to see. And we need the qualitative testimonials to
engage in informal activities. They're off the radar. But how great is it when a kid goes out
on their skateboard? Who knows? Like as an athletic director, we don't know that because
(20:28):
it's not a school varsity contest. But I would argue, and in a future webinar, we've got celebrating
all forms of activity, I would argue that this should be hierarchically flat. Being in an
all state team is high performance, great for those kids. Going out on a skateboard, it could be
(20:51):
high performance, could be entirely recreational, could be entirely social. It's all good.
Trying new activities. For a lot of young people, that is a serious undertaking that comes with a
lot of challenges, the uncertainty of going into a different space to move in a way that you've never
(21:11):
moved before. Or to exactly as I just said, to go to new settings, maybe where you don't know
anyone. So we need to capture that. So this is some data that's taken from last semester,
from one of the schools that's using MyMove. I'm just giving you a flavor of the evidence base
(21:31):
that the teacher had. So in that school, 120 students were using MyMove. Straight away,
we know that in that semester, the kids recorded 71,000 minutes of activity. Now that in itself,
okay, we can celebrate that. We can certainly celebrate it if next semester, that seven has
(21:52):
turned to an eight, and they're now doing 81,000 minutes of activity. Straight away, that teaches
like activity has gone up 10,000 minutes over the course of this semester. And we did that because
we implemented X, Y and Z strategy, or we listened to what the students were saying. We could get a
little bit deeper where the students are active. And I've just taken some real headline data here.
(22:17):
So of all the activity, 59% of it was in PE. But 28% was outside in free in free play. So in
informal activity, with relatively few kids outside of school, engaged in formal club-based
activity. And this is split by gender a little bit. So here, males are just under 3% informal
(22:44):
activity, but about a third in informal activity. And interestingly, when it comes to girls and
young women, almost 10% were involved in formal activity, and a quarter in informal activity.
So educating for the sort of experiences that kids are having is potentially a really challenging,
(23:07):
but also a very interesting question. This is some of my favorite data that was unearthed by
this particular school. The quality of the experience. So on my move, the kids rank the
quality of the experience great through to horrible. And this was all of their activity in
general. So you can see it's like 81% was good and great. But here's the deal. When it came to PE,
(23:33):
it was just above that. So of all the activity, these teachers are saying 83% of our all of
our student experience in PE lessons were good or great. Now that in itself is well worth shouting
about. But it's also a platform for saying, okay, how do we move forward? What do we do about
(23:58):
this 18% 17% of kids who are not finding our lessons good or great. And that's conversation,
it's engagement, it's relationship, it's inquiry. It's engaging in those processes. And that,
I guess, is student centered learning, not student appeasement learning, student centered learning.
(24:25):
There was 703 reflections, free written reflections. And these are some to finish off that caught my
eye. So this is around the qualitative evidence. I went through a late night walk with my family
in my neighborhood. It was incredibly relaxing. And I spent a lot of time with my family that I
couldn't spend because of school and work. Now, if we're applying a meaningful PE framework,
(24:51):
these statements shelter us. So this is about physical activity for strong social connections.
Look at lovely language. It was incredibly relaxing.
My dad loves cricket. I got a bond with him over it. Plus, I love watching it. So playing it was
(25:14):
even more fun. As the word I was talking about before fun. But again, look at the context,
social relationships, family relationships, what a great word to use around sport and physical
activity. I bond with my father. And then through that, this kid has developed a love of watching
(25:36):
cricket. It was super fun to play basketball. Open gym gives me a chance to relax and just play what
I love. If you need to put statements in front of other stakeholders in your school to justify
what you're doing, why have you got open gym at lunchtime or whenever this kid went to the gym?
(25:57):
This is exactly why. And again, this is a high school. So we've got young people who clearly
value their opportunity to relax and they're associated and relaxed with informal activity.
Notice the absence of adult voice when the kid went out for a walk.
(26:20):
Or when the kid went to open gym. These are not coach sessions. Now, again, please don't hear
me wrong. I'm not saying that we don't have any technical input, but we should also really value
giving young people space where they can express themselves and where they can relax. Absolutely
valid. Probably very healthy too. I love this. How honest is this? My fitness goal this year is to
(26:47):
lose fat. Okay, there might be lots of conversations around why and what support that might be needed.
But okay, this is a high school student. My fitness goal is to lose fat and regain some self confidence.
I don't know what you would hear and see when you make of that.
(27:07):
Personally, I find it heartbreaking that fatness is related to a lack of self confidence.
But hey, this is the world that this kid lives in. It's the world that many of us live in.
I'm aiming to be more healthy, calorie counting and diet and active through the day, muscle training,
flexibility, cardio to give me a sense of accomplishment.
(27:32):
Can we get a sense of accomplishment detached from having to lose fat? These are really deep
conversations that are triggered by kids disclosing, volunteering this information,
because for reasons that we don't fully understand, but we see it a lot, when they're engaging with
their device or a screen, they have a lot of trust and confidence to share. There's probably
(27:58):
also an intention that this is read, heard and responded to. Now, you might be saying,
well, okay, I can't do that. I haven't got time for that. That's another conversation for another
time around. But the point is we capture the data. If we can help this kid through professional
(28:24):
information, instruction, relationship building, etc. And we capture that again, great evidence,
evidence of this kid's progress and evidence of teaching effectiveness.
A fitness goal I want to work towards is running mile. I really don't know how to start, though.
(28:46):
What is the job of a phys ed teacher? That there is such a nice way in here. Hey, Katie,
kids, names, Katie, Katie, I saw your post. It's not complicated, Katie. Let's just start off,
walk and run. Tell me how you get on post it on my move. I'll follow your progress. One sentence.
So all of this is around us having better, deeper, high quality information
(29:16):
for us to shout about our work. Now, like some people who might be listening to this,
I talked for many years here in London and I was reticent to share a lot of the successes.
I didn't think it was particularly needed. I think didn't think it was exceptional.
(29:38):
I thought I'd go to work, I'd do an honest day's work and I'd take the wins and there'd be some
losses along the way, too. I'm not sure that was the right call. If I spoke to my younger self
about that, I would probably say, Greg, you probably should have made a bigger deal about the
really good things that were happening with me and my team and the students we were working with.
(30:04):
It's your call, your information. I guess the challenge coming out of this webinar presentation
is what evidence you're capturing to base your information on. And if you want to check out
how my move can support that, support your students' journeys so that they all hopefully
(30:25):
develop a positive relationship with physical activity, please reach out on the HPE or via
email Greg at MyMoveApp.com. Jordan, any comments or questions? Again, I probably was too long.
I think it's great. I mean, we got through so much connecting through, talking through, again,
(30:50):
standards, looking at framing up what we intend to do, why, and then how, and talking about linking
our practice with evidence all the way through to evidence-based practices with your grading,
getting kids to articulate what they are making progress with, what feelings they're having within
(31:11):
their physical activity. All of those things, I think, are laying a foundation for a real
really meaningful and helpful experience in a PE class for young people. And then we get all the
way through at the end to really wrap it with advocacy, and I want to share something that
(31:32):
happened yesterday. Yesterday we had a site visit. We had 60 to 70 teachers, students, administrators
from the New England area, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont. We had New Hampshire. These teachers were
with the NGLC, Next Generation Learning Challenges, and they are doing learning excursions across the
(31:57):
country. They're visiting schools where they believe that they stand to learn something
about what school could be. And our school is lucky enough to be chosen as a site for these teachers
to visit. And I got to sit in on a panel. I got to listen to some of my students talk about their
journey at STEAM. And it was really, really powerful and emotional for me. But then also,
(32:24):
I got to sit on a panel and teachers and administrators asked us questions about our
experiences. And the last question that was asked was about state-level accountability
through state testing. And the scores that are attached to kids and therefore placed upon schools
to say this school is a low-performing school, this school is a high-performing school,
(32:47):
and how it even gets internalized down to the teacher and their beliefs about themselves. If
their scores come back not as good as they had hoped. And my wife's a fifth grade teacher,
and that's something that she deals with, is that time of year when state testing scores are released,
but the question was to us, is like, hey, like, how do you resolve this tension of living in
(33:15):
this more abstract space where students are collecting their own evidence and they're
articulating it to you. And they're getting at some of these ideas around learner-centered approaches
that aren't as hard, you know, check yes or no forms of assessment. And how does that reflect
(33:37):
in your state testing and how do you all deal with that pressure? And so it came to me first,
and my first instinct was to do just what you said. I honestly deflected a little bit and was
like, you know, like, I'm just the PE teacher, I don't have a state accountability test. I'm
going to defer that to our science and math and whatever. And instantly, I knew that I could
(34:03):
have answered that question better. I was just trying to not suck up the air in the room.
But everyone answered and it came back around to me and I was like, I really want to revise
what I said. I was just trying to be a little self-deprecating there.
I was like, but everything that I do makes these kids better at what they do, makes these teachers
(34:27):
jobs easier. You know, these kids who come into a PE class and they are happy, engaged, motivated,
social, active, all of those things make students better learners. They're going to go to their
next class happier, more energized, more motivated. And so when I'm thinking about the evidence that
(34:50):
I need to support my practice, I'm going to, you know, this kid, Mitchell, walked out of my classroom
today, we were in the weight room and Mitchell doesn't care much for the PE class. But he stepped
aside as the bell rung and he's going out to the bus today. And under his breath, he said, Hey, Mr.
Manley, today was really cool. And you know, that kid has been really disaffected by school.
(35:17):
He came to me as a ninth grader, like telling me straight up, I don't want to be here. I don't
want to be in school. I really don't want to be in your class. And just like you said earlier,
the celebrating like include more inclusive celebrations, like just to be able to introduce
Mitchell to the weight room today changed a lot of the way that that he felt. And I'm getting to
(35:44):
know that through collecting these reflections of my move. But also, you know, once they are
reflecting in my move, they feel so much more comfortable just approaching me and saying it to
my face, because they know I read it, because I'll bring it up in a conversation. And so rather
than that conversation being held on our phones, now it's turning into real life. Because they know
(36:07):
that I'm reading it, they know that I care enough. And so they will come to me with it in the hallway,
before school, after school, like all of these things. When we're talking about laying this
foundation that our standards sit upon in the systems that we're using to collect evidence.
It really starts with this understanding of who these kids are, where they're at in their lives.
(36:32):
And for me, as a PE teacher, that's what I want my daughters to experience. I want their PE teachers
to know them. And I want them to empower their journey. So everything that we talked about today
really, really hits home with me. And I really appreciate everything that you gave us today,
Greg. I am all welcome. And that was a really lovely wrap up. And I'm not even going to,
(36:57):
I was thinking about lots of things we were just talking about. But hey, I think whoever's listening,
thank you very much.
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