ASRP-A Collaborative Approach for Quality Physical Education in Early Childhood using a Personalised System of Instruction

We address an underlying challenge in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), one of global concern; that of primary classroom teachers’ inability to teach Physical Education (PE) to comply with mandated PE teaching requirements. A lack of time, confidence and training are considered main barriers for many primary teachers. In accepting the challenge to improve this situation, we address two Affiliated Schools research priorities: (a) Early Childhood Education and (b) Personalised Learning. Our plan is to introduce and assess the suitability and acceptance by ACT primary school teachers of an already evidence-based, flexible and teacher time sensitive, in-school professional development program called the Physical Education Physical Literacy (PEPL) approach. Prof. Dick Telford details the PEPL Approach ACT here. The PEPL approach will be developed by our research team that includes teachers at six schools as co-researchers, ensuring specificity to the local context and program transferability as a model for all ACT schools. While the PEPL approach has been successfully implemented in other parts of Australia, the program will be contextualised for the ACT, while retaining its defining features and integrity. This contextualisation includes research about the use of evidenced based pedagogy, specifically the Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) (Metzler, 2017). Our reason for adapting the PEPL approach in this way is informed by research by the lead investigator (Williams, 2019; 2020). This research identified the need for ACT teachers to be using research informed approaches such a PSI (Metzler, 2017) in addition to rigorous assessment towards teaching quality PE. Therefore, this ACT rendition of the PEPL approach will include research specific to the needs of local teachers. Since the PEPL approach has never been used with PSI to our knowledge, our research provides insights were none existed previously. A further point of difference is that the PEPL approach has also never been used with gymnastics. Therefore, again our project will offer new understandings by including a different sport and one that is most relevant to the targeted student age group. Finally, our involvement of UC pre-service Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers to support program implementation is an additional value-added feature, included to strengthen the affiliated school partnership beyond just teachers and researchers. This feature of incorporating UC pre-service teachers as well as serving to support pilot delivery will also contribute to longevity and future transferability of the project on account of those students learning about the program and being upskilled in its use.