From Highwayman To Highway Patrol: A Physical Education Teacher’s Journey Towards Student-Centred Instruction
By Ashley Casey
LeedsMetropolitanUniversity and RiponGrammar School
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Abstract
This paper looks at a role change, through action research and self-reflection, for an experienced teacher of physical education. It tries to show the reader who the teacher was before he started to research his pedagogy through the metaphor of the highwayman. This ‘character’ is shown to be a villain who held people at his mercy rather than the law-keeper shown in the metaphorical highway patrol – the protector of safety and security – who leaves people to go about their own way without too much intervention. The roles change from commanding teacher (Mosston and Ashworth, 1986) to ‘key facilitator’ (Dyson, 2006) is shown to have considerable benefits to pupil learning.
Introduction
The theme (or should I say title) of this paper was devised with a two-fold purpose in mind. The first, and least significant, was to interest as many conference delegates as I could with a catchy title without calling the paper ‘free wine and cheese for anyone who turns up to listen.’ The second, and real purpose, was to summarise the narrative of the action research journey that I have taken, to date, from the teacher I was (the highwayman) three and half years ago and towards the teacher I hope to be (highway patrol) some time in the not too distant future.
In an effort to describe this journey – both in my words and those of the people who have helped me on this journey - I will address four major themes in this presentation: a) Who, Why, What, How, Where, and When in relation to the literature, b) the reasons behind the use of the metaphor of the Highwayman, c) the processes of change and metamorphosis itself (via a case study of myself) and finally c) I conclude by exploring the metaphorical Highway Patrol and how I see this role as the future of my pedagogy. I use metaphor as Lakoff (1992) summarised, ‘much subject matter can only be comprehended via metaphor as it is the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract concepts and perform abstract reasoning’ (p. 1).
Who, Why, What, How, Where, and When
Who?
Me.
Why?
On 7th January 2003 I wrote, in an assignment on innovation and change in PE, that the objective of the changes I wanted to make in my pedagogy would be a move away from the established methods of teaching and the positioning of lifelong learning as the major aim of any new curriculum I devised. This was the statement that sent me down this pathway of “action-narrative” and is one to which I am still trying to adhere as I continually develop my practice. It could be described as my road to Damascus or Eureka moment as it was the first time I realised that there was more to teaching PE than Games, School Sport and excellence.
Cothran (2001) has drawn our attention to constant calls in the physical education (PE) literature to reform the programmes that I teach. Cothran suggested that currently many PE programmes suffer from a lack of accountability, effectiveness, equity and meaning. This is described in the work of Browne et al., 2004; Kirk 2005; Metzler, 2005) have suggested that many PE programmes are taught exclusively using a dominant, traditional, technique-centred approach. This method of teaching is the one that I used until recently.
What?
Michael Young (1988) argued that the notion of exaggerated subject specialisation (i.e. national curriculum subjects such as Physical Education, English, and Maths) ensures that each subject teaches only their ‘own knowledge’ in exclusion from every other subject area. It seemed to me, at the time I started this journey (and it still does) that similar divisions are also made within Physical Education itself when we divide our subject up into individual activities and sports (i.e. Rugby, Gymnastics, swimming etc) rather than treating physical skills as interrelated and inherently important in many activities (i.e. the throwing action is found in many activities: invasion games, striking and fielding games, net and wall games, target games, martial arts, athletics.) Perhaps we can learn form our elementary specialist who prescribe movement concepts as described in Graham, Holt-Hale and Parker (2005- 5th edition). Young (1988) further suggests that ‘in the context of the much broader notion of educational purposes associated with a ‘curriculum of the future’ identification with subjects and occupational areas can become the basis for developing teams of connective specialists’ (p. 76). He uses the notion of transferable (or ‘core’) skills that ‘transcends and complements occupationally specific skills or subject based knowledge’ (p. 77).
The development of such ‘connective specialism’ (Young, 1998, p. 76) has been one of the aims of my practice since I read Young’s book (although to be honest I had called it transferable skills or transfer of practice and had forgotten until now who had inspired this aim). By relating this degree of connectivity directly to each pupil I have tried to move away from the positional pigeon-holing policy of youth and school sport teams - where a child is quickly identified as a goal keeper or a prop or a shot-putter and then kept in that position for life - and have moved instead towards the development of multi-skilled participants through the forging of ‘links between combinations of knowledge and skills in the curriculum and the wider democratic and social goals of education’ (Young, 1998, pp. 77-78).
How?
John Dewey (1897) wrote:
I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are merely preparation. As a result they do not become part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educated. (p. 231)
These were the lessons that I taught. I had a certain amount of information to give to my pupils who in turn had certain things that they had to learn and there were certain parameters in this had to occur. The relevance of this information to the pupils’ future was assumed and never questioned until I started to explore where I had been and where I wanted to go.
Over a century after Dewey, Craft (2000) observed that ”a teacher who is excited and motivated by experience of their own learning is likely to be in a strong position to communicate the excitement of learning to pupils” (p. 19). I was ecstatic and I wanted the children I taught to follow suit – not just the ones who liked PE but everyone. As I explored how to do this I started to believe that, as W.B. Yeats wrote, education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. The further I explored the concept of lifelong learning more I came to realise (with a lot of help from authors like Bunker and Thorpe (1986), Dewey (1902), and Metzler (2005) and the people around me like David Kirk, Ben Dyson and Kathy Armour) that since if this process was to take a lifetime then the pupils I taught must come to my lessons knowing something – especially if I had been teaching them for five years – which meant that their prior experience would’ve, could’ve and should’ve had an impact on what they took out of my lessons.
Somekh (2005) recently suggested that our schools construct the role of the pupil as someone who does not know anything in an environment where a teacher’s question triggers a guessing game in which the pupils must figure out the answer that is in their teacher’s head. We prioritise our knowledge over that of the child’s and expect him or her to absorb all we have to offer as and when it is offered. It is my belief that I can no longer occupy the position of sole orchestrator of learning, from which I make all the decisions in what Mosston and Ashworth (1986) called ‘the pre-impact, impact, and post impact’ (p. 4) sections of a lesson and should instead allow my pupils to play a significant role in their learning.
Where?
I started small. One or two attempts a year which coincided with my Master’s modules: A school-based evaluation of Sport Education (Siedentop. 1994), a negotiated study looking at Cooperative Learning (Dyson, 2002), and a master’s thesis on Teaching games for Understanding (Bunker and Thorpe, 1986). Now it’s much more frequently: In the last academic year alone I have involved myself in a large cycle of action research that has spanned seven separate cycles (or units of work).
Kurt Lewin first coined the expression ‘action research’ in 1944 to describe this type of teacher-driven research. Lewin (1946) posited that research conducted by an expert at a local level i.e. a teacher in his or her own classroom, would be able to by pass the lawfulness of the textbook response, what Lewin’s called the “if so” of social science, at a national level and concentrate instead on acting upon personal research findings uncovered in the locality. McTaggart (1982) explains that Lewin’s conception of action research was one in which a spiral of planning, action, observation and reflection occurred.
In utilising this approach I started to move away from my ‘stand and deliver’ pedagogy and more towards the role of overseer. I maintained my influence over the pre-impact section of the lesson, I chose what to focus upon, and decided what to exclude. I chose the duration, type and direction of the lessons, and I allocated the students to the groups in which they were to work for the duration of my intervention. But this is where my input almost ceased [apart from small occurrences of “teaching time” (Metlzer, 2005) where I re-established the desired learning behaviours], and where I changed from Highwayman to Highway Patrol Officer. My role had changed from decision-maker to overseer on this learning highway. I have not achieved this through strength of will or chance but through the systematic collection of my thoughts and deeds. In ‘doing’ this to myself I came to a point where I finally paused to listen to the stories of the ghosts of my teaching past, present, and future. I sought to interpret my personal experiences and define the impact that they had had on myself and on my pupils. In describing this process, Ellis and Bochner (2000) (who call ‘self-reflection’ while others call Autoethnography) explain that:
I start with my personal life. I pay attention to my physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I…try to understand an experience I’ve lived through. Then I write my experience as a story. By exploring a particular life, I hope to understand a way of life.
Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 737
What follows is a commentary on my teaching and experience.
It’s my way on this highway
My reasons for the choice of pedagogical descriptor ‘Highwayman’ was that I wanted to show change and movement in my work but also that I wanted to capture the image of a highwayman – think Adam Ant in the song Stand and Deliver – holding up a stage coach with two flintlock pistols, a tricorn hat, and a black scarf covering everything on his but his eyes. Why? Because this is how I wanted you, my audience, to visualise the teacher that I used to be. I was accepted, even praised by my peers and liked by my pupils but it was only ‘my way’ that counted. I decided on what they needed to learn – or should that be what I wanted to teach – and I covered my own ignorance by setting the difficult questions that they might ask as homework. I hid behind my mask of irrefutability and made them do what ever I wanted simply with the power of my position. I ‘held up’ my classes with the power I gained from my position as teacher, and then instructed my pupils to ‘stand and deliver’ the techniques that I had just demonstrated. I was the sole decision maker in the classroom and the dialogue was one-sided, stemming almost exclusively from me. I use a self-reflection (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) now as an elicitation tool in an effort to demonstrate, in someway, what my “previous” pedagogical intervention would have been:
Seven Years of experience at the school tell me what to do. The plan is in my head and on the scrap of paper in my pocket before the next class arrives. The Year group is unimportant because it's Javelin this week and the lesson plan in my head and in my pocket has already been rehearsed and modified several times prior to the lesson. The context is the same, the method of delivery is the same, and in fact nearly everything is the same except for the boys involved. Truth be told, they may already have been
taught this lesson last year, not that it matters because most of them will make the same mistakes anyway.
They arrive in twos and threes and get changed amidst a cacophony of noise.One question is prevalent, "What are we doing today sir?" My answer of javelin is generally greeted positively but this is athletics and they need to learn how to throw a javelin properly so pleased or not, it doesn't really matter.
The run down to the 'red door' is used as a warm up and they stretch as I get the equipment out. Armed with a javelin each, a cone and a stern reminder of the safety rules they head for the edge of the cricket pitch. Standing throw into the ground, standing throw ahead, walk, side-step and throw, run, side-step and throw, run, turn into side-step and throw. The drill is the same, the progressions are the same and I control everything. It is a javelin after all and they could kill.
This was my take on the highwayman but other saw it differently. As I was preparing this paper I spoke to a number of people and told them, proudly I must say, of my title and my forthcoming presentation at this conference. These friendly critics, who were purposively selected to give a positive response, thought that it was a catchy metaphor but what surprised me most was that they all had their own opinions on why ‘Highwayman’ – although most allowed me to explain first before they offered their interpretation.
They saw the highwayman of legend as a charismatic anti-hero who was well dressed and loved by everyone – even his victims. An egocentric who, as a highly skilled practitioner of his trade, liked to show his ‘victims’ just how good he was. In these descriptions I saw myself throwing a Javelin forty metres, ‘nailing’ six out of six set shots in basketball and serving three consecutive aces in tennis, and then lapping up the adoration that my ‘performance’ elicited from my pupils. I was in it for myself as much as anything and I had become a physical education teacher as much out of a desire to play sport all my life as to have an impact on children and their learning.
I was all of these things but I was also a dedicated teacher who enjoyed his job – I had often comment to my friends that I was glad to have made the decisions that I did to be a teacher. I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture about my pedagogy because as far as stereotypes and accepted norms went I was one. I know that I portray myself as a philistine but perhaps I was just happy to meet the standards that were expected of me as a teacher of Physical Education. But, having read extensively around the subject, it would appear that I am not the only teacher to feel comfortable teaching to the industry standard.
Physical Education still retains much of its traditions, most notably the way in which it is taught. Many practitioners, myself included, were taught themselves by the ‘do as I do’ method (Gréhaigne et al, 2005, p. xiii) and have in turn adopted it as the mainstay of their own professional practice. Mawer (1995, p.148) defines such teaching as ‘involving the teacher telling or showing pupils what to do’, while Armour and Fernandez-Balboa (2001, p.105) view this traditional method of instruction in Physical Education as a ’skills and methods’ pedagogy in which teachers are only responsible for producing technically able performers and need only worry about increasing skill.
Yet I had had my eyes wide shut – i.e. I knew what I was doing and was good at it but I was oblivious to any alternatives. Yet this was inevitable, wasn’t it? After all I was taught by Highwaymen and by accepting the ‘norm’ to be their teaching methods I was indoctrinated into the ‘way’ to teach. By breaking away from this common denominator I have changed my image of myself from law-breaker to law-keeper yet in some ways it is I who have broken away from the norm and I am on the run. Perhaps I am still the highwayman…but I new brand for I challenge my pupils and then demand that they think broadly, collectively and holistically, yet I do this with the unseen hand of a lawman not the pistols of a highway man…so does that make me a mixed metaphor?
But in 2002/2003 I found an alternative to the skill-drills pedagogy (Holt et al. 2002) and now I needed to make it my own. My master’s course was the start but Ben Dyson (2001), among others, warned that it would take three years to learn how to teach this way – well I’m three and half years in and where am I now?