Lifestyle sports, pedagogy and physical education

Lifestyle Sports and Physical Education Teachers’ Professional Development in the United Kingdom: A Qualitative Survey Analysis

“…The minority of PE teachers that had delivered lifestyle sports throughout their teaching careers tended to have done so through the guise of OAA; the teaching of this 'activity area' is currently a requirement of the PE national curricula in England and Wales [71,73]. This could be seen by PE teachers as a logical place to provide such sports given the contexts and environments where these activities traditionally occur (i.e., relatively 'safe' activities taught by PE teachers on school site, such as orienteering, or 'riskier' pursuits delivered by outdoor education centre staff on school residential trips where PE teachers may not have the necessary experience or qualifications, such as paddlesports) [22,34,35]. Ultimately, this lack of conceptual clarity, coupled with the limited opportunity to teach lifestyle sports on the PE curriculum, could have severe implications for the modernisation of the PE curriculum and any future reform, as well as the professional development of PE teachers, especially as the phenomenon is clearly growing within the current sport and physical activity landscape [6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…For example, it has been argued that areas such as health and lifelong physical activity tend to be absent from PE teachers' CPD profiles [51,55]. However, the same can be said of lifestyle sports, despite their global growth and potential for several physical, mental, and social benefits for students [22]. Thus, PE teachers' engagement with lifestyle sport CPD opportunities is low, with much provision and initial teacher education (ITE) programmes favouring an emphasis on mainstream team sports, resulting in an evident gap in PE teachers' pedagogical and content knowledge.…”

“…Lifestyle sports have the potential to offer PE curriculums in the UK a chance to divert away from a discourse of winning and overemphasis on competitive team sports, while helping to inspire and motivate the youth culture of today to lead healthy and active lives [22]. Competition and team sports are not inherently bad and are important elements of any PE curriculum, yet they dominate to the extent they form most activities and sports that are offered within schools.…”

“…While we accept that the phrase lifestyle sports is not without its critics, especially within the sport coaching literature [21], for the purpose of this paper, the all-encompassing term lifestyle sports will be used that includes both elements of the 'conceptual continuum' [19]. That is, those action and adventure sports and activities identified in the sport sociology literature where participants engage individually (typically), focus on their technical competence and enjoyment, do not compete against others, seek out thrills and risks, adopt a DIY ethos and a 'style of life', and those recreation-based sports and activities identified in the PE literature which are predominantly health and fitness orientated, and relate to a 'style of participation' [19,22].…”

“…Further to this, they have the potential to contribute towards government sport and physical activity agendas [8,11], especially as children and young people's physical activity levels have been reported as declining during adolescence and after leaving school [25,26]. It would seem then that the promotion of lifestyle sport within schools could be a suitable place to address, or at least alleviate, some of these issues [22]. However, despite the immense global growth in participation and the potential contribution towards national sport and physical activity agendas, schools and PE have been somewhat reluctant to embrace lifestyle sports [27,28].…”