Today, in a place and time where physical activity is not being valued, and where our students are becoming less and less physically active, we are in need of greater engagement with our students with the idea and process of physical activity. Students are not interested in the way P.E. is being offered in schools; they are bored, unmotivated, and uninspired. Physical Education instructors, including generalist and specialist teachers, are struggling to find ways to engage their students. The cycle of repetitive game play and activities with little or no relevance to the students is not promoting student motivation or engagement. While game play has become an important focus for engagement of our students in recent years, play is not always accompanied with purpose. Students would likely benefit even greater if movement and play were combined with purpose and student interest.
One of the largest problems that physical educators continually struggle to contend with are unmotivated, unengaged students. This is an especially relevant issue for teachers teaching students activities that they are not personally interested in. Interest is vital to student’s motivation. As a factor of motivation, interest refers to “the psychological state of engaging or the predisposition to re-engage with particular classes of objects, events, or ideas over time” (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). It is a “phenomenon” that emerges from the interaction of the individual with their environment (Hidi, 2000, p.152). The goal of teachers is to create that environment to foster that interest and engagement. As Hidi and Renninger state, “the potential for interest is in the person, but the content and the environment define the direction of interest and contribute to its development (2006).
Interest has been shown to have many positive benefits. Personal interest has been shown to help individuals “pay closer attention, persist for longer periods of time, learn more and enjoy their involvement to a greater degree than individuals without such interest” (Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2005). While offering activities of personal interest to every student would be ideal, it may be unrealistic. To help increase interest past personal interest, situational interest, “the affective reaction triggered by appealing features [ ] in the environment,” (Subramanian, 2010) can be used to engage students.
To engage is to “occupy, attract, or involve” a person’s interest, or “to participate or become involved in” (Oxford Dictionaries). Engagement gets at more than simply activity without context and purpose. Engagement is not and should not be defined solely by the occupation of one’s time. In the case of my inquiry, engagement should be defined in terms of how students are involved through: 1) enjoyment 2) cognitive engagement 3) socially responsible action 4) and physical movement.
A large focus of P.E. is creating physically capable students who are able, by choice and through their own knowledge, to make a conscious decision to take part in physical activity or in a physically active environment. Fundamental movement skills are an essential part of being able to participate in physical activity. Because many students lack these fundamental movement skills when they enter high school physical education, it is imperative that we find fun ways for students to learn them or that we provide alternative paths to engage them so that they too will have the necessary skills and knowledge to be physically active. But fundamental movement skills are just a piece of that puzzle of physical literacy.
Though intrinsic motivation and participation may be the long term goals, students first need to be taught how to get to a place that they are competent enough in their abilities and knowledge to freely make those decisions on their own; this is physical literacy. “It is a set of values and principles that underpin the promotion of a person’s movement capability and engagement in purposeful physical pursuits that enable them to recognize their value and to inspire them to engage regularly in pursuits that they have chosen to energize and enrich their lives” (Almond, 2015). Physical literacy is more than just understanding and ability to move. Physical literacy is being motivated to move. We need to teach students be become intrinsically motivated so when they leave school they will have the tools and desire to make themselves active.
From my own experiences working with students and in teaching and coaching situations, I have seen many students that appear uninterested in being involved in the class or with the activities. For me, engagement and motivation needs to be facilitated by the teacher. We need to create a learning environment that will actually engage with our students that will cause them to engage back. Some students will come into a class motivated, and others may find the motivation themselves, but many students will not come to that on their own.
As I have gone through this process of inquiry, I continue to wonder at the best ways to movitate students. There is an endless wealth of information on what motivates students to be intrinsically motivate. As situational interest is created through the interaction of the student and the learning environment, I will continue to explore how to structure the environment and match the environment, my style, and the content to the needs of my students.
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