Abstract
Physical education in schools has been marginalised across the globe, and as a result, children are missing out on opportunities to develop and acquire the foundation skills needed to lead a physically active life. The squeeze on physical education in schools, particularly in some western countries (United Kingdom, Australia and America), has been justified on the grounds that core subjects such as English and mathematics need more curriculum time, as this will lead to higher cognitive and academic performance. The aim of this paper is to highlight how physical education lessons in early childhood, underpinned by either of two major theories of motor learning, can support teachers in the creation of learning environments, as well as guide their pedagogical practice to facilitate children’s development of key cognitive skills, in particular executive function and self-regulation skills. These skills are crucial for learning and development and have been found to be a higher predictor of academic achievement than IQ. They also enable positive behaviour and allow us to make healthy choices for ourselves and others, therefore providing further evidence that the development of movement skills has the potential to secure positive attitudes and outcomes towards physical activity across the lifespan.
Highlights
In spite of international [1] and national [2] policy-led campaigns, physical inactivity continues to cost the United Kingdom (UK) economy over £7 B each year [3] and, internationally, an estimate in excess of £51.5 B a year [4]
The UK government and World Health Organisation recommends that children and young people should take part in moderate to vigorous physical activity (PA) for a total of 60 min per day in order to achieve the associated health benefits [5,6], and yet, in 2012, as few as 20%
The turn of the 21st century has seen the introduction of nonlinear pedagogy (NP), which is drawn from the theory of Ecological Dynamics [39]
Summary
In spite of international [1] and national [2] policy-led campaigns, physical inactivity continues to cost the United Kingdom (UK) economy over £7 B each year [3] and, internationally, an estimate in excess of £51.5 B a year [4]. Physical education (PE) is deemed to be the subject on the school curriculum that enables children to develop foundational movement skills and builds the knowledge and understanding needed to lead physically active lifestyles [8] It has progressively become marginalised within the primary school timetable and is commonly viewed as a lower priority than core subjects, such as mathematics [9,10], which, typically, are prioritised by schools, because government policy has introduced national standardised tests in these subjects [11,12,13]. We will discuss how teachers can manipulate the physical environment within the education setting, according to two prominent theories of motor skill learning, to ensure that the skill learning environment challenges the EF skills of their students
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