About the lecture
Physical Education has, for generations, charted a familiar course in schools across the country: a sequence of lessons shaped by tradition, sport, and the often-unseen inertia of “the way things have always been.”
Physical education is at a crossroads, facing the persistent pull of tradition and the exciting promise of pedagogical innovation. This lecture asks why so many schools continue to teach physical education through familiar traditions of practice, and whether new approaches centred on pedagogical models and Models-based Practice can create deeper, more meaningful learning for all students.
Drawing on 15 years’ experience as a secondary physical education teacher and another 15 years as a teacher educator and academic, this lecture charts my personal journey from inherited ways of teaching toward the adoption of pedagogical models and Models-based Practice that purposefully align teaching strategies, curriculum, assessment and learning outcomes. It considers the challenges and possibilities that arise when teachers experiment with pedagogical models not simply as isolated frameworks, but in combination and through sustained practice.
Rather than delivering an outline for change, the lecture explores how embracing Models-based Practice encourages teachers and schools to move beyond “one right way” of teaching physical education and create new traditions of practice.