The development of a 14-18 physical education curriculum in a community setting

This study set out to produce a working document for teachers and headteachers in Coventry schools. This working document was written to offer guidelines for physical education departments in the design and implementation of their own curriculum and to raise their awareness of the role that physical education can perform in schools. It details recent trends and issues in the community and describes in particular the philosophy of Coventry Education Authority. This philosophy is reflected in the L.E.A. document 'Comprehensive Education for Life' (Coventry 1982), and the working document responds to this publication, in particular, to its commitment to life-long education and the pursuit of active-learning styles. The implications these local and national trends have for physical education departments were examined and detailed in the working document. Twenty-five interviews were recorded on tape and provided a data ·base for analysis. Themes were drawn from these interviews and it was possible to articulate major lines of development that key people in the profession were identifying. Drawing upon the evolutionary development of the document, interviews and seminars with key people in the field, it was possible to identify major aspects of work that· ought to be developed in physical education if the profession was going to translate important aspirations into a guide for action. The study helped to evolve a framework which describes a direction for the physical education curriculum and also what it can sample and focus upon. By recording this development in the working document, physical education departments were then encouraged to explore this framework and from using examples of current practice described in the document, developed their own programmes. Finally the working document presents a collection of teaching and learning processes in current practice which help the teaching of physical education focus upon the individual's personal development. Throughout the document, suggestions for evaluating the curriculum, teaching and learning are proposed, and physical education departments are challenged to review their curriculum.