C&Pa Learning Focused Culture: Hauora & Physical Education 2

• To have knowledge of Te Whare Tapa Whā/Rima model of Hauora and its applicability for conceptualizing a broad notion of well-being.
• To understand a range of current issues in relation to the Health & PE curriculum in the Aotearoa/New Zealand primary school (Y0-8) context.
• Explore the Health & PE curriculum and create a lesson that is integrated with other curriculum areas

Te Whare Tapa Whā/Rima

…providing a more holistic view of hauora and wellbeing from a Māori perspective and stemmed from a Māori worldview of interconnectedness.

There are five parts to the Te Whare Tapa Whā model. They are:

Taha Hinengaro
Taha Whānau
Taha Wairau
Taha Tinana
Whenua

Click on the Mental Health NZ website link here to look at the definitions attributed to each of these parts of the model. https://mentalhealth.org.nz/te-whare-tapa-wha

Current Issues in HPE curriculum in Aotearoa/NZ

There are six issues in the literature that will be outlined in this section of the chapter that are important for you as developing teachers to consider when thinking about matters to do with hauora and wellbeing.

1. The Health & PE curriculum tries to achieve too much (Tinning, 2009).
2. There is a lack of research that shows that the role of PE and Health education at school promotes engagement in lifelong PE & Health practices (Tinning, 2009; Engstrom, 2008; Burrows, Petrie & Cosgriff, 2013).
3. The ‘cult of the body’ has become a dominant source of anxiety for young people and the Health and PE curriculum contribute to the judging of children’s bodies (Tinning, 2009)

… 4) Linked to the second issue, encouraging children to become better decision-makers in health-related issues such as diet and exercise is highly problematic. It is suggested that children are encouraged to use their rational-thinking skills to choose between ‘good and bad options’ such as ‘good eating habits’ over ‘bad eating habits’. Pleasure is discounted as a source of knowledge and privileged by children’s ability to rationalise. 

a) Sport and Nationalism in NZ: PE discourse is inextricably linked to discourses of sports, and frequently presented as sport. Swathes of government policy confused physical education as sport and many schools, in turn, articulate a version of physical education focused on sports and increasingly so on sports of national significance (i.e. rugby, netball). 

 b) Militaristic arrangements: Military styled cultural-discursive arrangements are practiced across primary schools in Aotearoa. This is reflected in drills (i.e. get into line, you throw like a girl). The language of reward and punishment is associated strongly with PE (i.e. if you cannot behave we will go inside) and it is connected to the discourse of preparing good citizens.

 c) Teachers civilising children’s bodies: Schools have been implicated in being part of the problem and solution to children’s wellbeing. The pressures on NZ teachers to be responsible for children’s health is so enormous, both from within and outside our profession. Schools are seen as both the problem (i.e. not providing enough active physical engagement or poor health programmes) and the solution to this dilemma (Evans, 2014).

d) Neoliberal pressures: Schools market themselves on a range of qualities and student achievement. Sporting prowess has become a very marketable tool for schools in a way to attract a ‘better clientele’. 

e) Experts in classrooms: Burrows, Petrie & Cosgriff (2013) note that HPE programmes offered by outside organisation to schools has become something of an ‘invasion’. 

 What to do?

1) Burrows (2008) urges teachers to reflect on the ways their current practices potentially encourage students to negatively evaluate their own and others’ bodies.
2) Burrows (2008) also encourages teachers to provide learning experiences for students that encourage an embracing of all aspects of hauora and not just the ‘physical’.
3) Tinning (2009) suggests that rather than using solely the ‘rational-self’ in helping children to make healthy choices that teachers need to ‘fold in’ the power of emotion and pleasure (not guilt) to aid children’s ’critical’ faculties.
4) Remember that you are the PE & Health teacher. Defaulting the work to an outside organization may subvert the messages you want to pass on to your tamariki.

Planning for an integrated curriculum

An integrated curriculum, on the other hand, combines two or more subject areas and integrates them via a common context, investigation or theme. This theme could stem from the interests of students, from events that are taking place in your community, or it could be given to you by a Senior Leadership team.

Once a theme has been decided upon, a series of learning experiences can then be planned which span your chosen curriculum areas. 

For example, if in Maths your students are learning about measurement, you could integrate this curriculum area with Health and PE through the context of The Olympics. Learning experiences here could include measuring students’ times in a 100m race during athletics, and comparing these to the 100m times of famous athletes like Usain Bolt, or students could participate in shot put throwing and learn to measure the distances of their throws accurately using M and mm. Alternatively, students could time the Olympic rowing races and learn to record these measurements using Min and Sec. The possibilities are endless. Through this context of the Olympics, Measurement and Athletics is suddenly a whole lot more tangible and meaningful for ākonga.    

Planning considerations

Theme: What will your overarching context, investigation or theme be? 

Curriculum areas: Which curriculum areas will you choose to integrate? 

Achievement Objectives: Which curriculum level are your learners working at, and which achievement objectives do they need to focus on? 

Key Competencies: Which key competency will you focus on in your series of learning experiences?

Learning Outcomes: What do you want your students to be able to demonstrate or do by the end of the learning experience series? These should be measurable and start with a verb (create, define, identify, compare).

Learning Experiences: What activities do you actually want your students to carry out in the classroom? These are a series of instructions and are much more specific and detailed than learning outcomes. They are for you as a kaiako to follow when you are sitting in front of the class so require thought and description (What will you do and say during your teaching time).