Narrator

PDHPE provides learning opportunities that are contemporary, learner-centred and relevant to the student.

There are five key propositions which underpin the PDHPE K-10 syllabus, which are adopted from the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education. A strong and diverse research-base ensures that the PDHPE curriculum is contemporary and future-focused.

The five propositions are interrelated and guide teaching, learning and assessment. They should guide teachers in their pedagogy and be authentically embedded across the three content strands.

While the PDHPE syllabus may contribute to a range of goals that sits beyond its educative purpose a focus on educative purpose prioritises ongoing opportunities for student learning and development.

PDHPE has an important role to play in terms of health and social outcomes, however it needs to be one part of a whole school and community approach to addressing these issues. PDHPE provides students with a strong foundation to take positive action to protect and enhance their own and others health, safety and wellbeing. Through PDHPE students will be empowered to actively contribute to and advocate for the health safety and wellbeing of themselves and others in the community and beyond school

A strengths-based approach to teaching PDHPE flips how we have previously approached the learning area it affirms that most students are healthy, safe, active and well. It acknowledges that students bring with them strengths, capacities and resources. As teachers, we can build from these to develop positive attitudes and a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills. We have a role to support our students to identify, their strengths and capacities to enhance their own health, safety and wellbeing and that of others.

The focus of a strengths-based approach is - What keeps us healthy, safe, well and physically active?

Taking a strengths-based approach in PDHPE encourages students and their communities to draw on strengths, capacities and resources to develop the knowledge, understanding, skills, values and attitudes they require to make more engaged choices.

PDHPE focuses on the value of movement, physical activity, physical literacy and physical education.

Movement experiences provide challenges and opportunities for students to enhance a range of personal and social skills and behaviours that contribute to health and wellbeing.

We value movement by refocussing the role of PDHPE to build knowledge, understanding and skills for a lifetime of physical activity and provide opportunities for movement-based learning. Valuing movement encourages opportunities for students to learn in, about and through movement and physical based activity.

Students will learn how and why we move, how we can improve physical performance and how and why we participate in ongoing physical activity across our lifetime.

This proposition ensures our students are provided with the opportunity to enhance their ability to gain access to, understand, and use health information and services to promote and maintain health, safety, wellbeing and participation in physical activity.

Health literacy is crucial for students as they gain independence students become increasingly involved with their own health and health care, interacting with health services and accessing information which informs their actions and behaviours.

A critical enquiry approach encourages students to challenge, question and interrogate PDHPE related content and health information.

Including a critical inquiry approach in PDHPE enables students to better analyse and critique health information from all sources. It recognises the contextual factors that influence people’s attitudes, decisions and actions. In addition students will explore content related to inclusiveness, power inequalities, taken-for-granted assumptions, diversity and social justice.

Using a range of pedagogical models a critical enquiry approach in PDHPE is consistent with experiential learning and recognising learner diversity.

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Focus on the explicit learning driven by the syllabus outcomes and content. The focus of all lessons in PDHPE should be on the explicit and purposeful learning that is intended to occur.

Prioritise learning and progression by providing ongoing, developmentally appropriate and explicit learning about health, safety and movement concepts. The priority is to develop knowledge, understanding, attitudes and skills to be healthy, safe and active.

Create purposeful learning experiences where students make meaning of the knowledge, understanding and skills and apply these to live healthy, safe and active lives. Learning intentions and success criteria should be clear and articulated in all PDHPE lessons to identify the knowledge, understanding and skills students will develop, reinforce or apply through each lesson.

Build a shared understanding of why the learning is important. Be able to identify and articulate why the learning is occurring and the evidence that demonstrates this learning is occurring. It should be visible how each PDHPE teaching and learning experience and/or assessment addresses explicit syllabus content and outcomes.

Complement whole school and community approaches. Empower students to actively contribute to, and advocate for, the health, safety and wellbeing of themselves and others.

Affirms that most students are healthy, safe, active and well and bring with them strengths, capacities and resources. Focus on what keeps us healthy, safe, well and physically active throughout life.

Encourage students through this approach to use their own strengths in a wide range of situations to optimise their own and others’ health, safety and wellbeing. Use learning experiences to focus on the capacities, competencies, values and hopes of all students, regardless of their current circumstances.

A strengths-based approach:

• values people as individuals with their own strengths, capacities and resources
• draws on existing strengths and resources to promote action and choice
• promotes positive expectations for all students
• recognises varying access to resources and promotes the role of community in support
• focuses on what individuals and communities can do
• acknowledges that people experience challenges that need support and encourages positive action
• informs and guides pedagogy, learning and assessment
• builds skills to promote confidence and capacity to take action to be healthy, safe, well and physically active.

A strengths-based approach does not:

• use shock, fear or scare tactics to educate students
• fixate on disease, harm, inactivity or ill health and the risk for these
• ignore student voice, feedback, interests and capabilities
• assume all students learn and demonstrate their learning in the same way
• focus only on positive things
• avoid the truth or show only one side
• attempt to immunise students against harmful or risky behaviours
• assume all students are demonstrating the same attitudes and behaviours.

Recognise the contextual factors that influence people’s attitudes, decisions and actions and encourages students to challenge, question and interrogate PDHPE related content and health information.

Including a critical inquiry approach in PDHPE enables students to:

• build inquiry skills. Promote, support and encourage researching, analysing, applying and appraising knowledge in health and movement contexts.
• recognise contextual factors. Develop capacity of students to recognise that being and staying healthy, safe, well and active are shaped by a range of contextual factors, some of which are controllable and others which are often out of the individual’s control.
• interrogate information. Build ability of students to challenge, question and interrogate all knowledge, information and PDHPE or health and movement related content.
• experience learning. Use a range of pedagogical models or approaches to teaching and learning in PDHPE which focus on experiential learning and recognise learner diversity.

Enhance student's ability to gain access to, understand, and use health information and services to promote and maintain health, safety, wellbeing and participation in physical activity.

Include and develop the three dimensions of health literacy through PDHPE. The more students are able to use the dimensions of health literacy, the better skilled they are to take control of their own health.

• Functional health literacy. Shift the focus from traditional sources of information and recognise non-traditional sources of information, e.g. social media and online. Encourage students to research and apply information relating to knowledge and services to respond to a health-related question.
• Interactive health literacy. Develop more advanced knowledge, understanding and skills to enable students to apply new information to changing circumstances. Support students to actively and independently engage with a health issue.
• Critical health literacy. Provide opportunities for student to selectively access and critically analyse health information. Support students to make judgements, critique and question information. These skills will enable students to take action to promote health, safety, wellbeing and participation in physical activity for themselves and others.

These opportunities could include:

• investigating and using a wide range of health and physical activity related vocabulary and symbols
• exploring web page design and navigation and multiliteracy conventions related to health and wellbeing
• recognising and processing information and ideas to read aloud, discuss, brainstorm, develop concept maps and highlight terms, key ideas and note take
• critical assessment of the authenticity and reliability of information
• exploring health inequities and possible solutions.

Focus explicitly on the value of movement, physical activity, physical literacy, and physical education to build knowledge, understanding and skills for a lifetime of physical activity.

Create movement experiences driven by syllabus content and outcomes across a variety of movement and physical activity contexts.

Movement is embedded throughout the content to build movement competence across a range of physical activities.

The movement skill domain ensures movement is mapped to content to highlight authentic opportunities for development of the broad range of movement skills.

Movement provides a powerful context for learning across the curriculum and for developing interpersonal and self management skills.

Physical literacy is developed through an inclusive and holistic approach with an equal focus on movement proficiency, motivation to move and appreciation of the value of moving.