Praxis Physical Education Content and Design (5095)

Items drawn from this chapter ask candidates to state the purpose of physical education, match historical figures, tests, and laws to their effects on school programs, and recognize the current national standards, time recommendations, and program models. Most appear as short recall questions set in a school scenario.

Physical education is a curricular area that develops physically literate individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to enjoy a lifetime of healthful physical activity. It is a planned, sequential, standards-based program of instruction and assessment taught by a certified teacher. The discipline draws on several scientific fields, including exercise physiology, kinesiology, biomechanics, motor learning, and sport psychology.

Physical literacy is the comprehensive outcome of a quality program: the ability to move with competence and confidence in a wide variety of physical activities and environments. A physically literate individual demonstrates competence in movement forms, applies knowledge of movement concepts, exhibits responsible personal and social behavior, values physical activity for health and enjoyment, and remains active throughout life.

The primary goal of physical education is to develop the whole child through movement experiences. Learning outcomes are therefore written in three domains of learning, and a sound lesson usually addresses more than one. A fourth-grade striking lesson, for example, can target a mature forehand pattern, the cue words that describe it, and cooperative work with a partner.

SHAPE America (the Society of Health and Physical Educators) publishes the national standards that most states use as a model. The current national standards are four statements describing what a student should know and be able to do as a result of a quality program, each supported by indicators that show how learning progresses across grade spans.

An earlier five-standard framework, written around the phrase "the physically literate individual," still appears in many state standards documents and preparation materials, so candidates should recognize both versions. Its fitness content is now carried mainly by the second standard (movement and fitness concepts) and by the personal standard, and its statements on responsible behavior and valuing activity by the social and personal standards.

National standards are a model; state and district standards govern what a teacher must teach. In either case, elementary programs build fundamental motor skills and movement concepts, middle school programs apply them with basic tactics in modified games and activities, and high school programs prepare students to plan and sustain lifetime activity and fitness.

American physical education grew from European gymnastics systems brought by immigrants in the 1800s, passed through a period in which physicians directed college programs, and was reshaped in the early twentieth century by progressive educators who treated movement as a means of educating the whole person. The rivalry among the gymnastics systems is known as the Battle of the Systems; no single system prevailed.

Sport sociologists describe sport as an institutionalized, competitive physical activity governed by rules. Institutionalized means that the rules are standardized, an official body enforces them, and skills are taught formally. Sport is the organized end of a continuum that begins with play, which is voluntary and spontaneous, and passes through games, which add agreed rules and goals.

Because sport is a social institution, it transmits values and reflects wider issues such as gender equity, access for students with disabilities, cost, and early specialization. Physical education uses sport as content and holds every student accountable for learning, whereas interscholastic athletics selects the most skilled performers.

Contemporary programs have moved away from a multi-activity model dominated by team sports and toward standards-based instruction that prepares all students for lifetime activity. The following models and emphases recur in exam scenarios about how best to organize a unit.

Fitness assessment has changed in the same direction. Performance awards based on norm-referenced percentile rankings gave way in most school programs to criterion-referenced health standards, such as the Healthy Fitness Zone of FitnessGram. A criterion-referenced standard tells a student whether a score is sufficient for good health, regardless of how classmates perform. Results support self-assessment and goal setting, not grading.

A Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) coordinates opportunities for students to reach the recommended 60 minutes of daily activity, with physical education as its foundation. It fits within the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model, a ten-component framework that aligns health and education and includes physical education and physical activity as one component.

Two public health concerns drive these efforts: the high prevalence of childhood obesity and the time young people spend in sedentary behavior, much of it in front of screens. Schools respond by protecting instructional time and recess, by keeping students in moderate-to-vigorous activity for at least half of each lesson, and by never assigning or withholding physical activity as punishment.