Developing Students' Generic Skills through Physical Education

PE is an essential learning experience for students. It is an important part of whole person development and educates students through physical activities. PE helps students pursue an active and healthy lifestyle, develops generic skills, and nurtures positive values and attitudes. It educates students to be responsible citizens and contributing members of the society. PE teachers play an important role in promoting student’s well-being by creating, fostering, and sustaining a learning environment that is healthy, caring, safe, inclusive, and accepting. A learning environment of this kind will support not only students’ psychomotor, cognitive and affective development but also their generic skills for life long and life-wide learning.

With the ongoing renewal of the school curriculum (The Curriculum Development Council, 2017) in response to the dynamic changes in society, the nine generic skills will be grouped into three clusters of related skills for better integrative understanding and application, namely Basic Skills (including “Communication Skills”, “Mathematical Skills”, and “IT Skills”), Thinking Skills (including “Critical Thinking Skills”, “Creativity” and “Problem Solving Skills”), and Personal and Social Skills (including “Self-management Skills”, “Self-learning Skills” and “Collaboration Skills”). With these generic skills which are the fundamental skills that help students learn to acquire and construct knowledge, and apply knowledge to solve new problems.

However, relatively little information concerning how the generic skills from physical education in different schools can be shared with different practices in teaching of PE is available. From observation, PE instruction in schools is dominated by the teacher directed, didactic and drill-based instruction. Obviously, these types of teacher dominated instructions are relatively less capable of developing students how to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information collaboratively and to be innovative for improvement of motor performance. As a matter of fact, relatively little opportunities are provided for students to be questioned, analyze the problems on motor problems that they face and to be inventive in their practices in the context of PE. It appears to be the timely initiative to revisit the current curricular practices in PE so that students’ positive values and attitudes as well as their generic skills can be promoted and nurtured. The health and development of students depends on PE teachers making a difference.

The concepts and nature of “Generic Skills”, and how these learning-to-learn skills develop through PE in schools are relatively unfamiliar for most PE teachers. Opportunities and platform have to be provided so that PE teachers can be shared and nurtured for incorporating these skills and innovations in their school PE curriculum. Thus, organization of the Summer School for PE Teachers 2018 aiming at developing PE teachers with knowledge and skills for “Developing Students' Generic Skills through Physical Education” is a timely initiative. As teachers are key players in any reform movements as they directly involve in learning and teaching for the students. Accordingly, they have been urged to improve the quality of teaching and to be prepared to be reflective and innovative in their teaching. They have to possess new knowledge in their subject area for facilitating more student-centred learning. They were asked to incorporate new methods of instruction and to introduce new approaches for promoting students’ learning towards the educational goals in the current education reform by means of “Action Research”. The Summer School for PE Teachers 2018 aims to help and familiarize PE teachers with knowledge and skills in “Developing Students' Generic Skills through Physical Education”. It also helps to build up knowledge-based sharing culture. The major objectives of the Summer School for PE Teachers 2018 are formulated as follows:

a)	To familiarise PE teachers with the latest development in PE, in particular “Developing Generic Skills”;
b)	To disseminate good practices and share the experiences among PE teachers with particular emphasis on how students’ generic skills can be nurtured through PE; and
c)	To deepen PE teachers’ professional knowledge of learning and teaching for promoting students’ learning

Many scholars believe in creative teachers and creative teaching. Teachers are key component for promoting positive values and attitudes as well as generic skills in schools. PE teachers’ ability to create an optimal environment, structure learning goals, experiences, activities and select appropriate methods plays a vital role for those related generic skills development for students in PE (Hsu, et. al., 2014; Mcbride, 1991; Momchilova & Ilchev, 2016; Park and Heisler, 2001; Schwager & Labate, 1993; Zachopoulou et al, 2006). From theoretical and practical perspectives, enhancing generic skills through PE has merit. For structuring learning experiences of these skills in the PE curriculum, teachers must be willing and be capable of planning, organizing and evaluating relevant learning experiences for their students. As a matter of fact, relatively few programmes for cultivating these learning-to-learn skills are currently initiated in the local PE curriculum. It is an appropriate time to look into the issue and to see how the concept of generic skills can be promoted in the field of PE. Thus, through the initiation of this project, PE teachers can be acquainted with necessary skills and knowledge of structuring relevant learning experiences for “Developing Generic Skills” for the students through a variety of professional development programmes namely conference, experience sharing seminars and workshops.

Reference:
Curriculum Development Council (2017). Physical Education Key Learning Area Curriculum Guide. Hong Kong: Author.
Hsu, W., Pan, Y., Chou, H. and Lu, F. (2014). Measuring student responsibility in physical education:   examination of CSR and PSR models. South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education & Recreation, 36(2), 129-136.
McBride, R.E. (1991). Critical thinking- An overview with implications for physical Education. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education. 11, 112-125.
Momchilova, A. and Ilchev, I. (2016). Interactive methods in physical education and sport lessons for         development of communication skills for the fourth grade students. Research in Kinesiology, 44(1), 3-12
Park, R.J. and Heisler, B. A. (2001). School programmes can foster creativity through physical education.     Education, 95(3), 225-228.
Schwager, S. and Lubate, C. (1993). Teaching for critical thinking in physical education. Journal of Physical   Education, recreation & Dance, 64, 5, 24-26.
Zachopoulou, E, Trevlas, E. and, Konstadinidou, E. (2006). The design and implementation  of a physical    education programme to promote children’s creativity in the early years.  International Journal of Early Years Education. 14(30), 279-294.