Reid on knowledge and justification in Physical Education

[FIRST PARAGRAPHS] To my knowledge, very little has been written on the educational justification of PE activities for the last decade. Since PE now does have a place on the National Curriculum, albeit arguably a minor one, the justification issue does seem to have been put on the back burner by the profession.

In a recent and welcome addition to the literature, Reid revisits the debate, outlining two ‘conventional assumptions’ made by what he calls the ‘new orthodoxy’ in PE:

1. The ‘early Hirstian’ account3, which sees knowledge as propositional, and education as academic. When applied to PE, this suggests:

2. The distinction between practical performance and the ‘theory’ related to it - i.e. the propositional knowledge of Human Movement Science (HMS).

The paper is a critique of these two assumptions, and a defence of the claim that PE ‘can indeed satisfy the knowledge requirements of education; but ... without making claims to academic significance’ (p95).