Integrating Thinking Skills and Movement Processes in Physical Education

Integrating Thinking Skills and Movement Processes in Physical Education

Physical education is buoyant with curriculum models that purport to stretch the cognitive development as much as the motor development of children in schools. These are attempts to infuse thinking about movement activities into the curriculum. There are no models as yet that has seen fit to raise to a level of awareness in children the actual process of thinking about movement skills. Certainly not in the same way that thinking skills in math, science and language teaching are evident in some schools in Singapore. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for the teaching of thinking in physical education. A review of early attempts to promote thinking about movement activities in physical education form the basis a discussion of teaching thinking skills through physical education. This is followed by a discussion of a psychomotor taxonomy for the teaching and learning of motor skills and the core thinking skills used in Singapore schools. Finally the contention of this paper is that by adapting the teaching methods used by the physical educator in class students can simultaneously acquire higher level motor skills, understand the process of learning motor skills and explore more deeply using thinking skills each level of the taxonomy.