Physical Education for Sustainability and Well-being

Citation

Murray A (2024) Physical Education for Sustainability and Well-being. In: Doull K & Ogier S (eds.) Teaching Climate Change & Sustainability in the Primary Curriculum. 1 ed. Learning Matters, pp. 174-186. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/teaching-climate-change-and-sustainability-in-the-primary-curriculum/book285833

Abstract
Physical Education (PE) enables children to move with confidence through the physical world and to interact effectively with each other and their environment. In this, we recognise the effect we may have be having through our actions and the choices we make. This responsibility to acknowledge our interdependence is what we might call reciprocity. The notion of reciprocity exemplifies awareness and willingness to give back, rather than just take (Creswell, 2013), linking to sustainable practices that can shape education and personal lives. Children need the opportunity to increase self and collective awareness of their imprint upon our environment and our world. Time needs to be given if this is to be considered in the curriculum. Curriculum time needs to be made for children to take on greater ownership of how to care for our world in meaningful and sustainable ways. The same can be said for how we go about everyday living, and therefore across our planned and emergent curricula as well as in extracurricular experiences. How can we make these count in relatable and tangible ways for school and community sustainable living? This chapter shares a pragmatic means to plan, enact and recycle sustainable practices through physical education. PE offers practicable means to host, support and exemplify several of the sustainable global development goals. We hope colleagues might also capture pupil interest and imagination in considering and connecting with the more subtle elements across the global sustainability goals. We are delighted to share a tangible framework to support sustainability through PE and physically active learning. We have taken our inspiration from the Fibonacci spiral as demonstrated with a conch or nautilus shell, where the starting point expands, repeats and grows. This metaphorical shell pedagogy can wrap around your PE curricula. We have used the spiral of the shell as it symbolises how the gradations of content within the curriculum can be expanded, developed and adapted in an ecologically responsible manner (Figure 13.1). The concept of the shell represents a transferrable tool that can be implemented (and re-implemented) across a variety of contexts, to offer guidance on how content can be situated through sustainable education in a scaffolded fashion. As sustainable development is of itself, a process of constant change (Hauff, 1987), we invite colleagues to try out the suggested pedagogy and adapt this to your own particular context.

Keywords
Climate change; sustainability; primary; curriculum