Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Discussions
4.9 Theme 7: Location and Time
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they provide, and make adjustments to them as necessary to help every student achieve the curriculum expectations to the best of his or her ability”.
Capel (2007), opine that teachers should also have reasons for the plans they have, and the strategies they are going employ, to teach their subject (physical education) in order to ensure that the curriculum is applicable to the learners they are teaching. It is the responsibility of the teacher to ensure that the vision of the curriculum is achieved. If teachers can be fully responsible by ensuring that their lessons have goals and objectives and teachers are being consistent on those goals and objectives the curriculum can be successful. One can argue that the curriculum is practical, only when teachers can play their role of ensuring that they plan and secure the availability of the resources. It is always said that teachers should improvise (the resources), doing so can ensure that the curriculum is practical. Service Ontario (2015), clarifies this by stating that the preparation and accommodation of consistent physical education classes may need some ingenuity, especially if resources are scarce and must be shared by large numbers of learners. If teachers know and take up their responsibilities the curriculum will not struggle and it can be made sustainable for a long period.
4.9 Theme 7: Location and time
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These comments indicate that the teachers are aware that a space where physical education must take place should be conducive. Participant 1 has indicated that:
…the dust, remember the dust have all the kinds of diseases. The dust can affect the learners to a point whereby they end up sick from the lungs or any internal illness because I myself do not know what they inhale from that dust.
The teachers have indicated ‘…where physical education should take place there should at least be the sand or there be the grass so that it will be comfortable for the learners’ (Participant 3).
There should also be shelters so that when they finish playing they will stand under the shelters (Participant 2)
Secondly, we have learners whom are sensitive, even us teachers. The sun in this place is too strong [hot] you will come back from the playground suffering from a severe headache and so are the learners there are some who are like that (Participant 3).
The above accounts indicate the concerns of the teachers about the health of the learners and teachers themselves. Lack of safe learning space and good sanitations are some of the elements that the teachers experience when teaching the life skills physical education. One can conclude that the above comments from the teachers may contribute to the reasons that teachers not to teach physical education.
I do not know the health status of these learners. For me I hate the dust because I once suffered from asthma for a long time, so this kind of sickness does not want dust and so are the sinuses. We need comfortable spaces so that even if the learners jump they will not get hurt unlike here where they will be jumping on the dry ground with some stones.
If a learner gets hurt, parents at home do not take it that learners were playing or learning (Participant 3).
The main concern of the teachers about the place where they practice physical education is about the safety of the teachers and the learners. For this reason, there is a need for a comfortable space that will also promote good health in these teachers and their young learners. We do not need a situation whereby a learner will receive a permanent disability as resulting from the unsafe place
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at school. A safe and conducive place may even save the teachers’ time because they will not worry much about safety and may teach different activities.
4.9.2 Time
Physical education is allocated sixty minutes a day, for two days per week. Participant 3 in her remarks about the time they have for teaching physical education indicated that ‘the time allocated for physical education is enough and even more because we do not like it [P.E]’. With the experiences she (Participant 3) had in teaching physical education, her statement indicates that she has lost the motivation to teach physical education. However, Participant 2 has a different opinion, in her statement she said:
The thing that there will be period one, period so and so they [learners] get tired, as if they can go out and exercise and come back and continue. The time is not enough as if we can have more time. Physical education according to me I wish it should always be there, it should be allocated more time so that the children will be developed.
However, if there was someone who specialises in physical education the time was enough that even if it was time up learners were still enjoying themselves and do not want to go back to classes because this thing physical education was well done (Participant 2).
One can argue that it is not that teachers do not like physical education like it was said earlier on.
Teachers do not have the expertise for teaching physical education thus; they lose the interest on physical education. It can also be argued that should the teachers be equipped with the information they need to effectively teach physical education, they could enjoy the experience and the time allocated for the subject may be enough.
The allocation of time should have been done according to the number of learners in a grade and in a class. For example, in grade 3 there are 216 learners in total, there are four classes and there are four teachers. Some teachers having more than fifty learners in a class.
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They [management] do not look at how many classes they just give us a period after break we all find ourselves in the playground and sometimes it is not effective because the learners end up playing (Participant 2).
This suggests that there should be a way that teachers can split the allocated time for physical education because currently all four teachers use the same time for physical education. Apart from grade 3 the whole of the foundation phase has been allocated the same time for physical education, with each grade constituting around 200 learners. How can over 600 learners use one small playground for physical education? Physical education in this school requires face-to-face contact and all the learners need the teachers’ attention. This suggests that there should be ample time for physical education and moreover, that the classes should be split in order to do physical education in different times.
4.9.3 Discussion theme 7: Location and time
The school is a vital place for learning, attaining skills and basic attitudes, which are retained with the learners all their life (Asadi Behzadkolaee et al., 2015). Thus, the school must be a good environment that promotes health and the play grounds should be conducive for learners’ play.
The location, or the space, is a very important aspect of a school (especially in primary school where young learners like to play and their development depends on that play). Moreover, Asadi Behzadkolaee et al. (2015) caution that the school, as a second home, should be eye-catching and optimally challenging to promote interest of the learners in the educational program. Likewise, Tsiakaraa and Digelidisa (2015) opine that a central role in children’s impetus to learn and develop is determined by the learning environment the learners engage with. In the case of the school where this study was conducted, the teachers believe that the learning environment does not promote the development of the learners because it is not of a good standard and does not interest the learners.
Gross and Buchanan (2014, p. 68), contend that:
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In order to provide daily, quality, developmentally appropriate physical education, physical education specialists must overcome many variables that affect the delivery of their lesson content, and affect their attitude and outlook on their profession.
In this case teachers in some of the school are not physical education specialist and they themselves need to be taught more about physical education as they have indicated in their comments. Because of the poor environment in rural schools, teachers are compelled to keep their learners in the classrooms for the whole day. This is in sharp contrast with what Scott et al.
(2014, p. 47) believe is needed: “actual contact with friends and different resources in an outdoor setting interacts strongly with memory and as a result enhances subsequent retention and recall of learned material and fosters motivation to learn”. This may be the reason Howie and Pate (2012) state that physical education is associated with academic success. At times, learners in rural schools do not do well academically; one may argue that it may be as the result of learners not participating in extracurricular activities and also the lack of physical education in such schools. Even though learners are always in the classrooms, taking them out is often seen as wasting their study time.
Time is one factor that plays a huge role in the implementation of the curriculum. Teachers themselves are not of the same voice when it comes to the issue of time. As indicated by the teachers during the interviews, the time allocated for physical education is enough while others disagree. However, Van Deventer (2009) argues that the time allocated for physical education is enough and that it ultimately depends on how the time is utilised by the teachers. The argument is that if teachers have the content knowledge, time would not be a problem because they could plan beforehand. Time becomes insufficient because teachers struggle with many difficulties (bringing the materials together) before they start the lesson of the day. O'Sullivan (2013) states that the physical education curriculum tends to be practical when it is adjusted to meet the necessities of learners. To ensure the needs of the learners are met there is must be well trained teachers to teach physical education, the DBE and school administrators provides sufficient time, resources, and facilities that are necessary for the implementation of physical education.
Wanyama and Quay (2014) and Mudekunye and Sithole (2012), argue that physical education is seldom implemented, to the point that some head teachers timetable it only to please school inspectors. This can be addressed by ensuring that time is split accordingly so that all the learners
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have an opportunity to participate in physical education activities. It makes it impossible for learners to participate in physical education if there are too many learners and the teacher may find it difficult to assess the learners.