The foundation of movement skills

Abstract

An understanding of motor development is essential in order for teachers to provide a developmentally appropriate physical education curriculum. While physical education specialists may be exposed to motor learning from a developmental perspective, classroom generalist teachers may have very limited experience and education in this area in the course of teacher education at a tertiary level or on-the-job professional learning. The extent of full-time employment of specialist physical education teachers in the early childhood and primary settings is limited, and the presence of a specialist does not always guarantee a quality developmentally based program (Morgan & Hansen 2007). Generalist teachers, with their knowledge of individual needs of their students and the security and psychological support that they provide in the early childhood and primary classroom, are ideal candidates for providing developmentally appropriate, best-practice teaching in physical education. Overwhelmingly, generalist teachers are those who, as classroom teachers, cover all of the key learning areas in the primary curriculum. Specialist teachers have additional learning in their pre-service teacher education programs and usually have greater expertise in teaching one of the key learning areas such as physical education, music, or art. More recently, there have been initiatives to address the lack of confidence in the generalist teaching of physical education at the pre-service teacher education level and to provide the generalist teacher with greater opportunities to learn.