BRINGING THE KNOWLEDGE COMPONENTS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY EDUCATION (INCLUDING SPORT) TO THE PRACTICING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY EDUCATOR

Abstract

The field of physical (activity) and health education, or whatever it is called in any one of the world’s countries, has undergone a “determined” but often “confused” development in the 20th century. After Sputnik went up in 1957, the field sought help from a variety of disciplines (e.g., kinesiology) and professions (e.g., management) in an attempt to truly define itself. Building on what Arthur Steinhaus (George Williams College) stated were its four “principal principles” in the early 1950s, the author asserts that some 14 “principal principles” of the field can now be affirmed. Searching for consensus, a proposed taxonomy for “developmental physical activity in exercise, sport, and physical recreation” is offered here for consideration as the field moves along in the 21st century. The author argues that the field also needs to make available to the professional practitioner a computerized inventory of generalizations that represents a distillation of the field’s scientific and scholarly literature.