Health and Physical Education – Relationships with other domains

Introduction

The advice for this section focuses on the relationships between the domains to provide students with multi domain learning opportunities that will help support their deeper understanding of the essential knowledge and skills.

The Arts

Health and Physical Education (HPE) classes are an excellent space for confronting and exploring new ideas relating to personal and community health. These ideas might then be used by students in arts works such as dramas, media products or visual communications. Arts practice also demands close attention to both fine motor skills and whole body movement. Because the body is central to both Arts practice and HPE, both areas promote health knowledge, exploration and understanding of the body. Arts and HPE both attend, although using different strategies, to safe practices in body usage, emphasising the importance of correct usage of the body to avoid injury through sustained, energetic or repetitive action. These activities extend students’ understanding and range of movement and physical activity, their requirements of specific precise movement and unique consideration of the aesthetics of movement in space relevant to the selected art form or physical activity.

HPE teachers can incorporate aspects of the Arts disciplines of Dance, Drama, Media, Music and Visual Communication into their programs through activities such as:

• promote health and physical activity through creating and making, visual, performance or multi-media presentations
• develop skill and participate in physical activity through creating and performing circus or physical theatre
• explore and respond to music through dance
• respond to the dance creation of others.

Arts education also provides opportunities for students to analyse and critique representations of the body in society, examine how these images are socially constructed and consider the impact that this has on their own body image. Arts pedagogy provides opportunities for students to explore issues and themes developed by the students, and adolescent students frequently elect to explore issues of health and the body through their artistic practice. Through both deconstructing how health and the body are represented to them as consumers and making their own critical statements through their artworks, students can develop discernment when confronted with media images.

Civics and Citizenship

Civics and Citizenship promotes the idea that citizens require knowledge and understanding of civic institutions and the skills and willingness to actively participate in society. Teaching of civics engages students in sustainable active interaction with their community. Similarly within Health and Physical Education (HPE) students are encouraged to become active and responsible members of their community. Key concepts within HPE classes include: understanding of the importance of personal identity within a community; what makes a community, how to engage with different members and agencies within a community. Participation in physical activity and sport should also reflect the values, rules, rights and responsibilities indicative of a democratic society. HPE practical classes are built around the idea that a physically active lifestyle is conducive to more effective participation in all that society has to offer and greater levels of success within and beyond school.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to:

• participate in activities that facilitate the practice of citizenship skills
• understand that rules and laws protect the rights of individuals and teams
• demonstrate responsibilities that accompany rights of individuals and teams
• use democratic decision making to develop rules and responsibilities to reflect community values and social justice within class activities, sport and sport education
• develop leadership skills through class activities, sport and sport education
• explore issues of sexual and racial harassment, homophobia and/or discrimination, and consider their rights and responsibilities in these areas.

Communication

Communication involves developing the knowledge, skills and behaviours that empower students to respond to, make meaning of, and deconstruct a range of communication forms. Effective communication is a key skill in Health and Physical Education (HPE). It is essential that students develop the ability to listen, view and respond with respect to the content and context in which the communication occurred. Learning in the HPE domain involves developing familiarity with forms, language and conventions used in different forms of public, personal and interpersonal communication.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to develop knowledge and skills in Communication through their use of language in:

• working with peers during class-based activities, practical activities, games and sports
• describing movement, physical responses to activity and feelings about participation in physical activity
• setting goals as a group or team and working together for achievement
• providing feedback to individuals and groups in relation to skill development, team strategy or game concepts and rules
• presenting information on health related topics and strategies
• listening to the opinions and feelings of others in class discussions.

Design, Creativity and Technology

Links with Design, Creativity and Technology (DCT), through the study of food, are associated with the Health knowledge and promotion dimension.

In DCT students learn about the characteristics and properties of materials, including how foods differ in look, taste, feel and smell. These investigations assist students to make decisions about appropriate ingredients to use for particular food products.

Students analyse and evaluate factors such as social, cultural and economic factors that influence food choices, and the impact of nutritional information provided in advertising and on product labels. They consider how food can be stored and identify safety skills and strategies associated with working with food. Students describe how to prepare and store food hygienically.

The focus on food choices is a common link between the two domains at all levels.

English

In English, students develop critical approaches to the ideas and thinking in tasks as they read, view, write, compare, research and talk about texts. Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers can use health and wellbeing examples to encourage students to reflect on their lifestyles and analyse ways the media influences their attitude to health. For example, the HPE domain emphasises the importance of self-esteem and body image in the maintenance of good health; English provides the means for students to develop critical approaches to the ideas and thinking in texts and to explore the concepts. In an assignment investigating the impact of celebrity and fashionable physique on the health of young people, students would need to identify main contentions in media articles, collate supporting evidence for arguments formed, recognise the effect of different tones in writing and presenting ideas, and analyse the various persuasive techniques employed. An insight into the impact of the different structure of articles: the effect of headlines and by-lines, graphics, position in the layout of the publication would be beneficial as well. Recognition of these aspects is central to media study in the English domain.

In HPE, students explore strategies for effectively communicating and managing emotions when relating or responding to others’ during classroom activities, for example role plays, that allow students to learn how to apply their reading, writing, viewing, speaking and listening skills to make informed healthy decisions. HPE students can complete extended assignments that require them to research, compare and present their findings about a health or physical education issue based on text/s they may read in English.

The Humanities – Economics

Economics is the study of how society allocates scarce resources to satisfy the wants and needs of its members. Within the Health and Physical Education (HPE) context consumer health assists students to become more informed consumers of health products and services.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to:

• identify economic reasons for people’s food choices
• identify and analyse health needs and services provided to the community
• investigate the cost of specific behaviours, illness or disease to the community such as the economic impact of obesity and inactivity on society
• explore the influence of government spending on health outcomes for individuals and the community
• identify the services provided through Medicare.

The Humanities – Geography

Geography is the study of physical and human environments from a spatial perspective. Students develop skills in reading and interpreting maps of different kinds and at different scales. The same knowledge and skills are reinforced in physical education during orienteering or outdoor education activities. The investigation of local and global health issues involves collecting information from maps, satellite images, statistical data, and information and communications technology based resources. These types of investigations require the recording and representation of data in different types of maps, graphs, tables, sketches, diagrams and photographs. An outcome of this type of activity is that students have the necessary knowledge, skills and behaviours to understand themselves and their world, to apply their understanding in their present lives as well as make evidence based lifestyle decisions that lead to the future they desire.

Health and Physical Education provides the opportunity for students to:

• develop geographical knowledge and geospatial skills to read and interpret maps through orienteering activities and outdoor adventure activities
• investigate the impact of development and globalisation on poverty, the links between food, hunger and technology or the consequences of global health epidemics such as the spread of HIV/AIDS
• identifying and locating facilities and services that contribute to the health and safety of communities on a local and national level.

The Humanities – History

In History, students study the past from ancient civilisations to today's news. The study of History reflects multiple influences and connections to an array of other countries, cultures and times. The concepts of time, chronology and change are common to both History and Health education. In Health these concepts relate to the changes in an individuals' life, specifically focusing on the changes in the physical, social and emotional development as an individual moves through the human lifespan. The concept of identity is also relevant to both History and Health education. While History focuses on identity from a cultural or national perspective, Health education focuses on the range of factors that shape personal identity.

Health and Physical Education provides the opportunity for students to:

• explore the concept of identity from a personal, cultural and national perspective
• map the human lifespan as time-line showing significant physical, social and/or emotional events
• explore the social, cultural and political events that impact on the health of individuals or the community
• investigate changes to technology and medicine that impact on the health of the community
• identify events that have resulted in changes to the rights of specific groups in the community, for example individuals who are same-sex attracted.

Information and Communications Technology

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can be used to access, process, manage and present information; model and control events; construct new understanding; and communicate with others.

Health and Physical Education provides the opportunity for students to:

• use software such as web authoring, presentation and word processing to create reports and presentations about knowledge of health and wellbeing
• capture still and moving images of sporting activities and edit and/or annotate them to explain skill development or tactics
• capture, track and analyse data about body growth, performance and fitness
• identify, collect and evaluate data from online sources such as blogs, websites and forums to inform their investigation of issues ranging from individual lifestyle choices to health services and products that can be used to support the health needs of young people.

Interpersonal Development

Interpersonal Development provides students with skills and understandings which are essential underpinnings of Health and Physical Education (HPE). In the Movement and physical activity dimension, sporting activities require cooperation and team work. Fairness and honesty are important values for the successful functioning of teams, and the playing of sports. The development of a sense of belonging and shared purpose often comes from participating in a team sport.

Many of the issues addressed within the Health knowledge and promotion dimension, such as those related to issues associated with sexuality or drug use, should not be divorced from the social contexts in which they occur, therefore the study of social relationships is a crucial part of health education. Health education also includes the examination and development of social and emotional health, with the development of strategies for effectively communicating and managing emotions being prominent areas of activity.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to develop interpersonal skills through:

• working with others to achieve goals in cooperative and competitive sporting and games situations
• examining the concepts of fair play, rights and responsibilities, rules and respect for the roles of officials
• discussing how social relationships with family, peers, and friends influence health behaviour and affect health and well-being, such as the influence of family or peers on food choices
• demonstrating respect for the values and beliefs held by people in different contexts and analyse how these affect health
• developing and using strategies to resolve or avoid conflict in real contexts such as the peer influence to smoke.

Language Other Than English (LOTE)

The domains of LOTE and Health and Physical Education (HPE) provide a range of opportunities for linking the curriculum at all levels of the standards. The concepts of movement, dance, physical activity and sports, all vary culturally and are associated with their own specific languages, vocabularies and discourses. All societies have different attitudes, values and beliefs about physical activity, and the many ways in which these are expressed can be integrated with languages study as it explores the social worlds in which the target language is used. Health knowledge and promotion is also rich with possibilities of such connection. Diverse cuisines and cultural beliefs about foods in relation to their health properties are ancient and variable in diverse national traditions. Physical activities, and the use of the body in communication, are also richly connected to languages.

The links between the knowledge and skills in HPE and LOTE provides the opportunity for students to:

• learn about cultural practices, such as the use of right hand only for accepting gifts
• explore the diverse views and theories of movement and diet (for example, herbal treatment theories, auryvedic diets and treatments)
• examine the impact of cultural beliefs on food selection such as beliefs about wine and other foods consumed or avoided for cultural or religious reasons
• seasonal eating and family dining traditions, connections between regional foods and children’s foods and eating traditions
• practice activities/sports with a strong cultural tradition such as tai chi, yoga, soccer and indigenous games
• explore the role of sporting traditions; such as the origins of the Marathon and the ancient Olympics, the Highland Games in Celtic tradition, Asian martial arts based on self-discipline.

Mathematics

• scoring different sporting events involving time, distance, weight and number as variables
• combinatorial problems related to developing competition draws and ladders
• calculating percentage improvement in results from data collected through fitness testing or performance in physical activities
• collecting, recording, interpreting and presenting health, skill or fitness related data in a range of formats such as graphs and tables
• predicting trends in key indicators of health status in Australia.

Personal Learning

Personal Learning provides students with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to be successful learners both at school and throughout their lives. When planning classes, Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers acknowledge that students can learn through persistence. A comprehensive HPE curriculum requires students to develop Personal Learning strategies and regular opportunities to learn with and from peers and other adults. Subject content includes developing goal setting skills, understanding and exhibiting resilience as well as developing dispositions that support learning.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills of Personal Learning through:

• developing an understanding about how they as an individual learn skills and movement patterns, that personal progression varies and therefore learn how to set and reflect on their own personal goals for achievement.
• receiving feedback form teachers and peers and how to implement this to improve skill, tactics and game knowledge and understanding.
• developing a sense of identity and self worth as well as strategies to deal with success and disappointment.
• reflecting on their unique contribution to a team
• developing personal health plans
• developing attitudes that support lifelong participation in physical activity and healthy lifestyles.

Science

The human body is a common focus of both Science and Health and Physical Education (HPE). In Science, students study the human body from the cellular to the systems level, with a focus on relating structure to function. In HPE, learning is focused on the requirements for good health and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle. Students gain an understanding of the role of physical activity in ensuring good health can link the functioning of the musculoskeletal, digestive, endocrine and nervous systems, studied in Science, to the promotion of the physical, social, mental and emotional health of individuals within a society, studied in HPE. Students consider their personal responsibilities in health issues, both in relation to their own safety and well-being, as well as to the safety and well-being of others. Further, a range of contexts within which scientific concepts associated with movement can be explored in a practical way, including the body’s responses to physical activity in terms of pulse and respiration rates, the changes in direction, acceleration and force involved in playing different sports. Opportunities to investigate health issues related to nutrition, growth and lifestyles can also be explored, including eating disorders and the impact on the human body, impacts of technology on food production and the spread and control of disease. Some students may ultimately pursue a career in sports/health science practicum or research, but all students benefit from appreciating the significance of science for the long-term health and well-being of our society.

Thinking Processes

Health and Physical Education (HPE) classes can provide students with challenging tasks, which stimulate, encourage and support skilful and effective thinking processes. Students learn to question and assemble information and develop lifestyle behaviours based on informed judgments. The thinking processes of problem solving and decision making underpin the pedagogy of teaching Health Education. There is recognition of the diversity of views on health issues and the need to evaluate the accuracy of various sources of health information. Physical Education curriculum involves students analysing skills, planning strategies for improvement, predicting the outcomes of strategy or tactic and evaluating their own or their teams success.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate Thinking Processes through:

• using problem solving and decision making in real life contexts, such as reducing drug related harm or making healthy food choices
• distinguishing between fact and opinion in relation to the accuracy of sources of health information
• considering differing points of view on issues such as sexual identity, contraception and drugs in sport
• anticipating and predicting actions in a game situation and develop strategies to counter tactical challenges
• developing creative strategies to deal with physical, social, emotional and mental health issues.
• developing plans for improving their own health
• using thinking tools to evaluate their own effectiveness in a game situation.