The Professional Knowledge Base of Primary Physical Educators

Introduction

Across educational systems, physical education is recognized as having an important place within the primary school curriculum. For many countries such as England, New Zealand, and Greece, a generalist teacher will teach physical education alongside a host of other subject disciplines. Although traditionally valued as a pastorally focused role, a generalist is required to have a broad ranging knowledge across the primary age-phase (defined in this entry as 5–11 years old). The competence in which to teach physical education effectively is, therefore, often questioned. In this entry I discuss what knowledge teachers need to have in order to teach primary physical education and present a Professional Knowledge Model (PKM) (Randall 2019) that recognizes the breadth of understanding required. While critics might argue that such truths about the epistemology of teaching rarely exist, there is broad consensus that in order to plan, teach, and assess primary physical education...