The Urgency for Applying Individualized Instruction in Physical Education & Sports
Fred Keller, (1964) introduced the “personalized system of instruction,” based on 9 accepted educational principles that have produced documented success. This system, designed for individualized instruction, included the founding principles of immediate feedback, mastery before advancement, self-pacing and personalization.
The need for applying individualized instruction in every physical education class and in every sports’ training has never been more important. Applying the principles for intense exercise requires immediate feedback. These principles of individualized instruction, in group settings, become impossible to implement for intense exercise, when there is no immediate feedback. There is no possibility for self-pacing and personalization when heart rate responses are unknown and no data is available in student records for teachers, administrators, coaches, and students to reference. Documenting individual heart rate data for future reference is essential in physical education and sport workouts. Data from every area of education is documented in student records. What individual exercise intensity records are documented from physical education or sport? In physical education, 50% of their grade is often effort. How can effort be evaluated without heart rate technology which can be used to provide all students with immediate feedback to provide individualization for exercise conditioning?
Schools that have no heart rate sensors have no data for personalizing exercise. Administrators who evaluate every program in the schools have data. Those who have no data from any physical educator or coach for exercise intensity from those they were instructing have no history of personal exercise. It will be as if no individual data is necessary to provide an exercise science or design physical education and sports’ training protocol. When students or athletes receive exercise conditioning from a new teacher or coach during the semester, those instructors will have no exercise data from the previous teacher or coach, or any previous course or sport for that matter.
How do you individualize exercise protocols in physical education and sport, when there is no intensity data from individuals in group settings?
Parents expect objective examples of their child’s evaluations in academics. Physical education is one of the academics. There is no objective data to review for the parents and the teacher, or the administrator. Observation in group settings, is the evaluation tool in most physical education programs, for 50% of the grade. There is no history of exercise intensities for physical education and sport in student records.
There are consequences for the inability to individualize in physical education or sports’ practices. There are many differences in various fitness levels within one class in physical education, or in one sports’ practice. The guessing for students to apply exercise intensities, as well as the instructor to evaluate each student, is without data or real time feedback. In every class or practice there are a variety of individual needs. Overweight kids now make up a third of all our students. Covid has affected our entire country. There are higher temperatures and poor air quality, now throughout the country, that we are living with and exercising in. Every hour, a child collapses from cardiac arrest, in the USA. If a teenager leaves their teenage years obese, 28 out of 29 will remain obese their entire lives. Schools must embrace the challenge to individualize exercise training, for all students throughout their school years with a high tech physical education program. Technology has been integrated within the school education programs for the past 35 years. It is time to embrace the technology that will provide the individual data from group settings, in sport and physical education. It is time to individualize exercise prescriptions for every student/athlete.
Fitness Technology Pioneer, Beth Kirkpatrick, at UCONN
The heart rate sensor revolution began in 1982. Since then, schools across the United States have been purchasing heart rate sensors for all students that are used in every physical education class and in all sports’ practices. School boards are demanding accountability for the exercise prescriptions that physical educators and coaches are delivering to all students. All students are being held accountable to the real time feedback of their own heart rates for individualizing all conditioning, showing mastery in their ability to self-pace. The data provided, is sent home electronically, daily to the parents and to the students. This data, is collected for student records for future referral and for the “history” of exercise in schools. This data is collected, under the supervision of quality physical educators and coaches now trained in applying technology invented for their field. Their college degree for physical education and sports must reflect the technology training necessary for their future jobs.
These physical education graduates have had several years of college courses in exercise science, kinesiology, exercise physiology, prevention and care of athletic injuries, etc. Technology in physical education and sports must be included in this college preparation. Technology companies continue to invent the very latest in innovation for individualizing exercise prescriptions for all students and athletes. Recording the history of exercise, requires the implementation of the technology to provide 12 years of measurement using heart rate data. This heart rate data is also necessary to design individual exercise pacing, for every student in group exercise settings. Personalization will be possible as students choose exercise bikes, rowing machines, etc., in place of running, using heart rate as the common denominator to give real time intensities, no matter their choices in exercise equipment. Students will be well educated to the effects of heat, overtraining, progression and specificity, using heart rate as their guide.
Parents will be able to see their child’s efforts each day they are exercising, in the school setting. The heart rate printouts are sent home automatically every day through emails. Parents can check on their child’s efforts and engage in conversation about what they learned in physical education that day, using the heart rate printout and visualization from their own heart rate data printout.
Imagine having the history of exercise for every student, recorded in all student records, for both physical education, and all sports’ practices. This heart rate data reflects the individualization for all exercise protocols that were delivered in group settings.
Without this heart rate data, there is no possibility to record or reflect upon or evaluate the student individual exercise intensities. How do parents understand the lack of documentation and individual exercise data, based upon their child’s effort, that was prescribed to them by instructors who are hired for their expertise? Why is there no exercise intensity data from those whom prescribed their exercise protocols? Why would parents, administrators, and school boards continue to ignore the documentation for this area of education, in their school programs? Show me your data from physical education and sports’ programs that demonstrates individualization in group settings. Where is the history of exercise data for all individuals that were guided by college educated instructors?
References: people.potsdam.edu, Individualized Instruction
