ABSTRACT
This chapter will provide a brief overview of the learning theory connectivism and will show how, in an education landscape now saturated with digital technologies, it continues to offer practitioners the most useful framework for thinking about teaching and learning. We will focus our attention on physical education in schools and universities in New Zealand, where a significant update of the national curriculum document (NZC) (Ministry of Education (MOE), 2007), and the publication of a small number of influential reports and curriculum updates have been published in the years since connectivism was first proposed (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd, & Hipkins, 2012). These documents serve to propagate ideas about pedagogy and structure expectations for teaching and learning and how it will be conducted in New Zealand’s schools. We will trace connectivist ideas and concepts concerning the role of knowledge through these documents with the aim of showing how they serve as local instantiations of connectivist ideas. We will then use case studies to provide an account of innovations in teaching and learning underpinned by these ideas in two areas of physical education; Initial Teacher Education in Physical Education (PETE) and ongoing teacher professional learning and development (PLD). The chapter concludes by posing a number of critical questions for readers and physical education practitioners that will challenge them to consider the relationship between connectivism and ongoing trends in digital technologies in education, the place of such technologies in the physical education curriculum area, and what the role of the universities and professional development providers could be in addressing the issues these innovations raise.
