ABSTRACT
Primary physical education has recently been identified as a subject area with the potential to address growing concerns and associated initiatives linked with children’s health and wellbeing, sport participation and physical activity levels (Petrie & Hunter, 2011). In Scotland, primary physical education has likewise been placed in a prominent position, structured within the new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) guidelines aimed at enhancing and promoting children’s and young people’s health and wellbeing (Thorburn, Jess, & Atencio, 2011). Yet, evidence nationally and internationally suggests a significant variation in the quality of primary physical education, largely in relation to the prevailing use of the multi-activity ‘block’ curriculum model which provides abstracted elements of sport and physical activities to children in compartmentalized, unrelated and fragmented ways (Rainer, Cropley, Jarvis, & Griffiths, in press). Notably, criticism has been levelled at the ways in which this ‘block’ model has resulted in the perpetuation of developmentally inappropriate practices (Thorburn, Jess, & Atencio, 2009).
