ABSTRACT
At the time of the most recent revision to the national curriculum in England, the government stated its desires for young people to become ‘healthy, lively and enquiring individuals capable of rational thought and discussion and positive participation in our ethnically diverse and technologically complex society’ (Blunkett 1999). A subject-focused framework for the national curriculum was retained, but with a renewed expectation that all subjects would make a collective contribution to the development of a number of identified ‘key skills’ and specifically, ‘thinking skills’. (Identified key skills were: communication, application of number, information technology, working with others, improving one's own learning and performance, and problem-solving.) The opening pages to the new NCPE highlight opportunities for the development of these skills. This document states that physical education provides opportunities for thinking skills ‘through helping pupils to consider information and concepts that suit different activities and critically evaluate aspects of performance and to generate and express their own ideas and opinions about tactics, strategy and composition’ (DfEE/QCA 1999: 9). Attention is thus directed towards a greater sophistication in pupils’ thinking about skills and, in particular, an awareness and understanding of the potential application of skills in various physical activity contexts, and of the principles that relate to performance. Thinking is thus portrayed as integral to performance.
