Teaching responsibility

Among the personal-social development curriculum models we can find an interesting approach which is called: the responsibility model.

Through this model children are expected to develop personal and social responsibility. In order to achieve these aims they have to follow five steps:

1- Respect

2- Participation and effort

3- Self direction

4- Caring/helping

5- Outside of the gym

                     

I really like this approach because of several reasons. Foremost because physical education is understood as a education to the whole child thus the values don't have to be only displayed inside the classroom but under other circumstances as well. From my point of view, this is the main point of education, not only to learn some contents and skills, but also to be able to apply them in different situations or at least have the strategies to find the knowledge or skills that you have been requested. Furthermore, I like the way this model emphasizes the need to collaborate with others, it could be showed by listening to them or even helping them with some activity in which they have some difficulties.

Relating to this idea, it is very important as well that students reflect about themselves. What am I good at? When might I need help? When can I be the one who helps other people? Am I a respectful and committed person? When I am at school, am I doing my best? As I see it, all this questions are very important for becoming a good citizen, therefore, people should answer them and work with them as soon as possible and school can be a good place in order to develop them.

As I have said before, this approach is very advantageous since it combines the personal and social development of the person and it can be carried out through any kind of activity which promote physical activity at the same time. 

                  

When talking about this issue in class, the people complaint about the disconnection between the theory and the practice. It might be obvious that the older we are, the more responsible we are expected to be. Nevertheless, experience at college has given us a different idea about this statement. Unfortunately, some of our teachers treat us as we were children (and sometimes this behaviour is inadmissible even for children). For instance, attendance is compulsory and teachers check if we come to class although we are 20 people in our class, so it is quite easy to know who skips classes even without keeping a record. But the point is not that we are obliged to attend class, the worst thing in my opinion is that most of the time teachers do not believe that students are responsible enough to follow a subject. As a matter of fact, teachers could ensure attendance of the class juts by motivating the pupils to go to class, by making the subject so interesting that students do not want to skip the class.

Another contradictory thing is that we have to study what the benefits of responsibility and fairness are and how important is to develop them in our future classes, nonetheless, teachers keep treating us in a complete different way. So, what should we learn: what we study or what we experience as education students?