Hellison essay
Noah Wasyliw
University of Regina
Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) is one of many models that teachers
use to teach kids in physical education (PE). This approach to teaching PE was designed to teach
kids to be personally and socially responsible for oneself in the gym. TPSR is split into 4 levels,
respect, participation and effort, self-direction, caring and helping others, and throughout a
lesson a student can go from level to level and experience all sorts of personal and social
responsibility. Let us first take a look at the level of respect, and break it down a little. We can
put respect into components which may include self-control, the right to a peaceful conflict
resolution, and the right to be included and to have cooperative peers. To successfully be
respectful in TPSR one needs to respect others and also respect themselves and that is what the
above components indicate. Secondly, we can look at the level of effort, which can be broken
down into self-motivation, exploration of effort in new tasks, and how ones gets along with
their fellow peers. Thirdly is the level of self-direction, which simply comes down to being on
task independently and to resist the temptation of peer pressure in the class. This level is all
about wanting to learn something and not only because the teacher informs you to. Lastly, we
can look at the level of helping others, and to be concise it is about encouraging other peers to
want to learn themselves. You can also look at this level as having the inner strength to care
about what you learn and not being afraid to say so. one can see how when moving forward in
this approach you build off of the knowledge one learned from the previous stage and how
each level is interconnected with each other. The last stage that TPSR embraces is the level of
Transfer outside of the gym; this includes trying what you have learned in class in other areas in
life, and being a positive role model for others especially when it comes to younger kids. One
may be challenged to be socially and personally responsible for oneself in the gym, but once
you are outside of that setting there is nothing forcing you to do so, and TPSR embraces the
idea of its importance on our daily life’s outside the gym. TPSR is a great approach that helps
bring out the idea of being relational, not only for you as a teacher but for students as well. This
model gives teachers more time to focus on the students' needs and also gives students time to
cooperate/participate with their peers and develop more relational skills with one another.
Finally one can see how Don really embraces the idea that TPSR is all about human decency,
and how being a social and personally responsible person will be needed in every aspect of
one's life.
Human decency is something that should be embedded in one's mind regardless if you
have gone through TPSR or not, but in this harsh reality we live in that is not always the case.
Hellison really embraces the fact that transferring this decency one learns in the gym to the real
world is the most critical possibility that TPSR offers. The kids we teach today are the leaders of
the next generation, and if we simply help kids understand the idea of transferring what they
have learned into the real world they are going to make the world a better place. "This class
helps you become a better person" (Hellison, 2011, p. 11) is a perfect example from a kid of
how one learns human decency in TPSR. Looking at this quote you can see how this child said
"helps you", and how they didn't say makes you or forces you, they specifically said the word
help. Using the word help implies that TPSR guided him/her to becoming a better person, but
all of the power was in the kid's hand to get to that point. That's the beauty of the TPSR
approach, not only does it teach for human decency it embraces the fact that you as a student
need to want to become a better person for TPSR to successfully work as a model. Another
possibility that TPSR brings out may be the indication of "what's worth doing" in PE. As a
teacher of PE what's worth doing in the gym is a question all teachers must ask themselves to
fully understand the TPSR model. We need to realize that there is no right way to teach PE, and
that TPSR is just one of many ways to teach PE. We as PE teachers cannot do everything, and
may not be able to teach for everyone's needs but as a teacher you need to focus on
something, and that's where the "less is more" (Hellison, 2011, p. 15) idea starts to arise. When
you start to then focus on something specific you start to embrace your teacher identity and
then you may start to understand the true idea of "what's worth doing" when it comes to PE
and how it portrays your pedagogy of teaching.
As an athlete TPSR is embedded in your mind whether you like it or not. Coming to
practice on time, giving effort in practice, even having the motivation to come to practice on a
day to day basis, all these examples are what TPSR is all about. The 4 levels that TPSR embraces
are 4 things that all dedicated and successful athletes have, and as a becoming PE teacher you
are bound to have these level embedded in our head already. One can see how as an athlete
you get a head start when it comes to TPSR because what TPSR teaches you is already second
nature because of your sports background. Another possibility for new coming teachers when it
comes to TPSR is the idea of the curriculum. TPSR is all about growing your personal and social
responsibility and becoming a better person, and main parts of the TPSR approach are already
in the curriculum for PE. Being relational, social responsibility, personal identities, and
independence, are things that are both in the TPSR approach and the curriculum for PE. One
can see how parts of the curriculum are embedded in TPSR already and for becoming teachers
knowing TPSR Is going to help us be more familiar with the curriculum before we have to use it.
The possibility of TPSR is endless and this approach is making better people and possibly a
better world.
Resources:
Saskatchewan Curriculum. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2016, from
https://www.curriculum.gov.sk.ca/webapps/moe-curriculum-BBLEARN/index.jsp
Hellison, D. R. (2011). Teaching personal and social responsibility through physical activity.
Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics
Gordon, B. (2016, February 10).BLOG: Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility: Thoughts
from NZ. Retrieved November 12, 2016, from http://www.achper.org.au/blog/blog-teachingpersonal-and-social-responsibility-thoughts-from-nz