Introduction
In Episode 82 of the PE Insights podcast, host Nathan Walker sits down with Jack Harvey for a conversation designed to challenge the status quo. Nathan introduces the episode by warning that this might not be a comfortable listen for everyone. Jack is described as deeply passionate, widely read and willing to question what educators value, what they are prioritising and whether the stated aims of Physical Education actually align with what is delivered in practice. The discussion explores uncomfortable truths about the gap between performative practice on social media and genuine pedagogical standards.
Educational Journey and Global Experience
Jack’s journey into teaching began around 2017. After leaving sixth form with excellent grades in BTEC sport but no clear career direction, he undertook a PE coaching apprenticeship. This provided him with foundational skills in instructing activities and managing behaviour. Mentored by Joe Wilson, Jack was encouraged to pursue a degree to avoid getting stuck purely in coaching.
He spent four years working across all ages to include building a leadership academy and researching kinaesthetic activity for preschool children. Jack then completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Wolverhampton, benefiting from a model where he learned theory in the morning and applied it in primary schools in the afternoon. He completed his PGCE at the University of Warwick through the Bosworth school, which he credits with driving his standards incredibly high, before taking up a role teaching PE and humanities at SWB Academy in Bilston, England.
Following a meeting with his future partner in Barcelona, Jack relocated to the United States. He attended Springfield College in Massachusetts, famously known as the birthplace of basketball and the ‘Harvard of PE’, where he completed a Master’s degree in Advanced Pedagogy. His diverse ten-year career spans teaching pre-K nursery children all the way through to delivering professional development for teachers with forty years of service across both the UK and the US.
Physical Educator vs. Physical Activity Instructor
A central theme of Jack’s philosophy is the critical distinction between a physical educator and a physical activity instructor. This thought process was heavily influenced by a trip to the SHAPE America conference with Peter Hasty. Jack noted that highly attended sessions focused merely on playing cultural games without offering any pedagogical learning, while sessions on assessment were largely ignored.
Jack argues that much of modern practice is simply instructing physical activity to keep students “busy, happy, good“, referencing scholars like David Kirk. He shares an example of a teacher proudly posting on LinkedIn about an 800-metre lesson where a student achieved a personal best. Jack points out that while this is a great physical activity outcome focusing purely on the psychomotor domain and physical fitness, it is not necessarily physical education.
Jack argues that true physical education requires intentional design, teacher intervention and specific learning outcomes. Jack states that if an educator is merely setting up a game, varying the numbers or space, but failing to explicitly teach and drive students towards an intended outcome, they are functioning as an activity instructor rather than a teacher.
The Argument Against Sport-Specific PE
Jack strongly challenges the traditional reliance on teaching specific sports within the curriculum. He recalls a trust leader advocating for a curriculum focused on mastering just six sports to build skill competence. Jack argues this model is fundamentally flawed because achieving advanced functional competence in a specific sport requires hundreds or thousands of hours of practice, time that schools simply do not possess.
Drawing on an anecdote from Shane Pill, Jack recounts a principal questioning why a PE department was teaching football when there were five local football clubs in the immediate area. Jack firmly believes schools should not use their limited, intentional learning hours to teach sports that students can easily access outside of school. Teaching a sport does not inherently create a lifelong mover.
Instead of sport-specific skills, which research shows are largely non-transferable (e.g., being able to pass a rugby ball perfectly does not mean one can throw an American football), Jack argues for teaching conceptual transfer. He highlights that concepts such as spatial awareness, decision-making and off-the-ball movements are what actually transfer across environments. If students learn off-the-ball movement in basketball, those concepts can successfully transfer to netball, provided the teacher explicitly focuses on the concept rather than the sport’s rigid rules.
Instructional Models and “One Size Fits All”
Addressing the push for instructional models, Jack points out a glaring flaw. Teachers often claim they are avoiding a “one size fits all” approach by using models like Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) or Teaching for Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR). However, Jack highlights that if a teacher uses a single model with true fidelity, they are still employing a one-size-fits-all approach.
Every instructional model has a primary domain focus. For example, TGfU prioritises the cognitive domain, while TPSR prioritises the social domain. A student who struggles socially will continue to struggle in a purely TPSR-led unit. Jack advocates for what he terms a “competence model” or a hybrid approach that combines elements of multiple models to truly meet the holistic needs of every child.
He notes that these concepts are not new. Jack traces the foundations of holistic, experiential and movement-based learning back decades, referencing:
- Froebel (1837): Holistic education through play.
- Dewey (1916): Experiential learning and democratic participation.
- Laban (1940s-1960s): The movement framework focusing on body, space, effort, and relationships.
Jack believes the profession should return to these roots, advocating for “Movement Education” as an exploratory framework rather than “Physical Education”, which originated from 1800s military fitness drills. He highly recommends educators look at the ‘Move Well’ resources from New Zealand, which focus heavily on conceptual, experiential-based learning rather than sport specialisation.
Game Design vs. Sport Design
Jack makes a clear distinction between game design and sport design, a concept he learned from university lecturers Gavin Ward and Gerald Griggs. Simply playing a 3v3 small-sided version of a traditional sport is still sport design. True game design involves creating an environment with intentional learning outcomes that does not replicate an existing sport.
He shares an example from his time teaching physical literacy at Springfield College, where he designed a game called “Ultimate Herky”. This game combined elements of ultimate frisbee, floor hockey, the Irish sport of hurling and Quidditch. Students played on scooters, attempting to score in multiple goal types simultaneously, with added rules designed specifically to challenge emotional regulation and social interaction. Because the game carried no traditional sporting baggage or pre-existing hierarchies of competence, it allowed for genuine experiential learning.
Performative Professionalism on Social Media
When asked what he wants to see change on platforms like LinkedIn, Jack is highly critical of what he calls performative professionalism. He feels too many educators post curated, face-value images of busy students or use AI-generated text to claim they are delivering holistic outcomes without any evidence of rigorous teaching.
He calls for honesty and vulnerability. He wants teachers to share data-driven instruction, post about lessons that failed and explain how they fixed them. Rather than claiming to teach social-emotional learning, he wants teachers to share the exact, explicit questions they ask students to provoke that learning. Jack urges the profession to raise its standards to match the academic rigour of other subjects, suggesting that teachers need the equivalent depth of a PhD to truly advocate for and defend high-quality movement education against non-specialist administrators.
Conclusion and Golden Nugget
To close the episode, Nathan asks Jack for one thing listeners should take into their practice the next day. Jack offers a reflective challenge rather than a simple tip.
He asks teachers to consider: How do you define success and how is success achieved by your students?
If success looks exactly the same across all students and all lessons, Jack challenges educators to ask themselves if they are truly teaching, or if they are merely instructing. He reminds listeners that, unlike mathematics where two plus two always equals four, PE has no defined end point. There are endless ways to throw a ball and move a body. Therefore, educators should not limit their curriculums to rigid sports, but should instead aspire to provide experiential learning, exploration and the conceptual tools needed to create genuine, lifelong movers.
About the Guest
This episode is a conversation with Jack Harvey, a passionate and well-read voice in Physical Education currently working in Boston, USA as a PE Educator and Adjunct Lecturer with a focus on developing and delivering engaging physical education content at both K-12 and undergraduate levels.
Listen
To listen to the full episode please follow these links to Spotify or Apple podcasts.
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