Developmental Physical Education

There are three critical issues that children in the US are facing today. The first issue is that childhood obesity has been rising rapidly. The second issue at hand is that the violence in schools and in the communities among the youth has all of us alarmed. The third issue is early puberty has important psychosocial ramifications.
There are several goals that go along with Developmental Physical Education. Two of those goals are physical activity and fitness enhancement and cognitive learning. Physical activity and fitness enhancement means keeping the child active with physical activity. By doing this would enhance their fitness levels and help keep them in shape. Cognitive learning is the ability to think, reason, and act to new movement settings.
There are three major factors that lead to the development of the whole child and they are; Biology of the “individual”, Conditions of the learning “environment”, and Requirements of the movement “task”.
Individual appropriateness is the idea that children have their own individual timing and pattern of growth and development. Group appropriateness is the idea that age and grade level influence the curriculum but are secondary to individual appropriateness.
The difference between the two is that individual appropriateness is geared more specifically to the child’s level of personal fitness and cognitive development, while group appropriateness provides only general guidelines for the activities selected.