Curriculum Alignment: Doing Kinesiology as We Mean It

Abstract

Based on the lessons learned from history and articulation of paradigm change in science, this article clarifies the concept of curriculum alignment and describes the risk of curriculum disalignment between school physical education and kinesiology. Through contextualizing kinesiology as an integrated science, it explains the difference between a discipline and a field (subdiscipline) and argues that K–12 physical education is an integral and indispensable component of kinesiology. The article provides detailed discussions about the historical reasons/events that might have led to the curriculum disalignment and the ways the disalignment can be understood and addressed. Based on the analysis, a four-pillar framework (science, health, culture, and education) is proposed as a platform for “doing kinesiology” and a way to address the curriculum disalignment crisis.

Historically, physical education was where the pioneers of our discipline did kinesiology. It was where they were studying human movement through research and disseminating their findings through teaching. They advanced the discipline by contributing to specific research topics that the public cared about and developing a vision to expand the discipline for benefiting the public beyond schools. Since the time when Herry (1964) forcefully argued that physical education, the name of the discipline at the time, was a scientific discipline, tremendous changes have taken place in the discipline. The changes have elevated kinesiology and made it a mature science with the characteristics carefully identified by Kuhn (1970). The most salient change is the name change of the discipline. “Kinesiology” has replaced “physical education” as the name of the discipline. An unexpected consequence of the advancement, like all developing science, is “a house (nearly) divided” (Park, 1998, p. 213, parentheses added). Efforts to address the silos–discipline relationship have never stopped since and continue until today (Anderson & van Emerik, 2021). Recently, Wiggins (2021) eloquently reminded us of the nature of kinesiology as a multi- and interdisciplinary science. He elaborated the need for scholars to take both a “birds” view and a “focused frogs” view (p. 373) to connect our individual work to the broad context of kinesiology for the healthy development of the discipline.

Definitions of Discipline and Field

An academic discipline is defined as “a subdivision of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level” (“Academic Discipline,” 2023). According to Krishnan (2009), any discipline should have six common features. (a) There must be a particular object of research. In kinesiology, it is human physical movement. (b) There must be a body of specialized knowledge relevant to the object of research. Our knowledge consists of a wide range of information from multiple natural and social sciences structured uniquely to address human movement issues. (c) Research, teaching, and other academic activities must be guided by disciplinary theories and concepts to facilitate specific knowledge accumulation. (d) There are sets of disciplinary-specific terminologies, languages, semantics, connotations, and so on that are shared and acknowledged to be representative of the discipline. (e) There are specific research methods that are acknowledged and shared as fundamental ways of knowing. (f) A discipline must be institutionalized, meaning it must be “manifested in the form of subjects taught at universities or colleges” (Krishnan, 2009, p. 9), and it must be supported with professional organizations and knowledge-sharing outlets such as academic journals and scientific conferences.

Traditionally, the term “academic field” is synonymous with academic discipline. However, scholars have begun to re-conceptualize “field” by articulating differences between the two and clarifying their relationships. A recent consensus seems to be that a field is a focus of research within a discipline, which is defined by specific problems to be addressed. For example, Clegg (2012) argued that there are three overlapping “fields” within the discipline of higher education, “research into higher education, academic development, and disciplinary teaching research” (p. 667). She further clarified the conceptualization by elaborating why these were “separate fields” (p. 668). In practice, institutions of higher education adopt a compartmental approach to defining and distinguishing the two. For example, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (2023) defines literature, history, religion, linguistics, and anthropology as “disciplines.” It further defines Chinese literature, Japanese literature, and Korean literature, and so on, as “fields”; each has subfields of “modern” and “premodern” literature. Although the debate is continuing at the conceptual level regarding the classifications of the two (Tight, 2020), an emerging consensus seems to be that fields are focused research/scholarship components within a discipline.

The above clarification helps explain why the debate about the nature of the kinesiology discipline and its subdisciplines has continued in the past 60 years. It leads to a realization that the relationship between a discipline and a field could make or break a discipline. In the following, I first refer to Kuhn’s (1970) philosophical arguments about paradigm change (or crisis and revolution as Kuhn preferred) to make a case that a curriculum disaligned discipline is at risk of dissolution if the stakeholders do not take meaningful initiatives to re-align the curriculum, broadly defined, for the integrity of the discipline. After that, I focus on curriculum disalignment as a neglected risk, its consequences, and lastly, I propose a four-pillar framework for “doing kinesiology” to strengthen the future of our discipline. Through the article, I attempt to make a case that a re-alignment effort is necessary and must involve not only those within the field of pedagogy, but also everyone else in kinesiology. I describe and reflect on who we are, what we do, and how we do it based on the discipline–field conceptualization. Rather than a “focused frog” of research on physical education curriculum and pedagogy, I take the role of a “flying frog,” not quite a “bird,” looking over the landscape of kinesiology from a lens of the K–12 physical education crisis that the pedagogy subdiscipline is experiencing (Templin et al., 2019). Therefore, the ideas expressed here likely reflect a perspective loaded with the water and mud from the pond in which I do kinesiology.

Contextualizing Kinesiology

In kinesiology, the six major characteristics (Krishnan, 2009) are clearly identifiable not only at the discipline level, but also at the field level. The “object” is human physical movement referred to as “physical activity” (American Kinesiology Association, n.d.) or “movement” (National Academy of Kinesiology, n.d.). There is a core body of knowledge that can be found in course offerings in undergraduate and graduate kinesiology programs across the country and the world.¹ Kinesiology has its unique theories and concepts that form the basis for its core body of knowledge. All kinesiology theories and applications are described and articulated with unique sets of terminologies, vocabularies, and language expressions (a typical example is the Frequency, Intensity, Type, and Time principle). Scholars and practitioners in kinesiology share and use these terminologies, concepts, and theories in their research, teaching, and professional activities. While kinesiology researchers routinely use traditional research methods to address research questions, they also create unique research methods to gather data/evidence to address questions important to human physical movement. Finally, in the United States, kinesiology has been institutionalized as Department of Physical Education and Departments of Kinesiology in K–12 schools and higher education, respectively. In other countries, kinesiology can be a special discipline that an entire university is designated to study, such as my alma mater Shanghai University of Sport in China.

Kinesiology is a mature science or “normal science” (Kuhn, 1970), which “is based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practices” (p. 10). One salient symbol of a mature science is the formation of a paradigm that defines the problems to be solved, determines the methods to be used, and predicts the significance of research findings in applications. But doing research within, the constraints of the paradigm will lead to incremental changes which have potential to eventually change the paradigm. When some may take the paradigm as granted because of their past success, “the creative scientist can begin his research where it (the paradigm) leaves off and thus concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric aspects of the natural phenomena that concern his group”² (Kuhn, 1970, p. 20, parentheses added). When this happens, as Kuhn (1970) predicted, the existing paradigm will begin to break up, presenting opportunities for a new paradigm that could change the nature of the discipline. Kuhn vividly reasoned,

No longer will his (the scientist’s) researches usually be embodied in books … to anyone who might be interested in the subject matter…. Instead, they will usually appear as brief articles addressed only to professional colleagues, the men whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to them. (p. 20)

While the mature science discipline progresses with new findings/knowledge, the old paradigm will continue to take the traditional paradigm approach for granted by framing the new research topics in the scope that the paradigm has defined and worked from within. The traditional approach would generate tensions within the discipline that will lead to two parallel solutions, both are detrimental to the discipline advancement. One, the traditional paradigm community insists that the paradigm-defined topics “are the only problems that the community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 37). Two, the traditional paradigm rejects other problems as “the concern of another discipline … and insulate the community from those socially important problems” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 37). Needless to say, a possible consequence is for the discipline to split into subdisciplines and eventually to dissolve, unless the discipline can make paradigmatic changes to address the “problems” to overcome the two outcomes. What has been happening to the subdiscipline of pedagogy/Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE; see Templin et al., 2019) bears great resemblance to the two consequences predicted by Kuhn (1970).

Like in all mature sciences, the tensions in kinesiology may only be observable from within. These tensions can be regarded as a precursor of a paradigm crisis for kinesiology if not addressed successfully. Kinesiology, or physical education historically, has endured over 100 years of development and challenges, as well documented by Park (1998, 2017) and Wiggins (2021). But now, it faces an unprecedented challenge/crisis as a discipline with the most serious detrimental signs that have accelerated in the 21st century. As both Kuhn (1970) and Krishnan (2009) argued, the institutionalization of the knowledge base is the backbone of a discipline. The institution is manifested in the forms of journals, professional organizations, university affiliations as academic units, and a strong application of the science in the society. Some of the most obvious signs of the crisis are (a) each subdiscipline (field) has its own scholarly journals, in some cases more than one; (b) SHAPE America, used to be the unifying professional organization of physical education/kinesiology, has become a single subdiscipline organization for K–12 physical education; and (c) university kinesiology units are splintering with some subdisciplines/fields, especially those associated with the humanity research tradition, being moved or eliminated.

Although there can be multiple reasons for the crisis, I believe that curriculum disalignment can be a major contributor. Below, I focus on the curriculum alignment as a lens to reflect on the development of the discipline and the field of physical education. Specifically, I articulate a notion that maintaining a well-aligned curriculum not only is meaningful for K–12 physical education programming, but also has significant ramifications to the kinesiology discipline.

Curriculum Alignment for the Health of the Discipline

A mature science has multiple functions to demonstrate the relevance or legitimacy of specialized knowledge it creates. One critical function is the content for educating students in schools, including K–12 schools. The knowledge organized for this purpose is called a curriculum. It is expected, naturally, a curriculum must be consistent with the knowledge of the discipline it teaches. Thus, the term, curriculum alignment, means the consistency of a curriculum with the knowledge of the discipline it represents (English, 2010).

As a concept of educational research, a curriculum can be defined by stakeholders in schooling. Goodlad et al. (1979) identified five typical types of stakeholders who can define and conceptualize curriculum uniquely, thus, the curriculum domain theory. The domains are the viewing lenses through which the stakeholders position themselves to judge the relevance of the curriculum or, to a greater extent, the discipline. The ideological curriculum domain is represented by the views of scholars who often develop the central idea of the curriculum or the curriculum itself. The formal curriculum domain reflects the view of the institutions such as school administrations, departments, or other institutional entities. This view is powerful because of the stakeholders’ administrative power. The view of teachers who teach the content constitutes the perceived curriculum domain through which they interpret and contextualize the content to fit in the reality they work in. The experiential curriculum domain represents what students experience in the classroom. The domain centers on the curriculum function of enhancing student learning achievement. The final domain reflects the operational curriculum perspective representing how a person, who is neither the teacher nor a student, interprets what is happening in the classroom. The operational domain is critically important because it represents a public perception and conception of the curriculum and the discipline. When a math teacher assigns math work to students to do in class, the public perception is students are learning math. In physical education where students are playing sports, the perceptions and conceptions of the content can be very diverse.

One critical element that holds a discipline together is the “object” (Krishnan, 2009) or the knowledge base that all activities in the discipline such as research, teaching, outreach, and more are committed to advancing (Kuhn, 1970). The curriculum to teach the “object” is the only means to help the discipline sustain the core knowledge. In each discipline, curriculum alignment is achieved through maintaining an educational tradition where the “object” is central to curriculum development and implementation. A well-aligned curriculum is the gatekeeper to ensure that the content taught to students is consistent with the discipline core knowledge and is structured appropriately for the audience to learn successfully. The consistency and structure of an aligned curriculum can be commonly observed in math, science, language arts, history, music, fine arts, and so on. Curriculum alignment is achieved and maintained through frequent content updates according to the advancement of the discipline (Schwab, 1978). Curriculum variations are common and sometimes cause drastic controversies (e.g., the recent debate about the American history curriculum). Nevertheless, the curriculum alignment is acknowledged as a necessary mechanism to accommodate the variations in the history discipline, and the goal is to keep up with the knowledge advancement of the discipline.

As widely acknowledged (Lee, 1983; Lucas, 2006; Park, 2017), kinesiology has been in the business of education from its inception and physical education has been a major application field (Solmon, 2021), which provides the necessary “practice” avenue demonstrating the discipline’s past achievements (Kuhn, 1970, p. 10). When examining kinesiology from a functionality lens, we have little difficulty to find that the occupations and careers that most kinesiology graduates/professionals undertake are about educating people, whether they are patients, athletes, K–12 students, community members, and members of the public. Our curricula and programs teach scientific mechanisms/principles and benefits of physical activity for various purposes, skill analysis for best performance efficiencies, healthful living principles and methods, and ways to better serve the human population. Despite the expansion of career opportunities for our graduates, the education function of kinesiology is still central and may not diminish any time soon. In this regard, it is the most common knowledge that physical education has been the most relevant place to extend the education mission of kinesiology because it can reach every child who will be the lifelong beneficiary of kinesiology. Therefore, it should be expected that the K–12 physical education be aligned seamlessly with the advancement of kinesiology science for the vitality of the subdiscipline and the kinesiology discipline.

Curriculum Disalignment: A Neglected Risk

Keeping a K–12 curriculum aligned with a discipline is no small task as history has demonstrated repeatedly in education (Schwab, 1973) and in physical education/kinesiology (Park, 2017). Curriculum disalignment is a phenomenon where the structure of knowledge and structure of skills of a curriculum is inconsistent with those of the discipline (Schwab, 1978). Historically, physical education in the United States originated from games and activities that early European settlers engaged in for leisure (Lee, 1983). Since the publication of English philosopher Herbert Spencer’s influential book, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1860), physical education, the name Spencer gave to the curriculum of physical training, had formally become a top education priority. The sole purpose at the time was to help maintain a physically fit labor force for the Industrial Revolution. Physical education gradually flourished in American schools as a formal course during the 19th and 20th century transition when a group of prominent physicians advocated, led, and taught the subject in primary, secondary, and, especially, higher education schools. Soon the curriculum goal and the content gradually moved away from the leisure purpose and focused on healthy hygiene and physical fitness for young men and women (Lee, 1983). With the institutionalization of physical education in all levels of schools and the formation of a national professional organization (American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education founded on November 17, 1885), physical education was positioned to become a viable field or profession. The discipline, however, was NOT physical education, but education. As evidenced by Lee (1983), Dr. John Warren, a Harvard University professor of anatomy and physiology, gave the Importance of Physical Education lecture at the first convention of American Institute of Instruction, a professional organization of education. In the lecture, he addressed a variety of health issues associated with, among others, “improper seating, and the relation of physical exercises to the problems of general education” (Lee, 1983, p. 43). It can be speculated that Dr. Warren’s intention was to justify and legitimize physical education as a viable subject matter in education. In 1930, the Academy of Physical Education was born in Austin, Texas (Lucas, 2006).

The decades following the institutionalization of physical education, research in all aspects of human physical movement flourished and provided a tremendous amount of research evidence about the relationship between physical activity and health, performance efficiency, and the positive impact to almost all aspects of human life. The research advancement has accelerated the formation of kinesiology as an academic discipline independent from the discipline of education. Throughout the process, research in kinesiology has grown into subdisciplines and become compartmentalized, but the focuses on health and sport performance have remained as the central “objects” of scholarship. Figure 1 illustrates a cursory review of topics published in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (RQES) from 1930 to 2020.

Figure 1 —

Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport topic change by decade from 1930 to 2020.

The data show topic fluctuations over the 90-year period. Health topics were prevalent in early years, and most were fitness and anthropometric studies as associated with youth development. From the 1940s, research on sport performance and functions proliferated in many subdisciplines. The enthusiasm about sport/performance peaked during the mid-1970s. Starting from the 1980s, the interest in sport began to give way to the renewed interest in health. In the most recent decades, health remains the strongest academic interest of kinesiology.

For physical education, the late 1930s was a time when K–12 and university curricula were transitioning from the rigid German or Swedish gymnastics systems to the New Physical Education (Wood & Cassidy, 1927). Based on more than 20 years research and experience in physical education, Wood and Cassidy (1927) proposed the Natural Physical Education framework that was consistent with Dewey’s philosophy of viewing the child as a whole being and making education as a natural growth experience. The framework and its curriculum were highly consistent with the advancement of the discipline of education in which physical education was a part. The naturalistic curriculum expanded the traditional gymnastics programming to include dance, sports, and games that children naturally engaged in at home and in the school yard. The goal of Wood’s curriculum was to turn these physical activities into education opportunities for children’s intellectual, character, and moral development. Unfortunately, the effort was not as successful as Wood and Cassidy expected. The prevalence of playing sport for recreational purposes soon took over the curriculum goal, design, and teaching practices. Adopting the curriculum soon became an effective excuse to abandon the gymnastics for many teachers who were not believers of Dewey’s philosophy. Lee (1983) observed that these teachers who ignored Wood’s educational orientation “would instead build the program around sports and dance in their various forms. In the end, this … group was the one that prevailed” (p. 170). The sport-centered curriculum has been dominant until this day with a playing-sport programming cycle (Ennis, 2014) that further disaligned the K–12 physical education with the kinesiology advancement (Chen, 2023a).

Today, kinesiology has become an independent discipline. It still has a strong tie to the education mission, but with a larger audience than K–12 students. The curriculum at the college level has followed the development of the discipline moving from a physical activity–centered curriculum framework to a knowledge-focused program with health-enhancing physical activity offerings. However, the curriculum in K–12 schools has never kept up with the advancement of the discipline, which has presented major challenges to K–12 physical education (Chen, 2023a; Corbin, 2021; Ennis, 2006, 2014; Graham & Stueck, 1992; Pangrazi, 2010; Templin et al., 2019). Overtime, the K–12 physical education has become more and more deviated from kinesiology science. Once again, we are at a critical and historical crossroads for both the subdiscipline of physical education and kinesiology itself.

The disalignment seems to have contributed to the deterioration of the academic status of physical education. While many states’ policies advocate for recommended physical activity time by various guidelines, school administrators interpret the “time” as recreation time and recess time. In many states, physical education time is reduced so that the time can be given to academic subjects because recess and marching band time can be counted as physical activity time and used to replace physical education credits. This administrative practice clearly reflects a view from the operational curriculum domain (Goodlad et al., 1979) that identifies physical education as “playing” rather than learning. Vickers (1992) noticed that in the 1970s, 80% high school students were enrolled in physical education, but only 30% in the 1990s. As of now, high school students are required to take one half credit of physical education and one half of health education taught by physical education teachers in most cases. Few nonathlete students would take physical education as electives beyond the requirement. With tremendous misunderstanding, the media refers physical education as a waste of time because it does not help students learn anything or become good citizens (Wong, 2019, January 29).

The detrimental impact has reached the university level too. The “high need, low demand” K–12 physical education (Ennis, 2006, p. 41) requires fewer certified teachers. In the meantime, kinesiology majors are afforded more career opportunities (or illusions of them), these, plus a combination of many other factors, have consequently led to the historically low enrollment of students who are interested in becoming physical education teachers. The teaching-track enrollment has dropped to a historical low, which has led many universities to eliminate PETE programs. For the first time in the long history of physical education and kinesiology, the question “Will PETE survive in the 21st century?” has been put on the table (Templin et al., 2019). It can be reasoned that when physical education is no longer taught in K–12 schools, few students will know the discipline of kinesiology and the number of applicants to university kinesiology programs will certainly decline.

Understanding the Issue

The future of the discipline has long been an important topic among kinesiology scholars. For a long time, a central concern has been what the discipline’s continuous fragmentation would do to the very existence of the discipline itself (Park, 2017), given the dual responsibilities of “academic role” and “professional role” (Hoffman, 1974, p. 75). Although the risk has been acknowledged for a long time, the fragmentation has intensified (Park, 2017). The concern should not be a surprise given the cycle of what scientists do as Kuhn (1970) predicted. Have we tried to understand the risk? Yes, we have, but not enough (Park, 2017), especially from the curriculum alignment perspective.

It may be helpful to understand what kinesiology is from a perspective of what it is not. In this sense, kinesiology is NOT an extension of any one of its parent disciplines that have inspired each of our subdisciplines such as biology, physiology, psychology, sociology, history, education, and business administration. Nor is it represented by one subdiscipline separated from other subdisciplines. As mentioned above, kinesiology is a multi- or interdisciplinary science that includes natural, social, and educational sciences. This integrative nature has kept the discipline thriving. The reason for us to take this “bird’s” view even when we are each working in our own “frog” trenches is because understanding human movement involves a thorough understanding of movement as a human experience. A person in motion certainly reacts to the physiological, psychological, and neurological impact of the movement; moreover, the person needs to address social, cultural, environmental (natural and social), and economic issues as well. Needless to say, for the person to adopt and sustain a physically active life for the many benefits kinesiology has identified, the person should be educated so as to understand each of these factors in relation to the movement she/he engages in. From this perspective, kinesiology should keep serving this person in ways from all aspects of the discipline to maintain its relevance and vitality.

In the past 90 years, kinesiology has made noted advancement in research. As illustrated in Figure 1, the focus of kinesiology research has shifted from health and fitness development to performance, then to health and healthful living. Published physical education research in the RQES, however, has not kept up with this trend. As shown in Figure 2, in the earlier decades (1930–1950), the research was focused on health and fitness, which should not be a surprise because physical education was the prominent research site of the discipline at the time. Most research interests were about the activities and their impact in the context of physical education. In the following five decades (1950–2000), however, the interests in fitness and health declined and the research interest in pedagogy, the study of teaching rather than content development, increased exponentially. In the meantime, research interests in sport as a content was flat at a relatively low level. Collectively, the data may suggest (a) few physical education researchers studied issues associated with curriculum and its impact on students and teachers and (b) most research was on teaching methods (such as feedback, grouping, etc.).

Figure 2 —

Physical education research topic change in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport by decade from 1930 to 2020.

In 1981, physical education/pedagogy scholars in the United States made one effort to align K–12 curriculum with kinesiology science. The National Association of Sport and Physical Education, the leading professional organization at the time, assembled a group of curriculum specialists and subdiscipline experts to design and publish the curriculum framework Basic Stuff (National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 1981). The curriculum incorporated basic and important concepts in exercise science and organized them into teachable content for secondary schools. The effort, nevertheless, failed to transform the secondary school physical education due to teachers’ low knowledge of the content, low awareness of the need for curriculum change, and lack of administrative/institutional support (Placek, 1988).

In the winter of 1991, over 200 physical education scholars met at the “Critical Crossroads” conference to seek a curriculum solution for secondary school physical education (see Graham & Stueck, 1992). The conference failed to reach a consensus about a central content for the secondary school physical education. Rink (1992) attributed the disappointing outcome to the “lack of new ideas” (p. 67). The data in Figure 2 show that at the beginning of the 1990s, more than 60% articles in physical education research were about teaching/pedagogy, while research on fitness/health content topics plummeted to the historical low and research on sport content did not increase. Is it a coincidence that the “lack of new ideas” happened at a time corresponding to the lack of research on K–12 content? Few curriculum interventions were conducted to allow the development of new curricula that would be “disrupting the cycle of traditional, sport-based physical education” (Ennis, 2014, p. 63). K–12 physical education continues to be an extension of athletics rather than an extension of kinesiology science (Chen, 2023a).

To understand the magnitude of the disalignment, we should consider it not only from the scholarship/research perspectives but also from the practice perspectives. The failure of the Basic Stuff (National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 1981) may be explained by borrowing the concept of Curricular Safety Zone (Rovegno, 1994). The concept derived from Rovegno’s (1994) study on student teachers’ uneasiness in and resistance to teaching unfamiliar content during student-teaching. Rovegno described the confidence fluctuation of two student teachers who were trained to teach the concept-based movement education curriculum. The student teachers displayed strong confidence and teaching competence when teaching the movement education curriculum but lost their confidence when teaching sport-play content in high schools. The concept was verified in a randomized-controlled mixed-data study where the similar pattern of struggling was demonstrated when student teachers trained in teaching a sport-centered curriculum were asked to teach a concept-based fitness-education curriculum (Zhu et al., 2021).

Understanding the concept is important for aligning the K–12 curriculum with kinesiology. Kinesiology students are trained in the kinesiology science paradigm. As Kuhn (1970) carefully described, a science paradigm is represented by its content focus, which is the subject matter, and by its rules. By “rules,” Kuhn meant the “established viewpoint” connecting practical operations with the theory (p. 39). In a paradigm, “rules” could be interpreted and operationalized as standards with which the discipline determines the extent of success. A typically common rule, for example, can be an established viewpoint about the ways research finding can be generalized (Kuhn, 1970, p. 40). Therefore, the people trained in a discipline are characterized by not only the content focus (e.g., doing physical activities), but also the way they follow the “rules” that define the paradigm until the paradigm is changed into a new paradigm.

It is well known that our majors, including those majoring in teaching physical education, are trained to become knowledgeable about biological, psychological, and sociological sciences in the context of studying human physical movement. Our success in educating future kinesiologists, including future teachers, can be verified by a common, but unexpected, observation that in-service physical education teachers are often transferred to teach other scientific subject matters in schools (Chen, 2023a). As Kuhn (1970) and Krishnan (2009) suggested, institutional actions are a critical force facilitating possible disintegration of a field/discipline or preventing it. This implicit recognition of the scientific nature of kinesiology by school administrations presents two critical questions: Why do teachers trained in kinesiology not teach kinesiology science? What would it do to the future of the kinesiology discipline? In this sense, transferring certified physical education teachers to teach other subject matters can be a sign of discipline disintegration. This certainly is a sign of a curriculum crisis that may disrupt the discipline advancement if not addressed (Schwab, 1978).

To turn around the curriculum disalignment crisis, we should be mindful about the discipline development as both the “focused frogs” and “visionary birds” (Wiggins, 2021, p. 372). Operationally, we must first address the curriculum disalignment crisis by “disrupting the cycle of traditional, sport-based physical education” (Ennis, 2014, p. 63) to embrace a kinesiology-science approach to K–12 curriculum design. In the final section below, I propose a tentative framework for all of us to consider as a platform not only for the K–12 curriculum design but also for academic programming in Departments of Kinesiology.

A Framework of Doing Kinesiology

As kinesiology is an important component in the allied health field, every subdiscipline has an application field where kinesiology professionals apply kinesiology theories to practical work serving the public. Kinesiology graduates’ future work/careers may be diverse but mostly are associated with educating and guiding people for a better life. Through a careful review and insightful interpretation of physical education history, Solmon (2021) made a strong argument that K–12 physical education is “an applied field of kinesiology” (p. 332). Extensive research evidence has demonstrated that the ways we teach physical education in K–12 schools can be exemplary and relevant methods for all kinesiology professionals to apply in their careers. Specifically, the knowledge and skills for effectively engaging students/clients, planning and implementing instructions for effective learning, translating abstract scientific concepts into actionable behaviors or exercises, and integrating disciplinary knowledge and operational knowledge are particularly useful for all kinesiology professionals. These knowledge and skill sets benefit kinesiology students in pursuing careers in the “fitness industry, coaching, rehabilitation settings, and physical activity educational settings across the life span, … they all need expertise grounded in the basic instructional skills” (Solmon, 2021, p. 337). Solmon candidly pointed out,

Lessons from the past demonstrate that isolation (of PETE) from the broader field of kinesiology does not serve either community³ well. I argue here that a broader view of pedagogy that goes beyond school settings is a pathway that has the potential to enrich the academic discipline. (p. 337, parentheses added)

To accomplish this vision, we need a conceptual framework to support not only our research agenda in all subdisciplines, but also the educational mission of kinesiology in K–12 schools and universities. In this sense, I propose a four-pillar framework to start a conversation. The four pillars are: Science, Health, Culture, and Education.

Science

There should be no doubt that kinesiology is a mature science which, like all normal science (Kuhn, 1970), is an umbrella concept that holds the subdisciplines together and guides the development of all research, education, and application programs. Throughout the history of kinesiology/physical education, understanding human movement has been driven by scientific problems. No matter how complex the discipline has been and will become, the focus on basic and applied scientific issues continues to strengthen kinesiology as a discipline (Anderson & van Emerik, 2021, p. 225). As such, advancement in one or a few subdisciplines should be seen as advancement of the discipline. As Anderson and van Emerik (2021) implied, the integrative nature of kinesiology is the core of the discipline and “(t)he common focus on human movement, or more recently physical activity, is what integrates the discipline into a coherent whole” (p. 225, emphasis added).

The science advancement in kinesiology is signified by its breath and depth. According to Anderson and van Emerik’s (2021) account, Brooks (1981) identified following broad subdisciplines: exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor development, motor behavior, and sports psychology and sociology. In the Kinesiology Review special issue (Anderson & van Emerik, 2021), the subdisciplines were expanded from the six (Brooks, 1981) to 13 that are conceptualized into traditional and application categories of a complementary and inseparable whole. The 13 subdisciplines are biomechanics, exercise physiology, history of physical activity, motor control, motor development, motor learning, philosophy, sociology of sport, sport and exercise psychology, athletic training, physical activity and public health, physical education and sport pedagogy, and sport management (Anderson & van Emerik, 2021). On one hand, the subdiscipline growth strengthens the kinesiology paradigm with added movement problems to solve; on the other, it exacerbates the extent of division if the “silos” cannot assist the discipline as a whole. In addition, the articles in the special issue showcased the advancement of the depth of science in each subdiscipline. One important vision for the future in all the articles is the willingness of all the subdisciplines to integrate with others to further advance the kinesiology discipline.

The rich science content in kinesiology constitutes a strong component of the knowledge of most worth in kinesiology. The content, collectively, can provide a vast knowledge base for research and education programming. The key to materializing the value of the knowledge lies in the will of kinesiology scholars and professionals to acknowledge the integrative nature of the knowledge base and continue to develop it. More importantly, we need to emphasize the integrative nature of kinesiology science by taking the “bird’s view” and incorporating other’s work into our own.

From the discipline perspective, rather than offering space and time to reading, math, and science courses, K–12 physical education can teach kinesiology science in combination with physical activity. In so doing, K–12 physical education becomes the extension of kinesiology science, which will put physical education on an equal footing with other subject matter in schools. K–12 students need kinesiology knowledge and skills to begin their journey for lifelong physical activity. For example, students may know the health benefits of being physically active but do not have the procedural knowledge about how to become physically active (Zhang, Deng, & Chen, 2021). They may realize the role of energy for daily life but have many naïve- and misconceptions about the relationship between energy and health (Zhang et al., 2019; Zhang, Deng, Wang, & Chen, 2021). Using a curriculum of kinesiology knowledge, students may be asked to trace their own development from reflex to voluntary movement to learn important concepts about motor development and physical activity (Chen, 2023b). By learning the Frequency, Intensity, Type, and Time principles and other fitness exercise knowledge, students would continue a physically active life during after-school hours (Wang & Chen, 2020) and throughout life (Kulinna et al., 2018).

Teaching kinesiology science is consistent with the mission of STEM education. Below is an example from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2017) for high schools.

HS–LS2–3.⁴ Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions. [Crosscutting concepts: 1. Changes of energy and matter in a system can be described in terms of energy and matter flows into, out of, and within that system. (HS–LS1–5), (HS–LS1–6) 2. Energy cannot be created or destroyed—it only moves between one place and another place, between objects and/or fields, or between systems (HS–LS1–7), (HS–LS2–4); 3. Energy drives the cycling of matter within and between systems. (HS–LS2–3)] (NGSS, 2017, p. 81)

There are additional standards that kinesiology certainly can help teach students equally well if not better. With a focus on the science content, we might be able to change the unfavorable Operational Curriculum perception of physical education in K–12 schools.

Health

According to The New Encyclopedia Britannica (“History of Education,” 2010), physical training or physical education was part of institutionalized education in ancient times across the world. For example, archery was taught in the formal curriculum of “six arts” in ancient China (1111–771 BC; “History of Education,” 2010, p. 5). In Greece, gymnastics schools were part of the education system. But around the fourth-century AD, most content became spectator sports, which diminished the educational value of “physical education” and led to its disappearance (p. 9). In the modern history, educational theorists, such as Herbert Spencer (1860), have acknowledged the need to prioritize physical education in institutionalized schooling. Although health improvement and sport competition were the two major purposes of physical education, health enhancement has been valued the most throughout the history.

The kinesiology discipline grew out of a premise that physical activity improves the overall health of human beings. In the 19th century, physicians in the United States, under this premise, started physical education courses and developed the research enterprise with a goal to improve health of children and youth (Lee, 1983). Over the years, kinesiology has contributed to the knowledge about the role of physical activity in health enhancement. Not only is the knowledge a foundation for health and quality-of-life enhancement (World Health Organization, 2006, 2018), but also is acknowledged as equally vital to human beings as those of economic development and education (World Bank, 2021).

It appears that the goal of the discipline is still about helping improve quality of life with a focus on enhancing people’s health. As seen in Figure 1, our scholarship effort has come to a full circle, as the recent percentage of published research on physical activity and health has risen to match the percentage of 100 years ago when health concerns dominated the research. The same trend can be seen in Figure 2, which shows a come-back of the research on health and fitness enhancement in physical education. Over the past 100 years, many new scholarly journals have been launched to exclusively focus on physical activity and health. Many of our colleagues may have published more in those than in RQES. The not-so-rigorous data in the tables suggest that health has come back as the central issue that drives the future development of the discipline.

K–12 physical education has been struggling to reconcile with teaching knowledge and skills of health-enhancing physical activity. The enduring prevalence of the sport-centered curriculum seems to continue dominating the content taught in K–12 schools. Although most schools maintain the goal of helping children develop the intellectual, morale, character through sports (Wood & Cassidy, 1927; or later re-labeled as cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains), the goal has not been accomplished over many years (Hastie, 2017; Pangrazi, 2010). In the meantime, almost all states in the United States have established an independent health education course without providing additional resources. Instead, schools slice significant physical education resources, teacher workloads, class time, space, and so on to resource the health education mandate. Although the health education content is extremely important by its own right with topics of lifestyles, sex education, substance use, nutrition, and so on, giving away physical education time for health education reflects a perception of the state legislatures and education authorities that physical activity, or playing sports in academic times, is less important than learning something in the classroom. K–12 physical education was marginalized to a state of “endangered species” in the 1990s (Siedentop, 1992) and has never recovered. Now across the country, many prominent PETE programs have been eliminated from departments of kinesiology as a program or a concentration (Templin et al., 2019).

Enhancing human health must be the ultimate goal of K–12 physical education, which aligns with the purpose of the discipline. Aligning K–12 curricula with the discipline benefits K–12 school programs as well as the discipline. As articulated above and elsewhere (Chen, 2023a, 2023b), the critical issue is how closely we can align the K–12 curriculum to kinesiology for educating students about role of physical activity for health and quality of life.

Culture

If the science is the foundation and health enhancement is the purpose of doing kinesiology, then culture is the milieu in which we do kinesiology. Culture should be viewed from both the “doing kinesiology” perspective and the “participants” perspective. The “doing” perspective informs kinesiology scholars and professionals about the relevance of our work for an increasingly diverse world culture. In other words, the question “Is there a cultural limitation in my research (or my course materials … )?” must be asked and addressed constantly. This is not an abstract question. Rather, it is very specific and tangible in our work. For example, is the random sample in a study taking account of the needs of ALL in the American society? Is there a group of people under-represented or over-represented? If a correction is needed, what sampling techniques should be adopted to accomplish the goal of equal representation? There should be no doubt that asking and addressing such questions can elevate the quality of research and enhance its significance. Keadle et al. (2021) convincingly demonstrated the need of continuing to build a culturally diverse workforce in physical activity health promotion and to address the concerns of physical activity and health disparities in under-represented populations. Although we have been making progress, the kinesiology discipline still needs to make concerted effort to establish a culturally diverse workforce and leadership in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, ability/disability, and more (Keadle et al., 2021).

The “participants” perspectives may need the greatest attention of the discipline. The words “science” and “health” can be elusive. Their meaning can be interpreted differently by people in different cultures, with different levels of education, and in different cultural, social, economic, and even political contexts. A lesson we can learn from the U.S. population’s responses to the COVID vaccine is that interpretations based on cultural grounds can lead to vast diverse levels of trust and distrust in science and scientists, health and medicine, and ways scientists do science. During the past four decades, the kinesiology community has invested tremendous effort in developing the science of promoting health-enhancing physical activity behavior through intervention research and programs. The most recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Elgaddal et al., 2022), however, showed that merely 24% of the U.S. adults met both aerobic and muscular activity guidelines, 23% met only the aerobic guideline, and 7% muscular guideline, respectively. About a half of adults did not meet any guidelines. Severe racial/ethnic disparities are still prevalent.

Physical activity is a human activity. It can be assumed that every physical activity program or setting creates a unique culture for the participants. Whether this culture facilitates or impedes participants’ motivation for physical activity depends on the extent of how well the physical activity culture accommodates participants’ identified cultures. An earlier case study (Bain, 1985) documented a cultural incompatibility of a college weight loss course, taught by a white-male instructor using a “technical-rational” approach (p. 6), with the participant culture of overweight, female, and multiethnic college students (enrollment = 34, 50% of minority, 88% women). In K–12 physical education, Cothran and Ennis (2001) documented the detrimental impact of a team-sport-centered curriculum culture on female and low-skilled students who needed physical education and physical activity the most. Li and Rukavina (2012) revealed a teasing or abusing culture in physical education where overweight students were regularly teased and lost their interest in physical activity. Recent research has substantiated these findings by showing that the cultural negligence or incompatibility of physical activity programs can lead to physical activity disparities by creating disadvantageous social environments for racial/ethnic minorities (Duncan & Robinson, 2004; Hasson, 2018), females, particularly minority females (Garrett, 2003; Keller, 2008; Spender et al., 2015), and people with overweight/obese conditions (Rukavina, 2022).

The evidence seems to call our attention to the cultural issues when developing physical activity intervention programs to ensure the intervention culture is sensitive to and compatible with the cultures of the context in which the intervention is to be implemented. To successfully be “doing” kinesiology either as research or education, we must take into account the cultures of participants, and more importantly, the cultures we are creating to ensure the program’s cultural relevance. In this regard, kinesiology researchers have provided viable examples of success stories where culturally relevant intervention approaches can lead to desirable outcomes (Pickett & Cunningham, 2017; Ross, 2018; Zuest et al., 2022).

Education

The discussion of culture reminds us that although physical activities have the potential to benefit human health and quality of life, the activities we promote may create an activity-specific culture that benefits some and disadvantages others. This reality challenges us to take a discipline-wide effort to focus on the power of education to address the disparities by doing kinesiology beyond the “just-do-it” philosophy. People should be educated to understand that physical activity participation must be regular, science-driven, rather than random, spontaneous, and purposeless. Education is the only way that provides scientifically verified knowledge about what physical activity to do, why to do it, and how to do it. In this sense, doing kinesiology and doing physical education will be a lifelong journey of learning for kinesiology scholars, kinesiology students, and their future students and clients. From the physical literacy perspective (Whitehead, 2010), a physically literate person can and will engage in lifelong physical activity. The integrated knowledge from kinesiology subdisciplines will enable the individual to know what to do, why to do it, and how to do it, to motivate self in pursuing the most relevant activities, to continue to develop and maintain physical competence, and to develop and sustain the value of being physically active by overcoming challenges and barriers in life (Whitehead, 2010).

We are challenged in fulfilling the education mission by the curriculum disalignment because where “doing kinesiology” may have different meanings for each kinesiology scholar and professional who, mostly, are “focused frogs.” Our courses mirror the common institutionalization of modern higher education where we teach as the “focused frogs” to stay true to our own subdisciplines. Or maybe the institution wants us to just stay in the Curricular Safety Zone? For a long time, for example, most PETE courses have focused on teaching/pedagogy methods with teaching sports or recreational games in mind (Ennis, 2014). The PETE majors would have little opportunity in their training to translate the knowledge of exercise physiology, biomechanics, physical activity promotion, exercise psychology, and so on into K–12 content for their future students. When they start their careers as teachers, they soon become socialized in the team-sport culture that exacerbate the curriculum disalignment.

To address the disalignment and revitalize K–12 physical education, Chen (2023a) made a case to embrace the concept-based approach to curriculum and minimize the sport-centered approach to content/task development (Corbin, 2021; Ennis, 2014). Chen (2023b) also articulated a conceptualization for a physical literacy curriculum framework in which knowledge acquisition and physical competence development are integrated as a monism experience of learning for students to embody knowing and doing physical activity as a coherent experience (Whitehead, 2010). Through integrating the knowledge from all kinesiology subdisciplines, the curriculum can enable students to learn and practice not only the science about physical activity (what and why), but also the science of doing physical activity (how).

Since ancient times, education is about enlightening the learner about the content they are learning through understanding the unique utility value of the knowledge and skills. A content that deserves a space in institutionalized schooling must be one that its knowledge and skills can be learned only in the school and only from the teachers who are trained professionally in the discipline (English, 2010). Kinesiology as a science has earned a space in higher education as an established discipline. A K–12 curriculum aligned with kinesiology science will help physical education be recognized as a deserving subject matter in schools.

In summary, the above articulation identifies science, health, culture, and education as four necessary pillars of a framework for “doing kinesiology.” The framework suggests that we must maintain a holistic view of and approach to kinesiology and the way we do it. In research, it means to seek collaboration opportunities across the boundaries of the subdisciplines. In curriculum programming, it means to build learning experiences for K–12 and college students to develop competencies that are science-based, for the purpose of enhancing quality of life, culturally relevant, and efficient in helping self and others for lifelong healthful living.

Looking Into the Future

The future is bright for kinesiology as a matured science that has developed a large body of knowledge significant enough to be considered “knowledge of most worth”—especially the knowledge about benefits of physical activity to health and quality of life. The knowledge is clearly in high need. In contrast, the K–12 physical education is still in low demand (Ennis, 2006) and continues to be marginalized. Its future is full of uncertainty. This article points to the curriculum disalignment as a primary reason for the uncertain future because the traditional sport-centered curriculum has become an extension of athletics and lost its educational value of benefiting ALL students. The curriculum disalignment may pose a risk to kinesiology as a discipline, as well. All kinesiology scholars and practitioners should work together to help address the risk by carefully aligning K–12 curriculum with kinesiology science for physical education to become the extension of kinesiology science.

The proposed four-pillar framework can be a starting point for further discussions that lead to creative and new ideas. Researchers in the science and pedagogy subdisciplines can work together to (a) translate and simplify the complex scientific knowledge to make the science appropriate for K–12 students to learn and act on through physical activities, (b) select and sequence the knowledge and skills from a lifelong perspective to ensure the continuity of learning into adulthood, and (c) design and conduct longitudinal research to test the curriculum efficacy. We are now at a historical crossroads; we should make the right turn this time to revitalize K–12 physical education as a critical application field of kinesiology.