Rethinking Middle School Physical Education Curriculum: An Integrated, Thematic Approach

This paper reviews current thinking about middle schools and middle school physical education and raises questions about the place of physical education in middle schools. Although physical education currently is seen as a separate, activity-centered curriculum, I suggest we must begin to integrate physical education into the core interdisciplinary curriculum of middle schools. Five conceptions of middle school physical education are offered: separate and unequal, separate but thematic, separate but contributing, separate but parallel, and integrated into the core curriculum.