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At Boing, we’re big believers that play isn’t just about fun—it’s about shaping futures. Not just the futures of individual children, but of communities, and the world they inhabit. That’s why a recent academic paper by Jacqui Peters resonated so much with us. The work challenges us to think about physical education (PE) in fresh, urgent ways. The article argues that in a world “gasping for air,” PE has a unique role to play in nurturing not only physical literacy but ecological literacy—helping children see their movements, their bodies, and their choices as deeply connected to the planet around them.
This idea lands right in Boing’s sweet spot. Play is relational: it’s about connecting with each other, with spaces, with the more-than-human world. Peters, leaning on the work of philosopher Rosi Braidotti, puts it this way: humans are “relational beings, defined by the capacity to affect and be affected”. That’s a powerful thought. It means that every learning space, every playful encounter, is an opportunity not just to learn a skill, but to feel part of something bigger—whether that’s a friendship group, a school playground, or the ecosystems that sustain us. The paper paints a clear picture of the problem. Too often, PE is stuck inside defined spaces (i.e artificially lit sports halls), boxed in by walls, rules, and drills. Children are taught techniques, run through exercises, maybe finish with a short game. For some, that works. For many others, it’s alienating. Peters invites us to imagine something different: PE that happens outdoors, in dialogue with place; PE that encourages young people to notice—the smell of the playground after rain, the feel of cool air, the changing sights as the seasons pass. In these moments, children and young people aren’t just learning to move better; they’re learning to care, to attune, to see themselves as part of that environment. That vision resonates deeply with Boing’s play principles. When we design a playgame, we don’t start with drills—we start with curiosity. What will spark joy? What will invite movement? What will create connection? And often, the environment is a co-creator. A wall becomes a rebound partner. A tree becomes a landmark to dodge around. A line on the ground becomes the boundary of a challenge. Just as Peters argues, the environment isn’t a backdrop; it’s an active participant. The paper also provides opportunities to consider equity within PE spaces. Traditional PE has been criticised for privileging sport, competition, and certain types of bodies. That leaves some children feeling left out or “not sporty.” Peters suggests that by reframing PE through an ecological lens—where moving is about exploring, sensing, connecting—we can create spaces where all children feel included. That’s exactly what Boing strives for: games where success isn’t about scoring the most goals or being the fastest runner, but about joining in, experimenting, and finding your own rhythm. A shifting spotlight from competition to cooperation. Peters calls for physical literacy to be expanded to include the ecological: noticing how our activities affect the environment, and how the environment shapes our activities. Imagine children not just running laps, but learning about the plants under their feet, the history of the land, the impact of litter, the joy of moving lightly and respectfully in shared spaces. This is where play becomes purpose, where fun and responsibility go hand in hand. For practitioners, the takeaway is both challenging and energising. PE isn’t just about developing fitter or faster children. They’re about developing responsive children—young people who can adapt, connect, and care in a changing world. That means creating more opportunities for outdoor play, more time for noticing and reflecting, and more trust in children’s ability to co-create their learning environments. At Boing, we see this as a call to action. Every game we run can hold a bigger message: that movement matters, that connection matters, that caring for the spaces that we play in, matters. When we balance fun with flow, play with purpose, we’re not just teaching children to move—we’re teaching them to move differently with the world. Peters’ paper reminds us that in times of climate crisis, every subject in school has a role to play in building hope and resilience. For PE, the role is clear: to get children moving in ways that are joyful, inclusive, and attuned to the world around them. For Boing, it’s confirmation that our approach—playful, creative, relational—isn’t just “nice to have.” It’s essential. Because when the world is gasping for air, play might just be part of the breath of fresh air it needs. You can find the full paper by clicking the link: Peters, J., 2025. Promoting physical (ecological) literacy through physical education: Everyone’s response-ability in a world gasping for air. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 41(1), pp.39-55. Haven’t explored the refreshed Play Tank yet? Sign up here!
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It’s UK Coaching week! And with that, the theme this year revolves around the notion of holistic coaching practice. Developed by friends at StreetGames and UK Coaching, holistic coaching has been captured by i) developing physical, mental, social and emotional skills; ii) Appreciate the value and wider impact of sport and physical activity; and iii) Be inspired, feel connected and develop a love for being active over time. The definition resonates with us a Boing, and we want to explore how we can unlock young people's physical literacies through the notion of holistic coaching.
Holistic coaching can provide coaches, teachers and practitioners a broad framework in which to justify, rationalise and build their teaching or coaching philosophy. The notion of ‘being’ holistic is in reference to the appreciation of the person's full lived experience, including their social, emotional, cultural, physical dimensions. In this respect, we can not separate the learners we are supporting from their history and identity. Individuals' decisions are shaped by these interacting forces, where larger social, cultural and historical forces shape how individuals engage with the worlds around them. This poses a difficult problem for coaching - how do we find a way to appreciate each learner and the breadth of their histories? Coaching (used here as an inclusive term for all teaching, coaching, education activities) is inherently complex, social and relational. As coaches we have to navigate a landscape of interacting variables, all interlinking and influencing the space that we are working within. Particularly in the midst of the Post COVID-19 landscape, and the current cost of living crisis, sport and physical activity is still very much in recovery as illustrated within the latest Active Lives figures. More, now than ever, is a requirement for coaches who show compassion, empathy and support, and extend their roles beyond the x’s and o’s of coaching practice. Our starting point is reimaging young people's physical literacies, extending them from the body, to the body-in-its-environment. Such a repositioning of physical literacy is important, as we extend young peoples development, and consequently the role of the coach, away from simply providing the learner with a broader movement repertoire. Physical literacy has traditionally been viewed as the end point, or final destination that a person achieves as they demonstrate physical competency. Yet, the power of physical activity extends far beyond the physical competencies demonstrated by a person, and instead accounts for a number of other developmental domains. If we view physical literacy as a continued negotiation with the world, opposed to a brief window of opportunity, we can begin to lay the groundwork for a holistic approach. The importance of physical literacy across the lifespan provides us the opportunity to engage in broader multi-domain development, including that of confidence, competence, knowledge and understanding. These broader domains of learning are the first steps towards a holistic model of education, we now need a mechanism in which to deliver them!n The 6C’s of Boing is our model of alignment to ensure we are always trying to provide a learning environment with as much fun, meaning, and engagement as possible! Captivated and Smiling Learners One of our primary goals as practitioners within the sport and physical activity workforce is to provide engaging, enjoyable and meaningful learning environments. Central to this, is capturing the engagement of young people - and what better way to meet this criteria by ensuring every person within our session is captivated by the tasks and challenges set, and every learning is smiling. I always tended to get a feel for this based on the noise in the game, if its buzzing, you can hear laughter and shouting. This for me always gave me a sense for how capturing the game was. Challenging Problems Skill learning aside, we want to provide challenging problems to solve to support learners in developing a greater breadth of domains. Challenging problems encourage individual and collaborative decision making, helping learners share problems, communicate, experiment and stretch their own boundaries. A feature of setting challengin problems, opposed to the repetition of particular movements and skills, is to provide meaning in how each individual explores their environment, helping them to understand what their body is capable of achieving in respect to the world around them. Constant & Active Play I always challenge coaches to maximise as much as possible the amount of time spent playing. Reflecting with partners over the years, more than other subject areas, Physical Education and physical activity both within and outside of the school are often faced with significant time constraints. When delivering Boing in Primary Schools in the past, after the children had walked from the school to the sports centre, and left early to go back we had roughly 20 minutes of our hour lesson available for PlayGames. We have to push ourselves to allow as much active learning time, and be deliberate with our interactions. Can we spent more time interacting whilst their playing, with drive by interventions, quick check and challenges, and most importantly, a quick check in with every learner. Collaboration Traditional additive models of physical activity have often been delivered in isolated silos, where a learner is required to repear certain skills to achieve a level of assumed proficiency. We want to challenge this! In conversation with coaches, teachers, practitioners and community workers on our courses over the last few years, one consistent theme has been the impact of the isolation of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Supports people in learning to play, to share, and to collaborate became a key developmental focus of many of our partners. We want to set up PlayGames where learners are working and collaborating with those around them. Our challenge is to design games that shine a greater light on the skills needed to collaborate, opposed to competition. This way we can start to support learners in navigating challenges collectively, without the inherent additional complexities brought upon by direct competition. Creative Decisions & Imaginative Solutions Creativity and imagination are integral to the development of the domains of young people. We want to act in a way that supports creativity, and encourages learners to experiment with moving in different ways and exploring how their body works. Learners need a supportive coach to provide the scaffolding around them, allowing the learner to have the comfort and safety in which to explore the world in different ways. This might require a more flexible and fluid set of behaviours from ourselves in supporting our learners, giving the learners the space to engage in play their way. Could we bring the learners into the construction of the game, allowing them to co-create the game, design their own rules, or add their own elements to the story. The PlayGame is their game, they are the owners of the space, so lets give them the reigns to drive their own meaning into it. Celebrating Being Unique & Kind Our final C, and a broader ethos for the environment we create is the celebration of every individual learners own experience. If we are to appreciate that every learners moves differently, then we must celebrate those novelties in every learner. If every learner has their own histories, cultures and social interactions written upon them, we have to accommodate that within our environment. Can we provide opportunities that allow for the successful engagement of tasks in as many different ways as possible, and not just by being the fastest, biggest or strongest. If we can design this feature into the game, we can be sure that we are celebrating every individuals unique ability to move and experience the games. This is of course not an exhaustive list, and we challenge practitioners to always find their own ways to capture holistic practice within their own coaching identity. However, we believe the starting point is always grounded within the relationships that we construct with the people we work with. Our understanding and celebration of our learners will help us to foster an environment that accommodates exploration, autonomy and meaning. Our actions can help provide meaning to young peoples learning experiences. And embracing our own vulnerabilities, and releasing control to accommodate for co-creation and design to afford the learners opportunities to tell their story. Embracing holistic coaching, Ben Hey there,
Welcome to the latest addition to the Boing Blog! 👋 My name is Eve and I run the operations side of things here at Boing. I am a Sport, Coaching and Physical Education student at Oxford Brookes University. I have been fortunate enough to have experienced lots of Boing during my degree whilst working with Kit and Ben! As someone who is just starting on the road to becoming a PE teacher, I am very grateful to work alongside this amazing team who are BURSTING with Boing knowledge that I can take with me on my teaching and coaching journey. In light of this, I’ve come across one element that really fascinates me. This being just how much the power of creativity can affect the learning of children within play! A creative coach, teacher or practitioner is the first step to unlocking the imagination of children during physical activity. When leading activities, a practitioner has the opportunity to tell a story and grasp the minds of those in front of them. Take our game Bears in the Woods for example, there is a ‘hunter’ trying to catch the ‘bears’ and the bears need to make it safely back to their ‘cave’. In reality, a simple game of tag with an added safe zone has just been developed into an elaborative creative adventure! Then we add ‘food’, such as bean bags, that the bears have to get to their caves without being caught by the hunter. Now, there is a group of children invested in this story so much so that when different constraints are added or changed within the game to challenge how they move , they are simply excited for the story to take a new turn because they’re having fun. Using creative imagery within a story to captivate the learners will allow coaches to develop everything from coordination and balance to engaging in a whole repertoire of movements. There is always an opportunity to implement creativity into a coaching session, you just need to unlock your own imagination. Capture the flag can become a game about retrieving the crown jewels back from the thieves who stole it or then teaching a hockey sweep it can be described as slicing through a whole pizza in one go with a long, powerful stroke. Creativity really can be applied to anything! The potentials are limitless. It’s well worth checking out the resources we have to help you on your Boing journey. The Boing PlayTank is a free resource full of creative games and ideas to get children learning through the power of play. Or why not jump into a PlayVenture? Dive into the Boing principles and philosophies which can be applied in all coaching contexts whether it’s activity camps, PE lessons or sports clubs to give you an understanding of how to become a Boinger. I would love to share more information with you and give you an even bigger insight into the Boing world. Just contact me through the support email and I’ll show you how you can get involved! Eve |
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