An Overview of Developmental Phys Ed.

Today, in the U.S., teachers are facing the three critical issues of childhood obesity rising rapidly, the alarming rate of in-school and community voilence among young people, and early puberty having impostant psychosocial ramifications. Some goals of the concept of "Developmental Physical Education" are cognitive learning, affective growth, movement skill aquisition, and physical acticity and fitness enhancement.
Development of the whole child is important and some factors that explain the relationships leading to this development are biology of the individual, requirements of the movement task, and conditions of the learning enviornment. The difference between individual appropriateness and group appropriateness is indivisual approriateness is the inclusion of learning experiences into the physical education program geared to learners phases and stages of motor development and the levels and stages of movement skill learning which is more important than group appropriateness which is the inclusion of learning experiences into the physical education experience based on chronological age or grade-level.
There are a few different types of movement skills which include locomotion and manipulation. Some examples of locomotor movements are walking and leaping, jumping, and hopping and some examples of manipulation skills are throwing, kicking, and punting. Stability is also a fundamental movement skill and can be axial, like bending and stretching, or can be static and dynamic, like rolling and dodging. Physical fitness can be defined as the combonation of the concepts of health related fitness and performance related fitness.