About
A Long and Strong Tradition of Excellence
Our program has a long and strong tradition of excellence in innovative and scholarly courses. The program is designed for individuals who wish to pursue careers in educational settings, including school PE, fitness gyms, physical activity and health community–based organizations, and sports and recreational settings. In addition to offering outstanding graduate courses in movement science (e.g. motor learning, motor development, and exercise physiology), this program offers individuals a distinctive humanistic perspective on the education of the body. In line with the TC’s history grounded in a social justice mission, the program’s outstanding reputation for cutting-edge research offers an exclusive emphasis on sociocultural studies. Unique in its contribution, the program provides graduate students with the most advanced and exciting learning and sociocultural theories in PE, physical activity, fitness, and health.
A Diverse Community of Graduate Students and Scholars
We offer a diverse community of graduate students and scholars committed to sociocultural and critical inquiries in school PE and beyond, including physical activity and recreational, health, and fitness learning sites. The program is designed for individuals to develop a deep understanding of constructivist, sociocultural, and critical theories regarding teaching and learning. Graduate students in this program are either committed to child-centered approaches to curriculum development in K–12 PE and/or wish to make a change in people’s lives by enhancing their wellbeing through physical activity, PE, exercise, health, and fitness. The wide range of research-based courses are specifically designed to bring rigorous intellectual engagement, commitment to social change, and innovative curricula together for nurturing and promoting children’s, young people’s, and adults’ lifelong and meaningful active lifestyles.
Social Change
We prepare individuals to re-engage marginalized populations with contemporary, critical, and thoughtful pedagogical practices and culturally relevant curricula. The program’s unique emphasis on social change and social justice prepares students to teach and engage with new and diverse urban communities, placing school PE, health, fitness, and physical activity as crucial sites for social change. Throughout the program, graduate students learn about the most contemporary, culturally relevant, and progressive theory-based curriculum models to implement in “real world” school PE, fitness, health, sports, and recreational settings. Learning how to create and implement constructivist curricula that aim to engage the interests of a diverse population is essential in order to meet the sociocultural, emotional, and educational needs of all children and young people.
Individuals in this program learn how to develop awareness and mindfulness of issues of diversity, stereotypes, and discrimination as well as sociocultural, economic, and political factors impacting children’s and young people’s physicality in detrimental ways. In particular, graduate students learn to interrogate, analyze, and construct knowledge of the moving body and inequalities from pedagogical, critical, and sociocultural perspectives. Graduate students then learn to work and teach democratically with others to re-imagine the world of PE, health, and physical activity in the interest of all children’s and young people’s right to engage, develop, and express an active physicality in positive, culturally relevant, and meaningful ways.