Oscar Scipio is a part-time primary education consultant at the KVLO, the association representing physical education teachers and instructors and combination officers in education and sports. In this role, he focuses on two areas: professional association work (improving the quality of physical education) and trade union work. In addition, he works one day a week as a physical education teacher and one day as coordinator for the subject group in Almere. In the latter capacity, he manages 43 specialist teachers at 40 schools. He is also the coordinator in Almere of the after-school physical activity project AKT.
Scipio was introduced to the dynamic school day through workshops by Wim van Gelder. Conversations with people who had become acquainted with the dynamic school day in Denmark subsequently led him to help set up the Dynamic School Day Denmark Study Trip (25–29 September).
Scipio himself has long been investigating how to make the school day more dynamic for children. And from the KVLO’s training perspective, he would like to share this with more people.
He briefly explains why the trip is going to Denmark. “In Denmark, the education concept has been imposed by the government. Part of this is that schools are required to include 45 minutes of physical activity in the daily programme, in addition to physical education lessons. An important difference between the Netherlands and Denmark is that in the Netherlands, the focus is mainly on the software – methods such as Active Learning – whereas in Denmark, attention is also paid to the hardware – the school buildings. And while in the Netherlands a building is often erected first, followed by consideration of the school’s vision, in Denmark a school building is constructed based on a vision.”
In this way, the hardware supports the dynamic school, Scipio explains. “For example, spaces for physical activity in and around the school are part of the design. To achieve this in the Netherlands, the specialist teachers alone are not enough. You also need to bring the school management, municipalities, architects and the municipality’s housing department on board and turn it into a joint project. With this Study Trip, we hope to inspire them to design and build school buildings differently.”
Scipio points out that studies on active learning have not yet demonstrated that active learning leads to improved learning outcomes. However, the results also show that learning outcomes do not decline when children engage in more physical activity. “In short, students spend less time on academic subjects or move more during academic subjects without this having an adverse effect on their learning outcomes. In addition, it has been proven that more physical activity has a positive effect on concentration and health. In Denmark, we will therefore visit both schools that put this vision into practice and universities that have conducted research into it.”
Scipio hopes that the Study Trip will also help reduce primary teachers’ apprehension about active learning: “They are often hesitant because they see it as ‘free movement time’, during which anything could happen. In Denmark, where they made the transition about six years ago, they initially had the same concerns, but ultimately found a way to deal with them.”
For Scipio, the Dynamic School Day Denmark Study Trip will have been successful if it manages to inspire participants and encourage them to consider putting the various aspects of the Danish insights into practice in the Netherlands as well.
He also sees the beginning of a transition in the Netherlands. “For years, as a specialist teacher, I had to defend myself. Even children asked me why they had to learn to do a somersault. In the meantime, institutions have recognized that children’s physical literacy is declining and are convinced that something must be done about it because physical literacy is important. And that starts with the basic skills. If you master those as a child, you are better able to participate in all kinds of sports.”