Developing Digital Competency in Health and Physical Education: When Digital Literacy Meets Physical Literacy

The twenty-first century has witnessed vast adaptation and use of digital technology tools in education. The expansion and diversification of digital technologies in the contemporary education era continues to have tremendous influence in the field of health and physical education (HPE), specifically on the future generation of HPE teachers, that is – the preservice (student) teachers. This has made it necessary to question the current standalone approach to physical, health and digital literacies when contrasted to a more nuanced multiliteracy approach. It is no longer possible to think about physical, health and digital literacies solely as a linguistic or movement-based accomplishment. Preservice teachers need to comprehend, respond to, and compose multimodal texts in diverse forms, where meaning is communicated through dynamic combinations of two or more modes. In this emergent field of research, there is a growing amount of empirical evidence supporting a greater need for a multiliteracy approach that integrates technology, content and pedagogical knowledge for preservice teachers learning HPE. This paper examines the constructs of physical, health and digital literacies in the instructive and educational process for the subject of HPE. Thus, ways to develop ‘digital dexterity’ using frameworks such as technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) are explored from a preservice HPE teacher perspective. The increasing access of preservice teachers to health and physical education information and communication technologies for educational practice combined with how they could be integrated into teaching and learning is addressed.