Education for healthy bodies

Professor Kanyiba is interested in health and physical education pedagogy, sports and exercise psychology, and youth sports. He also enjoys studying sport administration, history and philosophy of physical education, and technology application in movement science. 

Humanics philosophy disposition

Teacher education relates to working with others, and especially children. Education is a collaborative process that involves learners, parents, and teachers. You must love being around children, and you must be intrigued by the opportunities to be innovative in helping a student who is struggling in any of the three learning domains: concept (cognitive), skill (psychomotor), or a sense of belonging (affective).

Anatomy and physiology (A&P)

The fun part about A&P is that as a professor or student, you are a model, learning about your own body! You must know all 11 body systems and how they function to keep you alive. If we are learning about health or different types of kinesthetic actions, there will always be reference to either structures or functions of molecules, cells, tissues, or organs in our bodies.

Human growth and development

Tracing life from a single cell through zygote, embryo, infancy, early childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, to adulthood and how body systems and developmental psychology relate to each of these stages is critical. Most importantly, you need to understand how the systems involved in movement, metabolism, and emotions interact with each other to enhance quality of life.

Know essential numbers

You need to know numbers and the associated vocabulary generally agreed upon to represent healthy bodies and behaviors. 

For example, your body is made up of about 37-40 trillion cells, and each cell depends on oxygen as fuel to keep you alive, even when asleep! 

At rest, a healthy heart is expected to beat 60-72 times per minute, which is also commonly known as a pulse rate. Your heart pumps blood to itself and the rest of the body at a rate of five liters per minute, and 120/80 mmHg represents a healthy blood pressure. 

Physical activity has many benefits including aiding the veins to drain blood back to the heart, and the recommended daily moderate to vigorous physical activity is between 75 to 150 minutes per week, or 10,000 steps per day. 

You are expected to take in between 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day, depending on many factors that include metabolism and activity levels. Rest is as important as your dietary-caloric intake or levels of physical activity, and you are expected to sleep about seven to eight hours per day.

Pedagogy

You will need to master theories of intellectual development and theories of how we learn to move and perform sports at proficient levels, and apply this knowledge when selecting materials and teaching styles. You will need to master classroom management and assessment, and be prepared to teach diverse learners. You need to learn how to collaborate with other professionals and also know the use of appropriate instructional technology and teaching aids.

Conducting and consuming research

You should be able to understand published credible research related to health and physical education. You should understand the research process including research design, research methodology, data collection, data analyses, and how to correctly interpret data. You should also be able to use various data analysis software in coding, storing, analyzing, and presenting data.

This story is part of a series on six faculty who offer expertise on the fields they are passionate about teaching.