Health and Physical Education Glossary terms meaning

Community health
Focuses on work within defined communities to maintain and improve the health and wellbeing of all people in that community through collective action.
Contextual factors
A range of factors that can influence health, safety, wellbeing and physical activity participation. These factors include, but are not limited to, personal, social, cultural, economic and political factors that exist in differing ways and have varying impacts across population groups.
Critical inquiry approach
Focuses on how contextual factors influence the health, safety, wellbeing and physical activity participation of individuals, groups and communities. It provides opportunities for students to develop skills, self-efficacy and dispositions to advocate for, and positively influence, their own and others’ health and wellbeing. This involves critical analysis and critical evaluation of health and physical activity knowledge in order to make informed judgments and take appropriate action.
Dimensions of health
These are the variables that influence an individual’s level of overall health. The variables, frequently referred to as dimensions, are physical, social, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Discrimination
The unjust or prejudicial treatment of someone. The types of discrimination that students must learn about include racial, sex and gender discrimination; homophobia; and transphobia.
Dispositions
Enduring habits of mind and actions, and tendencies to respond to situations in characteristic ways, for example, maintaining an optimistic outlook, being willing to persevere with challenges, or actively engaging in regular physical activity.
Drug
Any substance (excluding food, water and oxygen) that when taken into the body alters its function physically or psychologically.
Emotional health
The ability to recognise, understand and effectively manage emotions and use this knowledge when thinking, feeling and acting.
Fundamental movement skills
Provide the foundation for competent and confident participation in a range of physical activities. The fundamental movement skills to be developed through Health and Physical Education include:
locomotor and non-locomotor skills — rolling, balancing, sliding, jogging, running, leaping, jumping, hopping, dodging, galloping, skipping, floating and moving the body through water to safety
object control skills — bouncing, throwing, catching, kicking, striking.
Gender
Refers to those characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed. It is complex and involves a number of components, including biological sex (male or female), gender identity (the psychological sense of being male or female) and social sex role (adherence to cultural norms of feminine and masculine behaviour).
Gender diverse
Refers to people who fall outside the typical range of masculinity or femininity with regard to gender identity and/or physical sex characteristics. Sex- and/or gender-diverse people include many different groups, including transsexual, transgender, androgynous, people without sex and gender identity, and cross-dressers.
Health
A state of complete physical, social, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Health literacy
The ability to selectively access and critically analyse information, navigate community services and resources, and take action to promote personal health and the health of others.
Health messages
Any message or advertising related to the health and wellbeing of people. These can be in the form of TV, online or magazine advertisements, media articles, product labelling, or portrayal of ‘healthy’ choices in the media.
Health-related fitness
Physical fitness is considered a measure of the body’s ability to function efficiently, effectively and without injury in work and leisure activities, to pursue recreational activities and to cope with emergency situations. Health-related fitness includes components such as cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular endurance and strength.
Identities
Individual characteristics (including thoughts, ideas, feelings and attitudes towards self-worth) and capabilities of a person, or characteristics of a social group.
Initiative games
Fun, cooperative, challenging games that require groups to collaborate in order to solve a specific problem.
Intersex
Relates to a range of innate biological traits or variations that lie between ‘male’ and ‘female’. An intersex person may have the biological attributes of both sexes or lack some of the biological attributes considered necessary to be defined as one or the other sex. Intersex is always congenital and can originate from genetic, chromosomal or hormonal variations. Historically, the term ‘hermaphrodite’ was used.
Kinaesthetic
The sensation by which bodily position, weight, muscle tension and movement are perceived by an individual.
Locomotor skills
Locomotor movement is when you move from one place to another.
Locomotor skills include rolling, balancing, sliding, jogging, running, leaping, jumping, hopping, dodging, galloping, skipping, floating and moving the body through water to safety.
Manipulative skills
Movement skills that require an ability to handle an object or piece of equipment with control, such as kicking, striking, dribbling or catching a ball.
Mental health
Refers to a person’s cognitive and thinking processes, for example their capacity to think coherently, express thoughts and feelings, and respond constructively to situations.
Minor games
Simple games, with few rules, designed to allow students to practise skills in a challenging situation.
Modified games
Games or sports that are adapted to suit the skills and characteristics of students through alterations to rules, equipment and/or the playing field.
Movement challenges
Movement tasks that require individual students or groups of students to solve a problem in order to successfully complete the task.
Movement concepts and strategies
These provide a framework for enhancing movement performance. Movement concepts (or elements of movement) explored in the curriculum include body awareness; spatial awareness; effort awareness; and relationship to/with objects, people and space. Movement strategies refer to a variety of approaches that will help a player or team to successfully achieve a movement outcome or goal. Movement strategies include moving into space to receive a pass from a team-mate or hitting the ball away from opponents in order to make it difficult to retrieve or return the ball. Different games and sports may require similar activities or goals and will therefore use similar movement strategies in order to achieve success.
Movement elements
The variables that are combined in composing and performing movement. The elements of movement are effort, time, space and relationships.
Movement sequences
The combination of fundamental movement skills and movement elements to enable the body and/or objects to move in response to a stimulus.
Movement situations
Any situation where students are moving with the intent of achieving an outcome, such as to score a goal, to perform a sequence, to retain possession, or to cross a creek.
Non-locomotor skills
Moving on the spot without any change in location. Non-locomotor skills include twisting (the rotation of a selected body part around its long axis), bending (moving a joint), swaying (fluidly and gradually shifting the centre of gravity from one body part to another), stretching (moving body parts away from the centre of gravity), turning (rotating the body along the long axis) and swinging (rhythmical, smooth motion of a body part resembling a pendulum).
Outdoor recreation
Physical activity in the outdoors or natural settings which provides opportunities to connect as a community and to the natural environment.
Physical activity
The process of moving the body that results in energy expenditure. Physical activity is a broad term that includes playing sport; exercise and fitness activities such as dance, yoga and tai chi; everyday activities such as walking to work, household chores and gardening; and many other forms of active recreation.
Physical fitness
Physical fitness is considered a measure of the body’s ability to function efficiently, effectively and without injury in work and leisure activities, to pursue recreational activities and to cope with emergency situations. It is commonly conceptualised as being made up of health-related components (such as cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular endurance, and strength) and skill-related components (such as agility, balance, coordination, reactions, rhythm, power and speed).
Physical Health
A state of physical well-being in which a person is physically able to perform their daily activities without restrictions.
Resilience
The capacity to deal constructively with change or challenge, allowing the person to maintain or re-establish their social and emotional wellbeing in the face of difficult events. It involves thoughts, feelings and actions.
Same-sex attracted
A term used to describe someone who is physically, emotionally, sexually or spiritually attracted to a person of the same sex. They may not identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.
Sedentary behaviour
Activities that do not increase energy expenditure higher than resting levels, for example, watching television, gaming, or using a computer and other devices.
Self-efficacy
An individual’s belief in their ability to succeed in reaching a specific goal or completing a task, such as maintaining healthy and active habits, acquiring a new movement skill or meeting a personal challenge.
Sense of self
Refers to an individual’s perception of ‘self’ and how they perceive their place in the world in relation to a range of personal characteristics and cultural norms and expectations.

Skill-related fitness
Physical fitness is considered a measure of the body’s ability to function efficiently, effectively and without injury in work and leisure activities, to pursue recreational activities and to cope with emergency situations. Skill-related fitness includes components such as agility, balance, coordination, reactions, rhythm, power and speed.
Social health
Social health is concerned with how individuals interact with the people around them, and with social institutions and social values and norms.
Specialised movement skills
Refers to movement skills that are required in more organised games and activities. Examples of specialised movement skills include fielding a groundball in softball, climbing a rock wall, and performing a grapevine step in dance.
Spiritual health
A positive sense of belonging, meaning and purpose in life. It includes values and beliefs that influence the way people live, and can be influenced by an individual’s connection to themselves, others, nature and beyond.
Sport
A human activity which has physical exertion and skills as the primary focus, with elements of competition, and for which rules and patterns of behaviour governing the activity exist formally through organisations.
Strengths-based approach
Focuses on the capacities, competencies, values and hopes of all students, regardless of their current circumstances, to optimise their own health and that of others. Its foundation is the concept of salutogenesis, which looks to extend preventive health to the creation of health through individual, community and societal resources and assets.
Transitions
Refers to the internal processes or psychological reorientation people experience as a result of change, and usually involves establishing new behaviours or new ways of thinking before the change can work. Individuals experience transitions in different ways and at different rates. Transition involves three stages: the letting go of the way things are or used to be; a period of exploration and adjustment; and a final stage where new behaviours and ways of working evolve.
Wellbeing
Relates to a sense of satisfaction, happiness, effective social functioning and spiritual health, and the dispositions of optimism, openness, curiosity and resilience.