Jan Wright

Physical activity and young people: beyond participation.

The quantitative literature on physical activity participation patterns leaves many questions about the place and significance of physical activity in the lives of young people unanswered. This paper begins to address this absence by attempting to understand physical activity from the point of view of young people and in relation to other aspects of their lives. It discusses interviews with 28 female and 34 male students from three Australian high schools chosen because they provided the opportunity to include students from different geographical, social and cultural locations. Students were asked to reflect upon their past and current engagement in physical activity, and the impact of factors such as their location, family, and school in their access and interest. Different spaces and places proved important in the nature of the physical activity available, its significance to young people and the kinds of identities which could be constructed.

It's All Very Well, in Theory: Theoretical Perspectives and Their Applications in Contemporary Pedagogical Research.

Current debates about educational theory are concerned with the relationship between knowledge and power and thereby issues such as who possesses a “truth” and how have they arrived at it, what questions are important to ask, and how should they best be answered. As such, these debates revolve around questions of preferred, appropriate, and useful theoretical perspectives. This paper overviews the key theoretical perspectives that are currently used in physical education pedagogy research and considers how these inform the questions we ask and shapes the conduct of research. It also addresses what is contested with respect to these perspectives. The paper concludes with some “cautions” about allegiances to and use of theories in line with concerns for the applicability of educational research to pressing social issues.

The Construction of Complementarity in Physical Education.

This paper discusses the ways in which feminine and masculine subjectivities are constructed as complementary-that is, defined in opposition to one another. This concept will be explored in the context of secondary physical education through an analysis of open-ended interviews with students and teachers as they talk about themselves and each other in relation to physical activity and their expectations of masculine and feminine bodies. It will be argued that physical education is an important location in and through which bodies are inscribed with gender differences which contribute to the marginalisation of girls in relation to physical activity and help to inscribe the female body as lacking those qualities associated with the active male body.

The Construction of Gendered Contexts in Single Sex and Co‐educational Physical Education Lessons

Abstract With the ‘linguistic turn’ in contemporary social theory there has been an increased interest in looking more closely at pedagogical practices in physical education as they construct social relations. Initially, and within a rather different theoretical framework this took the form of counting the number and kind of interactions teachers had with boys as compared to girls. More recently researchers have begun to look closely at how language choices construct relations of power between teacher and students and produce contexts for learning. This paper examines how these contexts may be very different for girls as compared to boys in single sex as well as co‐educational physical education lessons. Systemic functional linguistics and semiotic theory have provided the methodology and analytical tools to make visible the system of meanings expressed through teachers choices in language. The analysis has been further informed by the work of post‐structuralist and particularly feminist post‐structuralis...

Re-Conceiving Ability in Physical Education: A Social Analysis.

In this paper we explore how ‘ability’ is currently conceptualised in physical education and with what effects for different groups of young people. We interrogate approaches to theorising ability in physical education that draw on sociological and phenomenological ‘foundations’ together with notions of ability as ‘physical’ and ‘cultural capital’ drawn from the work of Bourdieu. We also look to data we and others have collected across a number of empirical projects to ask: where do we find talk about what we might identify as ‘ability’ in the context of physical education and sport; how is it talked about? And in what ways might this further our thinking of the meaning of ‘ability’ in physical education and school based sport? Our findings suggest that physical ability is far from a neutral concept and that how it is understood has important consequences for young people in relation to gender, race and social class. We argue that ongoing discussions around what we mean by ability, how we use it, and in relation to whom, are crucial in physical education where organised sport, recreation and exercise remain privileged over other constituents of physical culture.

Bodies, Meanings and Movement: A Comparison of the Language of a Physical Education Lesson and a Feldenkrais Movement Class

In Western societies since (and probably before) Descartes, the human body has been objectified and alienated from the self, something to be subdued, managed and more recently worked upon as symbol of self-value. Sport and exercise are sites where the objectification of the body has been traditionally promoted. In recent times with the scientisation of elite sport and the commodification of bodies in sport, the objectification of the body has taken new forms and achieved greater prominence. Physical education as the school site for body work has been implicated in the process of objectification and alienation. The traditional practices of physical education, including choices in teacher language, position bodies as objects, and movement as an instrumental outcome of practice. Not all movement practices, however, subscribe to this approach. This paper will compare the language practices of teachers in a physical education lesson and a Feldenkrais movement class as these constitute different forms of embodiment, different selves. Its purpose is to provide further resources for critical reflection on the ways in which pedagogical practices position students and contribute to the shaping of particular forms of subjectivity.

Changing Gendered Practices in Physi Education: Working with Teachers:

This paper examines new possibilities for gender reform in physical education in the context of what has gone before. The first section of the paper reviews the ways in which gender reform in physical education has been theorized and implemented in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the second reports on an Australian professional development and evaluation project which has been informed by a position which understands gender as socially constructed. While this is not a new position in terms of academic writing about gender in physical education, there have been few reports of physical education initiatives in schools or educational systems which have been specifically informed by such an approach. Finally, this paper will report on how successful, at this stage of the project, professional development workshops have been in motivating initiatives in schools.

Framing the mother: childhood obesity, maternal responsibility and care

Currently in developed nations, childhood obesity is generating widespread concern and prompting social and institutional responses. Obesity is constructed as a broad public health crisis, but individuals are constructed as responsible for their own bodies and body sizes within this crisis. We are particularly interested in two aspects that focus on women as central to this phenomenon; the first is the imputation of maternal responsibility for the weight of children and the second is the role that specific fears about flesh and womens bodies play in how childhood obesity is represented. We analyse media representations of childhood obesity in Australia and draw out the discourses of maternal responsibility and the intertwining of mothers and childrens bodies. We frame the childhood obesity crisis within a broader discussion of women, care and responsibility, suggesting that childhood obesity offers another embodied location to reinforce and extend womens roles and responsibilities as mothers, in response to changing patterns of work and care.

Mastery of fundamental motor skills among New South Wales school students: prevalence and sociodemographic distribution

Mastery of fundamental motor skills among children and adolescents is a potentially important contribution to satisfying participation in sports, games and other physical activities and may enhance the development of an active lifestyle. However, few attempts have been made to determine the prevalence of fundamental motor skill mastery among young Australians. The NSW Schools Fitness and Physical Activity Survey, 1997 (N = 5518) randomly selected schools proportionally from all three education sectors and selected students in Years 4, 6, 8 and 10. Performance on six fundamental motor skills (run, vertical jump, catch, overhand throw, forehand strike and kick) was assessed qualitatively. The prevalence of mastery and near mastery of each skill and mastery of each skill component is reported for boys and girls in each school year. The findings indicate that the prevalence of mastery and near mastery of each of the fundamental motor skills was generally low. There were no differences between students from urban or rural schools and the prevalence of skill mastery was directly associated with socioeconomic status more consistently among girls than among boys. Greater curriculum time and resourcing and training of teachers is required to increase the proportion of students who have mastered the skills fundamental to common sports, games and other physical activities.

A social semiotic analysis of knowledge construction and games centred approaches to teaching

Background: Games centred approaches (GCA) such as TGfU, Game Sense, and Tactical Games are widely promoted as alternatives to traditional forms of teaching games within physical education. These approaches are promoted on the basis of their capacity to engage students in meaningful and enjoyable physical activity and to promote problem-solving and decision-making. There is now a growing body of empirical research investigating the outcomes of such approaches in terms of tactical knowledge, enjoyment and motivation to play games, and a considerable theoretical literature that explains and develops models of practice. Questioning is promoted as a key learning strategy in negotiating tactical understandings and assisting students in decision-making. Examples of questioning sequences are frequently modelled in papers explaining how to teach games centred approaches. While there are considerable examples of how to teach games centred approaches there is a notable absence of research that investigates such approaches in the practice of actual lessons. Purpose: To argue for the value of a social semiotic approach for an analysis of lessons taught using a games centred approach. To demonstrate how a linguistically motivated social semiotic analysis provides the tools to test many of the assumptions and claims made for GCA by investigating practice in situ. In this paper this was illustrated through an analysis of the structure of questioning sequences as modelled in GCA literature and teaching resources. The purpose of the paper was also to argue that a social semiotic perspective allows for an analysis that goes beyond the immediate context of situation to ask how games centred approaches have wider social and cultural impacts, for example, in terms of whether they (re)produce or disrupt limiting notions of femininity and masculinity; extend opportunities for developing abilities to all students; and challenge traditional hierarchical power relations in physical education classes. Conclusion: A social semiotic analysis of the questioning sequences, as modelled in GCA literature and teaching resources, demonstrated how such sequences followed an initiation–response–evaluation (IRE) structure that expects one right answer to the questions and closes down opportunities for debate and for negotiating meaning. Such a pattern of interaction seems counter to claims of a student centred approach and increased student control over knowledge. Research is required that examines both the claims that proponents of GCA make about learning outcomes and the knowledge and social relations being constituted in GCA lessons from a broader social perspective. It is argued that a social semiotic analysis can do both: it provides the means to reflect on and critique the quality of learning that takes place in terms of situated knowledge; and it provides the tools to analyse the ways social and cultural meanings about games and sports, about teachers and learners, and their relationship, and about physical education are being constituted.