Lisa Hunter

Bourdieu and the social space of the PE class: reproduction of Doxa through practice

This paper considers the social space of one physical education (PE) class in the middle years of schooling. I endeavour to tease out the dialectic between the discursive spaces available to the students positioned within this space and the construction and negotiation of student subjectivities. Using the conceptual tools of field, habitus, practice, capital, illusio, and doxa provided by Pierre Bourdieu and of embodied subjectivities from post‐structural feminism, three particular spaces are explored, namely: ‘the good student’, ‘hetero/sexism’ and ‘the body’. I argue for a (re)turn to conversations around PE as a learning area and learning as embodied as a way to meet the needs of more young people through PE. Like others, I also question PEs existence as it is currently configured in the school curriculum.

Teacher knowledge and the disjunction between school curricula and teacher education

As partners in school curriculum reform, teacher educators have a responsibility to graduate students who are ready to take positions as competent and confident curriculum leaders. However, some curriculum initiatives such as those associated with the introduction of key learning areas in Australia have highlighted the disjunctions between teacher education programmes and contemporary curriculum documents. This article will explore the disjunctions from two perspectives: firstly, by examining the organisation of knowledge in schools and universities, and secondly, by presenting data from a school-based evaluation of the Health and Physical Education key learning area syllabus. The article conclude by raising implications for teacher education and the future organisation of knowledge.

Reconceptualizing the possible narratives of adolescence

This paper explores various epistemological paradigms available to understand, interpret, and semiotically depict young people. These paradigms all draw upon a metadiscourse of developmental age and stage (e.g. Hall 1914) and then work from particular epistemological views of the world to cast young people in different lights. Using strategic essentialism (Spivak 1996), this paper offers four descriptions of existing paradigms, including biomedical (Erikson 1980), psychological (e.g. Piaget 1973), critical (e.g. Giroux & MacLaren 1982), and postmodern (e.g. Kenway & Bullen 2001). While some of these paradigms have been more distinct in particular cultural, historical, and political contexts, they have overlapped, informing each other as they continue to inform our understandings of young people. Each paradigm carries unique consequences for the role of the learner, the teacher, and the curriculum. This paper explores contemporary manifestations of these paradigms. From this investigation, a potential new space for conceptualising young people is offered. This new space, underpinned by understandings of subjectivity (Grosz 1994), assumes sense of self to be both pivotal in generative learning and closely linked to the context and its dynamics. We aver that such a view of young people and educational settings is necessary at this time of focused attention to the middle years of schooling. In so doing, we explore the potential of classroom life and pre-service teacher education constructed within this new discourse of young people.

(Dis)Abling the (health and) physical in education: ability, curriculum and pedagogy

In this short discursive paper our aim is to introduce issues which have underpinned and are pursued in this special issue of Sport, Education and Society. In important respects the development of the special issue represented a challenge to make some inroads into the sustained silence surrounding ‘ability’ in physical education that Evans (2004) identified as having profound implications for teachers and learners in physical education. Evans (2004) brought to the fore the tendency for ‘ability’ ‘to be characterised as a one-dimensional, static entity’ , rather than ‘as a dynamic, sociocultural construct and process’ (p. 99, original emphasis) and prompted consideration of how to counter reductionist understandings and portrayals of ‘ability’ in physical education.

'Ability', curriculum and pedagogy.

In this short discursive paper our aim is to introduce issues which have underpinned and are pursued in this special issue of Sport, Education and Society. In important respects the development of the special issue represented a challenge to make some inroads into the sustained silence surrounding ‘ability’ in physical education that Evans (2004) identified as having profound implications for teachers and learners in physical education. Evans (2004) brought to the fore the tendency for ‘ability’ ‘to be characterised as a one-dimensional, static entity’ , rather than ‘as a dynamic, sociocultural construct and process’ (p. 99, original emphasis) and prompted consideration of how to counter reductionist understandings and portrayals of ‘ability’ in physical education.

Teacher education for the middle years of schooling: Making connections between fields of knowledge, educational policy reforms and pedagogical practice

Britzman’s notion of dialogic restructuring and the ‘clashing’ and ‘conjoining’ of ideas provides a framework for examining the development of a reform initiative in teacher education in Australia—a program concerned specifically with preparing teachers for the middle years of schooling. The middle years of schooling have been the focus of education reform efforts in Australia over the last decade, with a growing interest at grassroots and systemic levels in policy and practice related to the education of young adolescents. In the Australian context, middle schooling developments have not been accompanied in any systematic or on-going way by specialised teacher preparation programs. This chapter discusses one programmatic response to middle schooling initiatives by a teacher education institution—the development of a new Middle Years of Schooling Teacher Education (MYSTE) program at The University of Queensland (UQ). Considering the emergent state of middle schooling in Australia, alongside the rapidly changing social, economic and technological context underpinning the current and future educational needs of young people, this new teacher education program represented a conceptual and practical opportunity and challenge for the UQ team, including the authors of this chapter. Working collaboratively, the team sought to design a pre-service teacher education program that was both responsive to school reform initiatives and generative of new theories and practices associated with teacher education.