Lisette Burrows

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.

‘Kiwi kids are Weet-Bix™ kids’—body matters in childhood

A wide array of health policies and initiatives have emerged in New Zealand recently in an attempt to resurrect a presumed ‘lost’, adventure-loving, physically capable and non-obese Kiwi kid. Chief among these is Mission-On—a 67 million dollar package of 10 initiatives designed to explicitly target the eating and exercise dispositions of young people. I suggest that Mission-On, together with the raft of other avowedly health-promoting resources being directed at young people, provides an exemplary case of body pedagogies at play both via its far-ranging formally enunciated objectives and due to its annexing of these to popular cultures, familial obligations and educational missives. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to examine how pedagogies, like those regularly deployed under the Mission-On rubric, are made sense of by young children. The key habits and dispositions children believe are needed to achieve a healthy ‘self’ are highlighted, together with some of the ways in which young people come to assess the veracity of health knowledge. Analysis of interviews with New Zealand primary school students suggests that children engage with, enact and disrupt health imperatives in multiple ways, often linked to their differing social and spatial locations in home, school and community contexts. While their testimony points to small fissures in the Mission-On armoury, it is suggested that in a climate so thoroughly saturated with messages around healthy eating and exercise, it remains challenging for children to imagine themselves as the adventurous, confident, fun-loving ‘kiwi kids’ government desires to ‘bring back’.

Dosing up on food and physical activity: New Zealand children's ideas about 'health'

Objective To investigate New Zealand children’s understandings of ‘health’. Design Secondary analysis of student responses to a task called ‘Being Healthy’ in New Zealand’s National Education Monitoring Project. Setting Year 4 (8—9 year-old) and Year 8 (12—13 year-old) students who took part in New Zealand’s National Education Monitoring for Health and Physical Education in 2002. Method Coding of student responses using NVivo qualitative analysis package. Results Students reiterated messages widely promulgated in popular and professional mediums. Students predominantly conceived of health as a corporeal matter, citing eating, exercise and hygiene practices as the most important health promoting behaviours. Conclusion Students could usefully be encouraged to adopt socially critical understandings of what health might entail and broader, more holistic conceptualizations of health beyond matters of the ‘body’ alone.

Reframing Health Education in New Zealand/Aotearoa schools

Health education in New Zealand schools has a chequered history, peppered with controversy since its inclusion as a school subject in the early nineteenth century. In this paper we examine the trials and challenges faced by health education teachers over time, pointing to the particular components of this subject that are regarded as controversial and analysing the obstacles to its successful implementation. We briefly map the changing nature of health education across time, before discussing contemporary aims and purposes of health education. We suggest health education seeks to enable and equip children and young people with the knowledge, skills and motivation to make health enhancing choices for themselves and for others. To conclude, we explore future directions for health education, proposing several health competencies as viable options for a 21st century world.

Health imperatives in primary schools across three countries: intersections of class, culture and subjectivity

In this article, we want to focus on the impact of the new health imperatives on young children attending primary schools because the evidence from both our own and others work suggests that younger and younger children are talking in very negative and disturbing ways about themselves and their bodies. We see this in a context where in the name of getting in early, governments and authorities are targeting primary schools and primary school parents and children for messages about health and weight. Just as ‘obesity’ has become a global concern, we argue that globalisation of risk discourses and the individualisation of risk, the league table on which country is becoming the fattest have impacted on government policies, interventions, schools and children in ways which have much in common. In this article, then we argue first, that there is a problem (it is not one of children becoming fatter, but rather the way in which the ideas associated with the obesity crisis are being taken up by many children), and second, that the ways in which these ideas are taken up are not uniform across or within countries but depend on contexts: national contexts including, but not only, government policies and campaigns; and contexts within countries which vary with the social and cultural demographics of schools, in ways that are similar across countries.

Foucault on Camp: What Does His Work Offer Outdoor Education?.

Abstract In this paper we examine aspects of French social theorist, Michel Foucaults work and the contributions these can make to understanding practices in outdoor education. We look specifically at his notions of practice, discourse, power and the self and the lines of questioning that these concepts make possible in relation to outdoor education. We conclude with a discussion of some of the challenges of doing research with Foucauldian tools.

School Culture Meets Sport: A Case Study in New Zealand.

This article draws on ethnographic work undertaken with 21 students and several members of staff at an elite girls’ school in New Zealand to investigate the relation between school culture, pedagogical practices and discourses of physical education and school sport. It explores what and who contours the participation of these young women in sport, both within and outside of the school gates. The article interrogates the values young women ascribe to sport and physical education in the context of their shared commitment to achieving academic success, and suggests that government policy agendas and imperatives around Physical Education and sport are not necessarily changing pedagogical practices. Rather, the school’s desire to turn out well-rounded, balanced and successful young women drives the school’s commitment to affording young women multiple opportunities and resources to participate in sport and recreation within the school gates.

School health education in changing times: Curriculum, pedagogies and partnerships

This book explores the complex nexus of discourses, principles and practices within which educators mobilise school-based health education. Through an interrogation of the ideas informing particular models and approaches to health education, the authors provide critical insights into the principles and practices underpinning approaches to health education policy, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Drawing on extensive literature and research, the book explores and considers what health education can and should do. Chapters examine the extent to which health education, past and present, has attended to the needs and interests of young people in school environments, as well as assess common pedagogical approaches and whether the outcomes tally with expectations. By considering the problems in teaching health education, curriculum making, health education pedagogies and porous classrooms, the book offers a knowledge base from which educators can consider how theories and models can sit together to shape curriculum and influence practice. School Health Education in Changing Times will be of key interest to postgraduate students, researchers and academics in the field of health education. It will also be a valuable resource for teacher educators, current teachers, and those on professional development courses who want to navigate the moral minefield surrounding health education.

‘Doing it for themselves’: a qualitative study of children’s engagement with public health agendas in New Zealand

In this paper, we examine how New Zealand children engage with public health agendas that seek to shape their understandings of health. We shed light on the ways children make sense of what they see, hear and come to know through public health ‘work’, and consider what effects this has for how they come to think of their ‘selves’ and relations with others. We pay attention to the way public health messages assemble, bolstered by dispositions, behaviours and ruminations expressed in schools, families and communities. Children’s talk exemplifies the sheer volume of public health missives saturating their worlds and the range of media used to reach into children’s lives. In many cases, children are ‘doing it for themselves’ in the sense that they are attempting to enact health imperatives about healthy eating, regular exercise and weight management. However, alongside the willingness of many to simply believe and enact health information, we draw attention to the capacity of some children to think through public health messages, negotiate and make sense of them in relation to their own lives. Despite the ubiquity and mantra-like quality of public health messages currently directed at children we contend they are variously interpreted and embedded in children’s lives. We regard the messiness and complexity of children’s engagement as affirmation that a critically informed variety of public health could provide opportunities for children to come to know health as more than simply eating the right foods and running a lot.

Finding the ‘self’ after weight loss surgery: Two women’s experiences.

Drawing on narratives derived from two women’s YouTube vlogs (video blogs), we examine what weight loss surgery offers as a mode of being in the world. In these vlogs, Divataunia and Thebandinme have kept a record of their weight loss surgery ‘journey’. We explore the multiple selves they express, drawing on notions of embodiment and post-structuralist conceptualisations of subjectivity, to examine the contradictory and shifting experiences of having weight loss surgery. We examine the work that subjectivity ‘does’, in how each woman enacts her subjectivity, in what they ‘choose’ to express, and in how their choices are related to their perceptions and lived experiences of their bodies. In particular we investigate one subject position that the women both take up – a ‘fat subjectivity’ – and discuss how each woman relates to this subject position as her body changes. The notion of a weight loss surgery journey from an ‘old’ self to a ‘new’ one is explored and we conclude that the idea of a simple trajectory from ‘old’ to ‘new’ fails to adequately account for the complex vagaries of each women’s experience.