Louisa Webb

Healthy Bodies: Construction of the Body and Health in Physical Education.

In physical education, bodies are not only moved but made. There are perceived expectations for bodies in physical education to be ‘healthy bodies’—for teachers to be ‘appropriate’ physical, fit, healthy and skilful ‘role models’ and for students to display a slim body that is equated with fitness and health. In teachers’ monitoring of students with the intention of regulating health behaviour, however, the surveillance of students’ bodies and associated assumptions about health practices are implicated in the (re)production of the ‘cult of the body’. In this paper, we consider issues of embodiment and power in a subject area where the visual and active body is central and we use data from Australian and Swedish schools to analyse the discourses of health and embodiment in physical education. In both Swedish and Australian physical education there were discourses related to a fit healthy body and an at risk healthy body. These discourses also acted through a range of techniques of power, particularly regulation and normalisation.

Risky bodies: health surveillance and teachers' embodiment of health

In the current climate of health surveillance, governmental measurement and control as well as a focus on individual responsibility for risk are prevalent in school contexts. Physical education is a crucial site for the production and reproduction of health messages and thus is an important location through which health and healthy bodies are constructed and surveilled. Within a broader project with 16 participants in an urban city in the USA, it was found that the work of physical education teachers involved the management of a range of risky bodies – both their own bodies and the bodies of others. Risky bodies were unhealthy bodies, bodies read as overweight, ageing bodies and injured bodies. The physical education teachers’ identities were embedded in their desire to embody health but not in simplistic, unified ways. In a climate of health surveillance, the teachers took personal responsibility for managing risk and were both the embodiment of bio‐citizens and part of the mechanisms of (re)producing bio‐citizens.

Dualing with gender: teachers’ work, careers and leadership in physical education

The discursive practices of physical education reflect not only the expectations and constraints of discourses in the wider society, educational organizations and bureaucracies, but also the pervasive influences of working with and within sport. Within physical education, and specifically in the lives, work and careers of physical education teachers, in what ways are gender dualisms breaking down and in what ways are powerful gendered discourses still influential? This paper will outline results from research on teachers’ work, careers and leadership in physical education, with a particular focus on gendered patterns. A mixed methods research design was used with 556 female and male participants in the quantitative phase and 17 participants in the qualitative phase. Some of the results challenged gender dualistic ways of thinking about physical education teachers’ work, careers and leadership while other results indicated ways in which powerful dominant discourses still shape gendered patterns.

Making Sense of Teaching Social and Moral Skills in Physical Education.

Background: Education policies and curriculum documents in many European countries promote the social and moral development of young people as a cross-curriculum goal and place that goal at the center of the education process. All subjects, including physical education (PE) are required to contribute to the social and moral development of the children. Scholars have argued that PE and especially the PE teacher play a crucial role in the social and moral development of children. There is however little scientific evidence that underpins the positive contribution of PE to this development. Scholars also understand the social and moral domain in diverse ways. Little is known about how teachers themselves think about their responsibilities with respect to the social and moral development of their students through PE and how they understand and operationalize such curriculum goals. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how physical education (PE) teachers make sense of this formal curriculum goal and try to operationalize it. PE teachers tend not to be formally trained in didactics of social and moral development. In addition, the PE curriculum gives few guidelines that define social and moral development or how to accomplish this (if at all) but does require them to integrate this development into their teaching. We therefore used a social constructivist perspective with an emphasis on sense making to situate the study. Participants and setting: Participants teaching in different types of high school were recruited from Dutch urban, suburban and rural locations. In total 158 PE teachers participated in this study. Their teaching experience ranged from one to thirty-eight years. Data collection: Data were collected in three phases. Phase 1 was exploratory consisting of eight in-depth interviews. The results were used to construct an open-ended questionnaire that was answered by 55 participants (Phase 2). In Phase 3 we conducted 95 in-depth interviews with PE teachers to further explore themes that had emerged. Data analysis: The data were analyzed with the use of a qualitative data analysis package. We used a thematic analysis that was driven by both the data and the research questions to examine the combined data sets. Findings: The PE teachers unanimously constructed PE classes as places where social and moral skills should and can be developed. They equated social and moral development with the learning of social interactional skills. They differed however, in what they emphasized and the strategies they used to realize this curriculum objective. Conclusion: The PE teachers involved in this study actively worked to contribute to the social and moral development of their pupils by teaching and monitoring social interactional skills. The commonalities in curricular practices found in this study and the individual differences together possibly reflect a globalized socialization of PE teachers into and through sport accompanied by differences rooted in how they as individuals make sense of their upbringing. We recommend the use of a contextually-based bottom-up approach to explore the dynamics of social and moral development in PE classes.

Reflection on reflection on reflection: collaboration in action research

This paper is a reflection on the reflections of pupils about being ‘reflective learners’, one of the Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills of the secondary National Curriculum for England. A teacher and a lecturer worked together in a collaborative action research project generating co-constructed knowledge of practice across a two-year period, with reflective practice at the core of our action research endeavours. Key data were generated with a case-study group of 20 pupils who analysed their actions as ‘reflective learners’. We also asked the pupils their opinions of reflecting on their learning. These data are discussed in the paper along with the reflective process engaged in by the teacher-researchers. Teacher Tami shared that previously she had only been concerned with examinations results and not developing cross-curricular learning. The culture of performativity was influential in her previous conceptions of teaching and learning. Our reflections were also concerned with catering for a diversity of learners including pupils who speak English as an additional language.

Narratives From YouTube : Juxtaposing Stories About Physical Education

The aim of this paper is to explore what is performed in students’ and teachers’ actions in physical education practice in terms of “didactic irritations,” through an analysis of YouTube clips from 285 PE lessons from 27 different countries. Didactic irritations are occurrences that Rønholt describes as those demanding “didactic, pedagogical reflections and discussions, which in turn could lead to alternative thinking and understanding about teaching and learning.” Drawing on Barad’s ideas of performativity to challenge our habitual anthropocentric analytical gaze when looking at educational visual data, and using narrative construction, we also aim to give meaning to actions, relations, and experiences of the participants in the YouTube clips. To do this, we present juxtaposing narratives from teachers and students in terms of three “didactic irritations”: (a) stories from a track, (b), stories from a game, and (c), stories from a bench. The stories re-present events-of-moving in the data offering insights into embodied experiences in PE practice, making students’ as well as teachers’ actions in PE practice understandable.

Physical Education Teachers' Continuing Professional Development in Health-Related Exercise: A Figurational Analysis.

This paper uses figurational sociology to explain why Secondary Physical Education teachers’ engagement with Health Related Exercise (HRE) is often limited. Historically-rooted concerns surround the teaching of HRE, and these have recently been linked to teachers’ limited continuing professional development (CPD) in HRE (HRE-CPD). A two-phase, mixed-method study involving a survey questionnaire (n=124) and semi-structured interviews (n=12) was conducted in the UK to explore Physical Education teachers’ engagement with HRE and HRE-CPD over time. The findings confirm that teachers’ engagement with HRE-CPD is often limited. Indeed, nearly three quarters of the teachers (73%) also felt that their tertiary education had failed to adequately prepare them to teach HRE. This paper argues that a range of interdependent processes are contributing towards teachers’ limited engagement with HRE, and that most of these processes – such as the marginalisation of HRE – are rooted in the privileging of sporting, individualised and performative ideologies within Physical Education. In conclusion, it is argued that informed and strategic action which addresses the above issues and which transcends all levels of the education figuration is needed if the concerns surrounding HRE are to be overcome.

Providing sufficient opportunity to learn: a response to Grehaigne, Caty and Godbout

Background: Over the last 30 years, traditional skill-based game teaching models have gradually been supplemented by instruction under an inclusive banner of ‘Teaching Games for Understanding’ (TGfU). This approach focuses on developing tactical understanding through modified games and a philosophy that places the learner rather than the game at the centre of instruction. A recent paper by Grehaigne, Caty, and Godbout, ‘Modelling Ball Circulation in Invasion Team Sports: A Way to Promote Learning Games Through Understanding’, had a threefold focus. • to report the results of a qualitative study on various offensive configurations of football play observed in Physical Education (PE) lessons with young novice players • to propose a model of game play based on the analysis of such configurations of play • to promote a radical constructivist teaching approach based on ‘learning games through understanding’ that challenges the long-established TGfU methodology Purpose: This paper critically examines the contention of Grehaigne, Caty, and Godbout that the presentation of tactical data collected through the observation of novices playing sport in ill-structured domains, e.g. team games such as football, represent a useful pedagogical model that promotes ‘learning games through understanding’. In rewording the familiar TGfU approach, and calling it ‘learning games through understanding’, Grehaigne, Caty, and Godbout challenge the evolving TGfU approach as too solutions based and not sufficiently student centred. Discussion: This paper challenges the use of radical constructivism as a construct for the development of a philosophy for instructing novices in team games, in this instance, football. It defines ill-structured and well-structured learning domains and suggests that effective pedagogy, the art of teaching, requires flexible attitudes towards the choice of pedagogy in games. By inference, it also challenges Grehaigne, Caty, and Godbouts assumption that the TGfU models previously published, e.g. TGfU, Game Sense, Play Practice, and interpreted in various texts, e.g. Transforming Play, Teaching Tactics and Game Sense, are not student-centred and teacher dominated. Conclusions: Grehaigne, Caty, and Godbouts work is important in the evolution of models of game instruction for use in PE contexts. The concept of ‘learning games through understanding’ is a timely reminder of the importance of pedagogies, for example, guided or discovery learning that induce effortful thinking. However, if we consider TGfU in its true philosophical light, that is, as a holistic and experiential approach to teaching, then it already encompasses ‘learning games through understanding’. Because no two students learn or conceive knowledge in exactly the same way, teaching contexts require a flexible approach to instruction, based on a methodological continuum of empirical to radical constructivism. In short, providing novice learners with sufficient opportunities to learn, requires flexibility and a holistic experiential approach to teaching that is appropriate for the learner, activity and context.