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There is increasing interest in the role sports coaches are expected to play in supporting the mental health of elite and sub-elite athletes. This paper presents the first single-sport, mixed-methods, study of UK athletics coaches' mental health literacy (MHL). We extend previous quantitative survey-based UK studies by incorporating the qualitative lived experiences of coaches into the analysis. We explore coaches' knowledge of mental health and illness, experience of mental health training, and willingness to support athletes with mental illness. An online survey of 184 UK athletics coaches revealed that MHL was highest among women, younger coaches, and coaches with less experience. No statistical differences were found between MHL score and disability, sexuality or region in which coaches worked. Interviews held with a sub-sample of 25 survey respondents revealed a lack of clear consensus about what constitutes mental health and mental illness, and that coaches' everyday views of these did not always correspond with formal definitions or conceptualisations. Coaches' views were instead typically characterised by dominant psychological and psychiatric understandings of mental health and illness, while the significance of social relations and inequalities were often overlooked. There was a general willingness among coaches to support athlete mental health as an aspect of their duty of care, but most lacked the relevant training and understanding to do so effectively because such training was not implemented systematically within their organisational practice. Coaches' call for mandatory athletics-specific mental health training was one strategy thought to better enhance coaches' skills, knowledge and intentions to provide and seek mental health support. Important though MHL training and other sources of support is, we conclude that this is likely insufficient on its own and that there is a parallel need for multi-level, systems-wide, approaches in sport and wider society to better support the mental health of everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainability requirements of the planet in recent years have made it necessary for everyone to reflect on new lifestyles. For this purpose, the United Nations has established an agenda for change organised into 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that claim to be achieved by 2030. The demands of this sustainable development are organised into three main dimensions: social, environmental, and economical. To achieve these goals, the educational system is fundamental. This new context demands new areas of study centred on the educational sphere; for example, in a holistic Health Physical Education (HPE), there are precedents in the literature that show a relationship of the characteristics to enhance sustainable development. Based on these references, it is suggested that the characteristics of holistic HPE could contribute to the three dimensions of sustainability and the SDGs. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to deepen through a series of reflections and comments on the elements that compose a holistic HPE to contribute to the sustainable development of the planet. The paper begins with a justification of the delimitation of the problem it seeks to solve through this research area. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the specific SDG targets related to holistic HPE and the sustainability competencies to be developed. The epistemological foundations that a holistic HPE contribution could have on the three dimensions of sustainable development, are also added. Finally, the document closes with orientations for future research and teaching methodology proposals and teaching approaches that would fit within the holistic HPE for sustainable development. The contributions made in this document will allow researchers to find a baseline from which to begin to conduct research that confirms the virtues of holistic HPE in contributing to a more sustainable world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is only one leverage point for teacher professional learning and development, it is of vital importance that ITE supports pre-service teachers (PSTs) in developing knowledge and skills necessary to promote inclusion of students with a disability in their class-spaces. Whilst 'inclusion' is a key feature of legislation, education policy and standards internationally, students with disabilities continue to report exclusion from Physical Education (PE) by both teachers and peers. There are thus increasing calls for PE to be more inclusive, and for teachers to enact curricula and pedagogies that dismantle ableism and offer diverse ways for students to learn in, through and about movement. This paper outlines how ITE can have a positive impact on the pedagogical knowledge, competence and 'readiness' of PSTs to teach inclusively. We offer a unique contribution to existing scholarship in that we outline how a specific combination of elements can be enacted within one unit/module within a Bachelor of Education (specialising in Health and Physical Education) to promote inclusion of students with a disability in PE. More specifically, the findings suggest that the elements of the unit that best supported PSTs in becoming more inclusive teachers were: (i) pedagogization of theory; (ii) sense of safety; (iii) partnerships for authentic learning; and (iv) student voice and co-design. Combined, these elements served to support PSTs in moving away from fixed, normative and ableist assumptions about their learners. It also provided opportunities for PSTs to explore and enact alternatives to the 'disability as problem' discourse, and thus more effectively teach students with a disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the discussant of this special issue, I focus on two related ideas: choice and self-interest. First, I explore the idea of choice and its relevance within research that concerns itself with a heavily loaded concept like ‘social justice’. My proposal here is that future scholarship that explores the consequences of privatised health and physical education (HPE) might at least factor in choice as one from a list of competing priorities. For example, does greater choice trump concerns about equity? Is it possible that increasing choice is one of the ways in which important social policy outcomes might be achieved? Second, like a number of the papers in this special issue, I argue that the privatisation of HPE portends significant changes in the way knowledge is produced, consumed and evaluated. Through all of this, old ideas about the role of the academic are increasingly salient. But rather than limiting our critical gaze to the purveyors of privatised HPE, I suggest that financial self-interest is only one kind of self-interest amongst many others, each of which deserve our attention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents a call for papers on sociology, pedagogy or related disciplines in social sciences published in the July 2004 issue of the journal "Sports, Education and Society."

Physical education has become more than a superficial exposure to a range of motor skills and movement challenges through the emergence of a myriad of educationally-focused initiatives, models and theoretical approaches. Such proliferation of ideas has been positioned within the literature as both a strength and a weakness. While ideas can be strengthened through focused and inward-looking practice, an increasing array of foundational ideas with disparate language, can make the territory of physical education increasingly more difficult to navigate across divided discourses leading to a potentially shallow base. This research articulates a deliberate process of border crossing that we undertook as a way to seek a convergence (where possible) between two related frameworks for understanding and progressing physical education. We acknowledge this exchange of ideas is something that happens frequently and informally between different educators and researchers. Yet we suggest that there is room for those willing to undertake a more deliberate transformational approach to border crossing with the potential to yield innovative outcomes through the integration of ideas from different fields. Opportunities can emerge for educational developments as a consequence of working at these borders/boundaries. To better understand deliberate approaches to border crossing, we draw largely upon ideas from transdisciplinary research, concept analysis, boundary crossing and threshold concepts to reflexively interrogate our own uncertain, at times messy and iterative approach of reconciliation from either side of the globe. The paper offers insights and guidance for others who wish to more formerly seek out synergies through a process of disciplinary border crossing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue features the growing field of Sport for Development. Importantly few questions have been raised about the educative quality of sport for development programmes or the pedagogies by which they are delivered. This seems to be something of an oversight since; by definition development infers some sort of learning or educative process. This introductory paper provides an editorial commentary and summary on the papers included in this issue. We also comment on Sport for Development as a growing field of research and identify what might be some fruitful areas of research direction based on the papers included in the issue. Our reading of the papers suggest that there are important concerns related to pedagogy and educational practices in sport for development projects that stem from a dominance of neoliberal agendas, unintended though this may be. At the same time however, it is apparent that this challenge is being met head on by a growing number of researchers, and reports of this progress can be found in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2020a) requires all teachers to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples', culture and history where there is scope to meaningfully do so. However, there is a general absence in Australia and internationally of understanding culturally responsive pedagogy for those perspectives in teaching Physical Education (PE). This concept paper proposes an educational framework comprising Yunkaporta's (2009) 8 Ways Aboriginal Pedagogy and the Game Sense approach (GSA) (Australian Sports Commission [ASC], 1996). for games and sport teaching in PE to move towards a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. We provide an empirical argument that curricula are instruments of colonisation and explain the creation of a cultural interface through games and sport as one approach for decolonising PE. We present an opportunity to 'close the gap' between Western and Aboriginal knowledge through the purposeful design of engagement in reconciliation, respect and recognition of continuous living Aboriginal cultures. We use the game Parndo (ASC, 2000) to illustrate an example of how Yunkaporta's (2009) framework and the GSA become a solution for closing our identified gap. By proposing a culturally responsive curriculum, we focus on the importance of identity for all people and how curricula must be relevant and meaningful for all Australians. Importantly, Yunkaporta's (2009) 8 Ways is a product of 'cultural interface', co-created through dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators. Our findings, although not transferable to other settings, nonetheless have relevance to other countries where there is a similar move to decolonise PE curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an evolutionary concept analysis of Physical Literacy (PL) in order to shed some clarity within the uncertainty surrounding this highly adopted yet widely adapted concept. Inevitably, concepts like PL become re-interpreted as they gain popularity and get redeployed to serve an increasingly diverse range of purposes in varied contexts. The inevitability of an 'evolution' of concepts has not bypassed PL. With implications for research and theory formation, this paper takes stock of the concept of PL and presents findings that form a conceptual understanding of the concept as it has appeared within the scholarly literature over time. 103 papers from the peer-reviewed literature between 1993 and 2019 were analysed according to Rodgers' (2000. Concept analysis: An evolutionary view. In B. L. Rodgers & K. A. Knafl (Eds.), Concept development in nursing: Foundations, techniques, and applications (pp. 77–102). Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders) six-step method of concept analysis. Thematic coding involved extracting and analysing the surrogate terms and related concepts for, and the attributes, antecedents, consequences, and references of PL. Findings map the evolution of the concept, its subsequent splintering into a range of variable interpretations and an obscurification of foundational ideas. Rather than present a single, universal or 'correct' version of PL from a synthesis of the literature, we draw upon Sartori's (1970. Concept misformation in comparative politics. The American Political Science Review, 64(4), 1033–1053) 'ladder of abstraction' to present a pluralistic approach to the concept for researchers and practitioners to adopt. Using this approach, PL can be defined against its level of abstraction (low, medium or high) and by moving between thicker and thinner interpretations of the concept, some clarity about 'what version' of PL is being used can be obtained. This research should enable PL to be used in future theory development and empirical research with greater confidence and clarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional dimensions of physical education have garnered attention from scholars in the last two decades. Many scholars claim that emotions significantly affect learning and that positive emotions such as joy and pleasure are necessary for continued participation in movement activities beyond the classroom. Much of the existing literature, however, is based on the idea that emotions comprise internal mental states that are retrospectively oriented. In the current paper, we work with alternative principles that can create new understandings of the affective dimensions of PE and specifically, movement learning. We draw on symbolic interactionist principles, framing emotions as multimodal communicative resources that are performed in social contexts. From this perspective, we demonstrate how emotions: (1) can be investigated as part of the production of broader sequences of pedagogical action and (2) relate to issues of knowledge, identity and authority. We present observational material generated with PE teacher education students as they develop movement capability. We focus on three interactional episodes in which fear, joy and resignation are performed by students interacting with either peers or an observing researcher. In each case, we demonstrate how emotions: affiliate or dis-affiliate the actor with the movement knowledge in focus, index an institutionally recognizable identity and influence the subsequent actions of the participants in the interactional sequence. The key thesis developed in the paper is that as symbolic resources, emotions have important consequences for actors within movement learning environments. The paper is concluded with reflections on the implications of the approach for practitioners along with a consideration of questions in need of further scientific attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport is often framed as a panacea for social disharmony, especially within the context of marginalised youth populations, and is widely promoted as a mechanism through which a multiplicity of social policy objectives can be achieved. Yet while political rhetoric has long pointed towards sport's transformative abilities, the basis for such claims remains unproven. Theory-based approaches to evaluation have been posited as a useful device to explore the impact of specific initiatives and indicate where best practice may operate. The aim of this paper is to highlight one such theory-based framework that has been devised by practitioners in recent years around the operationalisation and evaluation of sporting interventions in criminal justice settings and which has come to be adopted as the dominant 'theory of change' across sport and criminal justice practitioner settings in the UK, but has, as yet, eluded academic scrutiny. To address this omission, the present discussion offers an in-depth analysis of this framework with the aim of discerning more clearly 'what might work' within sport and criminal justice contexts. In turn, the paper aims to stimulate further academic debate around the instrumental role of sport within criminal justice and the value of such frameworks for both policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging differences in contexts, the purpose of this paper considers how physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP), while maintaining our collective identity, can most effectively develop a capacity to engage with academic and institutional changes in productive, proactive ways. This, we contend, entails considering extending the groups or communities in which PESP is represented to increase the potential to access substructures with other academic communities. We have chosen a metaphor to frame this work, acknowledging that metaphor can often open-up new ways to view a specific aspect or phenomenon that has been conceived in a common, or perhaps static way. Worked examples of the metaphor are presented from an Irish and Canadian perspective and implications of these examples pose possible ways forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While complexity thinking features increasingly in the education and physical education literature, there remains a paucity of research presenting evidence of the influence that complexity principles have on learning. We further advocate that more work with complexity thinking is required to investigate how teacher educators engage with key complexity principles in their work with students and teachers. Accordingly, in this paper we investigate how one group of teacher educators, the Developmental Physical Education Group (DPEG), have grappled to develop their own knowledge of complexity thinking while concurrently attempting to support students and teachers in their efforts to apply these principles within local schools. Employing methodology from self-study, the paper provides data from two focus group interviews carried out in 2012 and 2014 in which six members of the DPEG discuss how they wrestled to understand, share and support the application of complexity thinking in practical contexts. In particular, the paper explores how the group members worked with complexity principles such as self-organisation, emergence and ‘the edge of chaos’ to develop innovative pedagogical strategies with children, students and teachers. Findings from the study reveal how all members of the DPEG, in their initial engagement with complexity principles, raised questions about their personal approaches to the teaching and learning process but also struggled to use the principles to inform their practice. Two years later, however, as the group’s confidence with complexity thinking grew, the members had created a shared understanding and language around complexity thinking, were more comfortable debating issues around complexity and also describing how key principles had impacted upon their pedagogical strategies in practical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore young Chinese girls’ aspirations and ideal environments for engagement in Health and Physical Education (HPE) and physical activity (PA) in Greater Western Sydney. Interviews are used to elicit these girls’ perceptions of their future and ideal environments in relation to HPEPA. Their data offer insights into key influences regarding what is thinkable, desirable and achievable in their HPEPA environments. Results showed dimensions of environments, such as social and pedagogical aspects, that are conducive to these girls’ aspirations in HPEPA (e.g. social support from parents, and functional built environment for HPE). This paper aligns with a strengths-based approach to understanding and recognising young Chinese girls’ perceived aspirations within their socio-cultural environment. In doing so, we discuss how feminism and femininity are positioned from a Chinese perspective that may provide alternative views to a post-feminist panorama in promoting advancement of all young girls in HPEPA. Results invite us to take into account some of the girls’ ambivalence towards being an ‘autonomous’ and ‘dependent’ modern Chinese young girl. This paper calls for a rethinking of how aspirations that shape young people’s future in HPEPA in much of the contemporary Western world are conceptualised in academic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal coach education has been described as an activity which promotes conformity from course attendees. To date, however, few studies have looked at how coach education has been socially constructed over time. The present study addresses this gap and provides a Freirean account of English Football Association (FA) coach education since 1967. Specifically, this study focuses on coach education in the participation domain (grassroots football) where many participants first experience football. Data were collected through an analysis of 47 documents including coaching materials and FA policies. In addition, an oral history of 16 participants whom had all experienced FA coach education were conducted. This paper presents five findings which explain the development of pedagogy over time. The findings illustrate a move away from oppressive, dogmatic pedagogical methods towards a more liberating form of coach education policy. For example, FA formal coach education policy now embraces in-situ methods to situate learning in the lives of coaches. The paper supports the trajectory towards liberation by advocating for more humility and critical-consciousness between tutors and coaches, thus rejecting the concept of banking education. In doing so the paper makes three novel contributions by; (1) describing the development of FA coach education over time; (2) introducing a Freirean theoretical perspective to coach education research; and (3) prompting course tutors to consider how they can enhance their practice to be more liberating. These lessons may benefit educators both in football and other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overrepresentation of independently educated athletes amongst Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics was described as 'One of the worst statistics in British sport'. Whilst the ensuing debate referred to independent schools en masse, the sector is far from homogenous. Within the UK independent (private) sector, a small subset of schools has educated a significant number of international sportsmen and women. Despite this record of success however, little research exists on young athletes in independent schools. Answering calls to study independent school sport, this paper uses semi-structured interviews with pupils and staff involved in sport in six independent schools in England to explore why some schools consistently produce international athletes. A dual theory framework combining the Eliasian notions of process and figuration, with Bourdieu's concept of distinction is employed to offer a sociological perspective on the sporting success of the schools studied. The findings reveal striking differences in institutional attractiveness, coaching, the sporting potential of the pupil intake, and facilities between the least and the most successful schools studied, where a number of intra and inter school practices contribute to an increasingly professionalised sporting environment. In concluding, a novel and more variegated perspective on the under researched and often difficult to access field of independent school sport is offered. The proposition being that through reconciliation of the notions of distinction and status rivalry, we are better able to understand the repeated success of some independent schools in supporting the development of talented young athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of selected academic research literature that underpins contemporary preschool physical education. We highlight and interrogate diverse rationales and beliefs that serve to influence and structure preschool physical education in various forms. We speculate as to how preschool practitioners and children might engage in specific practices relative to these discourses. Our consideration of preschool physical education discourses relies upon a Foucaultian analysis of the major techniques of power and also raises possibilities of conceptualising subjectivity formation through his concept of the ‘technologies of the self’. Discourses related to motor skill development, play and physical activity, in particular, appear to be prevalent in the selected literature, along with a related pedagogical discourse concerning ‘structure and freedom’. These sometimes competing discourses arguably underpin competing agendas reflecting those who advocate supporting children's free play and those who propose more structured and interventionist practices in relation to young children's physical activity. We conclude that these diverse approaches lend themselves to interpretation and negotiation in the context of preschool physical education, with specific consequences for the embodied experiences and subjectivities of preschool practitioners and children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It has long been held that participation in sport, physical activity (PA) and physical education (PE) can yield valuable benefits for young people (Bailey et al., 2009. The educational benefits claimed for physical education and school sport: An academic review. Research Papers in Education, 24(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701809817). Recently, there has been much focus on the role of such activities for moral development in support of social inclusion and social justice agendas, often centred within the broad field of sport-for-development (Coalter, 2013. Sport for development. Routledge; Rossi & Jeanes, 2016. Education, pedagogy and sport for development: Addressing seldom asked questions. Sport, Education and Society, 21(4), 483–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2016.1160373). However, disability, and the social inclusion of disabled people, has been somewhat overlooked by policy, practice, and research in this field. This article considers findings from a study investigating a sports-based educational programme, Playdagogy, designed for use with children/young people and intended to: (1) raise disability-awareness, (2) promote positive attitudes to disabled people and (3) foster inclusion. In focusing on promoting understandings of disability and inclusion through 'inclusive' sport-based games, Playdagogy reflects a recognition of the need to critique 'normalized' and exclusionary conceptions and practices in youth sport (Fitzgerald, 2009. Disability and youth sport. Routledge). While progress has been made to conceptualise 'anti-disablist' or 'anti-ableist' pedagogies within the context of inclusive education (Beckett, 2015. Anti-oppressive pedagogy and disability: Possibilities and challenges. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 17(1), 76–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/15017419.2013.835278), it has been slow to trace this into relevant curricula or teaching/learning strategies (Symeonidou & Loizou, 2018. Disability studies as a framework to design disability awareness programs: No need for 'magic' to facilitate children's understanding. Disability & Society, 33(8), 1234–1258. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2018.1488677). Playdagogy can be viewed as an attempt to achieve translation of pedagogy into practice. A mixed method approach was employed to capture experiences of programme staff, educators, and pupils (aged 6–12) involved in the Playdagogy programme. Findings highlight key issues related to the experience of delivering and undertaking Playdagogy activities from all stakeholders' perspectives. In acknowledging claims that educational messages are often inherent but not explicit within these kinds of sport for development programmes (Rossi & Jeanes, 2016. Education, pedagogy and sport for development: Addressing seldom asked questions. Sport, Education and Society, 21(4), 483–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2016.1160373), we add to calls for closer examination of the educational process and impact of such initiatives and examine the place of an inclusion/disability focus in future SfD work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is the José María Cagigal Scholar Lecture presented at the AIESEP World Congress in Edinburgh 2018. In the paper I argue that the only real sustainable aim for physical education is more physical education, where different ways of being in the world as some-body are both possible and encouraged. To reach this aim, a focus on the art of teaching is vital as a way of critically scrutinising and designing transformative and genuinely pluralistic physical education practices. In order to do this I discuss education as being educative, a certain view of the child as well as teaching as a continuous act of making judgements about the why(s), what(s) and how(s) of education, normative judgements about desirable change. The take home messages involves: (i) reclaiming a certain view of the child in education, (ii) reclaiming the open-endedness of physical education, and (iii) reclaiming the art of teaching in physical education, which is about being educative and making judgements about what to bring to the educational situation. We then must start with the purpose of education – the why – before deciding on the what and how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the contents of the special issue whose authors, in our view, together demonstrate the need for transdisciplinary study of body pedagogies focussed on embodiment, emplacement, enactment and subjectivity. We celebrate theoretical and methodological diversity in the social sciences while calling for border crossings between the disciplines and perspectives of the social and bio-physical sciences in the interest of better understanding how social and cultural reproduction occurs both within schools and beyond them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the physical education (PE) and physical activity experiences of a group of South Asian, Muslim girls, a group typically marginalised in PE and physical activity research. The study responds to ongoing calls for research to explore across different spaces in young people's lives. Specifically, I draw on a ‘middle-ground’ approach, using Hill Collins' matrix of domination and the notion of intersectionality. These concepts offer the possibility to explore the kinds of settings (physical, social and cultural) in which girls undertake PE and physical activity, how these spaces influence experience and how the girls navigate these spaces. The study is based in a large, urban, co-educational, secondary school in Yorkshire, England (95% of the students are from minority ethnic communities, 91% are Muslim and 63% live in the top 10% most deprived neighbourhoods in the country). Data generation involved three phases: observations, creating research artefacts in focus groups and in-depth interviews. The findings reveal the diverse ways the girls are physically active. They also demonstrate a complexity to their involvement which is contingent upon space, discourses and people. For example, discourses of competition, ability and peers are more significant within PE; whilst family, religion and culture feature beyond this context. The paper concludes by acknowledging the girls' heterogeneity and agency in the ways they strategically navigate spaces in their quest to be physically active on their terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on ethnographic data collected over 12 months of field research, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on sport for development (SFD) by giving voice to alternative constructions of the educative potential of SFD. It does this by exploring the social attitudes of youth, educators, community leaders and government officials in the Pacific island nation of Sāmoa towards sport, education and development. Imagining sport to be like ‘school outside’, my Samoan interlocutors construct sport as an educative platform that prepares young ‘academically unfit’ men to engage an increasingly global political economy in ways classroom education cannot. Viewing international sport as a form of ‘development education’, my interlocutors perceive the educative value of SFD as being rooted in the potential for sport to help move underperforming boys into transnational flows of remittances to the family. In this way, Samoans perceive sport as enabling ‘at risk’ youth to serve their families, to learn English and to become globally minded, ultimately equipping them with the skills needed to achieve transnational futures once beyond their reach. In allowing a grassroots understanding of SFD to emerge, the paper challenges the assumption that the institutions of sport and education are compatible, mutually reinforcing and complementary. Specifically, viewing sport as an alternative to schooling may serve to reintegrate underperforming young men back into an education-to-employment pipeline, but it also carries important implications for the de-skilling of youth and the perpetuation of their positions of marginality. The paper calls into question the role of education and sport in and for development, highlighting important questions that SFD stakeholders should consider. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anthropologist, Tim Ingold, recounts that humans inhabit a familiar, yet evolving world – stretched between 'the happened' and 'the not yet'. Despite efforts to the contrary, we can never fully be sure of its future configurations, making it difficult to determine how to solve yet-to-be-encountered problems, or how to skilfully navigate through uncharted terrain. Following on, I contend that to thrive in such a world is not to coordinate our orientation onto its surface in advance, but is to move, immersed with its opportunities for action; knowing as we go. Specifically, weaving together works from ecological psychologist James Gibson, and educational philosopher Jan Masschelein, with those of Ingold, I review the idea that knowledge growth of everyday tasks requires correspondence with threads of inquiry. This proposition highlights three principles of skilled behaviour, knowledge and education in an ecologically dynamic world: mastery as submission to constraint; knowing about as subsequent to knowing of; guidance without specification. I bring life to these principles through various applications in sporting contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feeling at home on the field of play offers insights into sport as a social experience between humans and the non-human world. Players, in whatever sport, but especially outdoor team sports, engage with each other and their environment. Take soccer, for instance. Beyond the mercenary dominance of FIFA and the competitive machismo of many player and fans, a universal cultural experience remains – one that is contingent on environmental circumstances. A key aspect of the game's lingua franca is the transferable joy of outside play – something experienced across ages and genders. For those working in physical education, where dominant sports will likely remain so, the question is whether the joy of codified outdoor play can be celebrated and taught above imperatives to produce fit and competitive selves. This paper contends that it can. By reflecting on a regular after-work soccer game at an elite school in Argentina, with the aid of soccer phenomenology and nature writing on joy, it is shown that momentary experiences emerge that celebrate social connections reliant on fragile material conditions. The game, which was prima facie welcome to all, was an event in which histories of soccer were evident in players from around the world. Such histories converged on the field each week as provisional delight and sincere congeniality. Contradictions inevitably remained within this space – inclusion and exclusion, environmental spoliation and appreciation, justice and injustice – just as they do in all encounters between the human and non-human. Yet the act of playing together outside contained the promise of lives not determined by human domination of each other and, crucially, the world around them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes to the relationsbetweensport-education and employment labour markets have resulted in the increasing diversity of how academic and vocational skills, knowledge and practices are valuedwithinthe micro-level of qualifications. The implications of this are particularly felt by further education (FE) sport-lecturers in the UK, who are required to select, transform and transmit messages from both vocational education policy and the sport-industry sectors. To illustrate the implications of these changing relations, the paper offers insight into the experiences of one FE sport-lecturer, Janet (all names are pseudonyms), who, as part of her professional development, engaged within a process of reflective practice that focused on her pedagogic interactions within a Foundation Degree in Sport Coaching (FdSC). Drawing upon a Bernsteinian informed analysis we illustrate how Janet attempted to use a range of pedagogical strategies toframethe selection, transmission and evaluation of academic skills. This process supported students to begin recognising the value of academic skills and assimilate these with the more established vocational skills within the FdSC qualification. The experiences of Janet are then used as a starting point from which to discuss how the possibilities of change to pedagogic relations within the FdSC may be encouraged, developed and enacted across the vocational sport-education sector. We suggest that institutions and stakeholders responsible for shaping higher education sport-qualifications should consider how lecturers are supported in the framing of pedagogical relations that enable academic skills and practices to be integrated and valued within FdSC curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Young people with English as an Additional Language/Dialect backgrounds are often identified in public health messages and popular media as ‘bodies at risk’ because they do not conform to the health regimens of contemporary Western societies. With increasing numbers of Chinese students in Australian schools, it is necessary to advance teachers' understandings of the ways in which these young people negotiate notions of ‘health’ and ‘(un)healthy bodies’. This paper explores the ways in which young Chinese Australians' understand health and (un)healthy bodies. The data upon which this paper focuses were drawn from a larger scale study underpinned by critical, interpretive, ethnographic methods. The participants in this study were 12 young Chinese Australians, aged 10–15 years, from two schools. Photographs of a variety of bodies were sourced from popular magazines and used as a means of interview elicitation. The young people were invited to comment on the photographs and discuss what ‘health’ and the notion of a ‘(un)healthy body’ meant to them. Foucault's concepts of discursive practice and normalisation are used alongside Chinese concepts of holistic paradigms and Wen–Wu to unpack the young people's subjectivities on health and (un)healthy bodies. The findings invite us to move beyond Western subjectivities of health and (un)healthy bodies and highlight the multidimensional and diverse perspectives espoused by some of the young Chinese Australians in this study. The research findings can inform future policy and practice relevant to the exploration of health and (un)healthy bodies in health and physical education and health and physical education teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses two pedagogical case studies (PCS) from a multidisciplinary perspective to highlight the problems of theoretical knowledge in tertiary physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes, school-based physical education (PE) practice and continuous professional learning (CPL) in PE. We argue that a critical view of tertiary PETE and PE teacher educator CPL practice or practices is particularly important if PETE programmes want to develop future PE and current teacher practitioners who are transformative agents. In setting up the pedagogical case study accounts, we recall common conversations about the bodies of knowledge in tertiary PETE programmes that have been positioned as problematic. The accounts highlight the existence of an artificial divide between PE educators as theory generators and both pre-service PE teachers and school-based PE practitioners as theory appliers. We suggest that part of the reason why this divide exists can be attributed to a general misunderstanding of theoretical and practical knowledge that have been wrongly compartmentalised into ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and hence erroneously taught as isolated entities without any connection or direct link with each other, or the former considered to be less relevant and perhaps even irrelevant in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a critical analysis of the representation of physical education (PE) in the 1992 Senate inquiry into 'Physical and Sport Education' in Australia. Analysis focuses specifically upon how and why a new professional discourse, fundamental motor skills (FMS), gained a privileged position in the inquiry, the inquiry report and in subsequent PE policy and practice across Australia. This paper examines the complex policy processes and power-relations underpinning the progressive legitimisation of the FMS discourse, and identifies subtleties and variations in the expression of the discourse. Attention is drawn to the strategic appropriation of established professional discourses and utilisation of crisis discourses in establishing and gaining support for the FMS discourse. The analysis reaffirms policy arenas as sites of contestation but highlights that they are simultaneously sites of possibility for PE professionals who are prepared and able to use discursive resources in strategic ways. The contemporary relevance of the discourses privileged in 1992 and lessons to be learned from events surrounding the Senate inquiry are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore male youth sport coaches' use of humour in relation to the reconstruction of masculinities, contributing to an emergent body of literature on the role of humour in coaching. Three creative non-fiction stories developed from my own coaching experiences in a competitive youth football (soccer) academy are used to examine: (1) coaches' reconstruction of hegemonic/esteemed masculinities; (2) coaches' use of humour to encourage re-alignment with hegemonic masculinities, and; (3) coaches' use of (counter-)humour to disrupt hegemonic representations of masculinities. The stories offer sport coaches and educators with a resource to reflect on masculinities, gender relations, and the everyday use of humour within their own contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant academic narratives about 'the body' occur within two major camps. The first is derived from 'classical social theory', and takes a macroscopic focus. The contrasting perspective is what Sharp (Extended forms of the social, Arena Journal , 1, pp. 221-237, 1993) refers to as 'post-classical theory'. This orientation, originating in theories with a phenomenological focus, attempts to understand individuals as identity forming social actors. This paper offers an alternative perspective to both orientations and is described as a theory of society as 'layered'. This perspective identifies three major themes that shape current understandings about 'the body': autonomy/independence as a primary social value of the 'self' in which the body can be understood as 'an action system', science and technology as potent social forces and inherent risks for individuals in the process of choosing and maintaining a desired lifestyle. These themes are explored via a case study of an Australian Rules footballer. The final part of the paper offers a number of suggestions about the implications of the analysis for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several critical scholars recently have debunked the media's proclamation that with Obama's presidency, the United States has entered a post-racial era, with the media thus fabricating an image of a 'race neutral' American society (McCarthy, C. (2013). The problem with origins. Race and the contrapuntal nature of the education experience. In H. A. Giroux & P. Shannon (Eds.), Education and cultural studies (pp. 104–153). New York, NY; Zirkel, S., & Johnson, T. (2016). Mirror, mirror on the wall: A critical examination of the conceptualization of the study of Black racial identity in education. Educational Researcher, 45(5), 301–311). In this paper, first, I suggest that today's pedagogical conditions within schools built upon 'deficit thinking' (Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91) need to be critically considered as a source of inequity. Second, I contend that the historical legacy of the academic gap and the current health gap work implicitly as a new form of neocolonialism embedded in the current neoliberal colorblind era that continues to mark ethnic-minoritized young people as 'deficient'. Black and ethnic-minoritized young people's attempts to reconcile discrepancies between their own culturally relevant sense of self and the normative 'white' identity become a problematic and difficult process. Third, against the backdrop of intersecting forms of oppression, I discuss how the pedagogical infrastructure of the Body Curriculum allows young people to re-write the body 'from below' (Spivak, G. C. (1993). Outside in the teaching machine. New York, NY: Routledge) from the perspectives of the 'other' – ethnic-minoritized young people, to destabilize the 'center' position and at the same time, create powerful counter-stories for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores physical educators' perspectives on race and racism as a first step towards disrupting whiteness and supporting the development of antiracist practice. With close links to sport, a practice centrally implicated in the creation and maintenance of racialised bodies and hierarchies, Physical Education (PE) offers an important context for a study of whiteness and racism in education. Using collective biography we examine physical educators' narrative stories for what they reveal about the operation of whiteness and racism in PE. Teachers draw on narratives from curricula texts which uphold and reinforce notions of the racialised other, thereby reasserting normative, universal white knowledge. Their pedagogy is underpinned by a colour blind approach where race is 'not seen', yet essentialist and cultural discourses of race are nevertheless deployed to position particular racialised and gendered bodies as 'problems' in PE. Engagement with antiracism is limited to professional rhetoric within pedagogical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of the Physical Education (PE) teacher's body, particularly for teaching PE, has been highlighted in literature. PE teachers are expected to be clear role models to students through their acts, behaviours and bodies. However, their strong embodied subjectivities, particularly those related to their teaching practices, may be problematised. This paper explores the ways in which a group of 15 pre-service PE teachers from a Spanish university constructed perspectives about the body and health in relation to their professional practices. Body journals were used to collect data, which were analysed using a Deleuze-Guattarian approach. The findings reveal the significant emphasis participants placed on their own bodies while teaching PE and the pressure they felt to conform to certain expectations of their professional roles. In response, we propose critical reflection on the content of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programmes and incorporation of alternative pedagogical approaches to alleviate the heavy reliance on pre-service teachers' bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuing professional development (CPD) is currently high on the Scottish Education agenda. Recent curriculum reform in Scotland, with the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence, places physical education (PE) at the forefront for its role in directly supporting learners' mental, emotional, social and physical well-being. This emphasis on PE, along with concerns about the health of the nation, has resulted in a nationwide initiative providing non-specialist teachers of primary PE with the opportunity to develop a specialism in the subject through government-funded CPD programmes at postgraduate level. Using Knowles' andragogical model as a framework, this paper reports data from a larger research study that evaluated a Scottish PE-CPD initiative. This paper comprises a single case holistic study investigating the impact and implications of a PE-CPD programme through the professional learning journeys, from the outset until completion, of four teachers: a nursery teacher, a class teacher, a cluster cover teacher and a PE specialist who participated in the programme. Data were collected over one academic year using two-stage questionnaire interviews and were analysed thematically with special attention given to the emerging general themes to achieve a holistic understanding of the case. Study findings endorse the positive impact of using the andragogical model of adult learning combined with the literature-supported characteristics of effective PE-CPD programmes. Teachers' perspectives on their CPD experiences, integration of acquired learning into working contexts and teaching post-PE-CPD were then examined to determine the next steps. This led to critical reflection on the implications of the findings for the teachers' ongoing professional development. We then challenged the role that university providers play in supporting teachers' lifelong learning. Instead, we suggest new school-university partnerships and alternative ways to support capacity building and lifelong learning towards a sustainable transformational change in Scotland's primary PE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores socio-ecological factors and their interplay that emerge from a qualitative study and influence adolescents' physical activity and sport participation. A total of 13 boys and 7 girls active and inactive adolescents, from years 12 and 13 and different types of school (state and private), participated in semi-structured interviews. It followed a purposeful sampling selection from participants who participated in a previous larger study on physical activity levels. Findings highlight the influence of personal and social interplay, such as perceived competence, obesity and teasing from peers, and new social demands and personal preferences in adolescents' (dis)engagement in physical activity and sport. They also stand out how social and environmental factors affect their participation, such as family, boy/girlfriends, physical education and rural/urban places of residence. These factors appear to have an important impact on the construction of (in)active identities during late adolescence. Policy makers, exercise professionals and educators should be aware of these factors in order to improve health promotion strategies and social policies. Some recommendations are also indicated in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High-performance sport is a big business, with nations such as Australia and New Zealand dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars in the development of facilities and in creating sporting centres of excellence. Historically, high-performance sport and elite athlete programmes (EAPs) were regulated to an extra-curricular space in schools or local communities, but over the last couple of decades, schools in Australia and New Zealand have introduced EAPs into health and physical education (PE). Recent work has begun to explore the rationale for these programmes and their educational priorities, but little research has explored how the elite athlete body is being constructed within this curriculum space. In this paper, I consider two interrelated problems. The first concerns the conflicting discourses of winning in high-performance sport versus getting everyone healthy and active in health and PE. The second involves an explanation of how the elite athlete body is being constructed in these programmes. I argue the juxtaposition of the elite athlete body as disciplined, attractive and healthy to other bodies as lazy, unattractive and unhealthy renders the other bodies as pathological or resistant to disciplinary institutions of the school. In particular, I focus on the ways in which young people's bodies are conceptualised within EAPs in relation to recreation, health, PE and other curriculum spaces. Throughout this paper, I provide examples to illustrate how EAPs may perpetuate normative ways of thinking that legitimatise elitism in schools. I propose that under radical reform, EAPs may have the potential to provide educational value and opportunities to students. I conclude by offering the cultural studies curriculum model that retains sport and desirable educational outcomes for health and PE as an alternative to elite athlete or talent development models. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The field of physical education (PE), as it exists in teacher education, is dynamic as ways of preparing teachers to meet the needs of young people in contemporary times change. Such endeavours are underpinned by concerns about school-based PE, the alienation of students from PE, and responsibility for producing healthy students. Concerns also exist around a perceived propensity amongst pre-service teachers of PE to steadfastly retain initial beliefs and values and resist more socially critical perspectives and pedagogies. An engagement with socially critical discourses in teacher education is critical if PE is to be a site of inclusion rather than marginalisation and exclusion. This paper examines how a group of pre-service teachers of PE, who experienced a teacher education programme, at an Australian university, that was infused with strong social justice discourses constituted subjectivities and pedagogical practices. We explore how, emotional connectivity, and an ‘ethic of care’, instil broadened perspectives and engagement with socially critical pedagogical practices. Whilst emotions and caring are generally perceived as marginal attributes in the field of PE, we suggest that the affective domain is significant to effective pedagogical practices, subjectivities of teachers of PE and the reality of teaching. We seek to trouble ‘truths’ disseminated by hegemonic discourses that construct PE teaching as a technical undertaking, founded on disciplinary knowledge and curricular expertise. We close by providing possibilities for others working with PE pre-service teachers around foregrounding affective dimensions of pedagogical practices and teacher subjectivities and propose that these possibilities might address calls for a new type of PE teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on a study that explored black and minority ethnic (BME) students' experiences of physical education teacher education (PETE) in England. Widening the ethnic diversity of those choosing to enter the teaching profession has been a key policy objective of the Training and Development Agency—the government agency responsible for teacher education—for some years. However PETE programmes, designed to produce specialist physical education (PE) teachers to work with secondary age (11–18 years) pupils, reveal significant and enduring levels of under-representation of BME candidates, compared to other subject specialisms. The study reported here used semi-structured interviews and questionnaires with 25 BME participants from five universities involved in PETE in England. The findings show that BME PETE students share many of the characteristics with their White counterparts, being young, sporty and with a desire to improve PE experiences for future generations. However, in other ways, their experiences reveal the significance of ‘race’ ethnicity, and religion and how these are interwoven with gender to position them as ‘other’ in PETE spaces and within schools. Skin colour and religious dress were significant to stereotyping and everyday interactions that served to position them as ‘out of place’, particularly evident in practical activity sessions and on teaching placements. ‘Race’ and ethnicity as part of their professional education was at best a marginalised discourse, at worse, reproduced a deficit perspective of BME pupils’ and their schooling. The paper concludes by arguing for a critical analysis of the construction of Whiteness through PETE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper centres on research that investigated the contemporary policy, curriculum and pedagogical landscape of Health and Physical Education (HPE) in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the light of increasing impressions that provision was moving to an ‘open market’ situation. Publicly available information sourced via the Internet was used to examine the public and privately funded initiatives, programmes and resources targeted towards the provision of HPE across all phases of education. The data arising revealed an array of government and non-governmental agencies and organisations acting as producers of resources and deliverers of HPE-related programmes in schools. It also clearly pointed to structural convergence between government and non-government sectors. This paper locates the findings from the research amidst developments in policy relations and networks spanning education, health and sport, and presents a theoretically oriented critical re-examination of the structural reconfiguration of contemporary HPE in Aotearoa New Zealand. Analysis brings together insights from Ball and Junemann's work on policy networks and Bernstein's theorising of the social construction of discourse to explore linkages between policy and pedagogic relations, and the discourses and practices in HPE. Attention is directed to the significance of changes in the nature of both the Official Recontextualizing Field and Pedagogic Recontextualizing field, and the connections between the two fields. Changes in the recontextualizing fields are discussed in relation to official pedagogic discourse of HPE and the pedagogic discourse of reproduction. This analysis brings to the fore prospective curriculum and pedagogic implications of new policy networks and new networks of providers associated with provision of HPE in schools. Discussion acknowledges potentially varied readings of contemporary developments and addresses the opportunities and challenges for teachers and teacher educators in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union Sport Unit has identified the societal and educational role of sport as a central topic in its new research agenda. It is argued that European Union (EU) citizens should be supported to learn continuously across the life course. In the sport/physical activity (PA) context, the role of teachers, coaches and exercise instructors (among others) is pivotal to the delivery of this aspiration. Yet, in this paper, we argue that entrenched barriers between teaching, coaching and exercise instruction and the lack of a well-developed, integrative underpinning knowledge base centred on pedagogy are serious impediments. We suggest that the development of a new integrative subdiscipline in the Academy may help pedagogy, and pedagogy academics, to make a stronger contribution to addressing these barriers and gaps. ‘Sport & Exercise Pedagogy’ (SEP) is proposed as an education-based, boundary-crossing, multi/interdisciplinary area of study located in the field known variously as ‘Sport & Exercise Sciences’, ‘Kinesiology’ and ‘Human Movement Sciences’. SEP places individuals and their life course learning at its core. A new cross-border1policy initiative from the island of Ireland illustrates the potential for SEP to contribute to PA/public health agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the 1990s, neoliberal reforms in Sweden increased local school actors' possibilities to develop school profiles regarding both organization and content. This restructuring has increased the total number of school sports programs as well as the possibilities for upper secondary schools and sports clubs to develop elite and amateur sports on a local level. In a new educational reform, the Swedish Government criticizes parts of the Swedish school sports system. The Government believes that the majority of local school sports programs and courses obstruct the maintenance of national equivalence, that upper secondary schools use school sports to attract pupils for economic reasons and that some pupils involved in school sports may fail to reach the academic or vocational goals of regular upper secondary education. Using critical discourse analysis, the present paper illustrates how educational policies are linked to wider symbolic meaning systems in an attempt to legitimize, define and organize upper secondary schools and to characterize pupils as either eligible or ineligible to participate in school sports. The analyses are based on various types of empirical data: policy documents, official letters from the sports movement on the government bill and in-depth interviews. The results indicate that the reform represents a shift in the policy rhetoric: from a normative rhetoric highlighting pupils' social and emotional reasons for choosing school sports, to a rational rhetoric emphasizing efficiency, standardization and regulation of pupils' educational choices. Using school sports as an example, the paper shows how the main aim of the reform—to raise educational standards and maintain national equivalence—is achieved through social differentiation, meaning that pupils with the right performance indicators are selected for participation in programs to which they are suited. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In view of the persistence of health inequalities and declines in leisure-sport participation over the life course, several quantitative investigations have explored the links between participation and other leisure activities, which have their foundations in childhood and youth, as a means of understanding adults’ health behaviours. This paper presents new qualitative evidence to examine the largely under-explored relationship between leisure-sport participation and health within the context of educational transitions among a sample of 30–35-year-olds in north-west England. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted with 19 participants between July and August 2009, the paper illuminates the differential impact that gender and social class had on sports participation, and other health-related behaviours (e.g. drinking and smoking), among different groups of adults during the inherently transitional life-stage of youth. The findings suggest that while significant, the length of time spent in education and the differential educational experiences recalled by adults cannot adequately explain the observed differences in health and leisure-sport participation. The major sources of difference, while associated with educational transitions, appeared to lie instead in the broader inequalities that characterized adults’ lives and it is argued that simply enhancing leisure-sport participation and individual lifestyle change, as a means of health promotion, is a futile endeavour that does little to tackle the socio-economic structural determinants of health. We conclude by suggesting that until this is recognized by government and those both inside and outside of the health and sport policy communities, stubborn differences in leisure-sport participation rates and health inequalities—that have their foundations in childhood and youth, but extend over the life course—are likely to remain intact, and the unequal lives people currently lead are likely to become even more unequal in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interrogates the development on critical understanding of the complex relationships between society, schooling and the self. Implications in the construction of identity and health and the achievement of social hierarchies order and control in society and schools; Theoretical framework that accommodates the need for dynamic understandings of teaching and learning as increasingly important aspects of theorizing health and physical education practice; Provision of ongoing locations for the negotiation, production, and presentation of selves that allows reproduction and re-presentation.

This study explores the role of school and university partnership teams in the professional development of physical education (PE) pre-service teachers (PSTs) during their one year Postgraduate Certificate in Education course in England. The paper focuses on the key influences and processes that impacted on PST subject knowledge development. An interpretive methodology informed by constructivist grounded theory [Charmaz, K. (2006).Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sage.] was adopted. This research highlights that the process of knowledge development in physical education teacher education (PETE) is socially constructed and complex. Much of the PSTs’ development was influenced by various communities of practice, particularly their school placements’ PE departments, but also their university-based learning community. Of these, the legitimised practices within the PE departments were found to be especially important to PSTs’ development. University-based learning was credited by PSTs with enhancing their holistic understanding of the learning process, developing those aspects of critical pedagogy that were under-developed in schools. This study identifies the capability of school/university partnerships to facilitate enhanced knowledge development in PETE. Taking into consideration the evolving nature of PETE within a political context that is progressively moving towards an entirely school-based model, an evidence-based debate over the manner and nature of the subject knowledge to be developed is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since Heidegger's influential text; Being and time (1927/2005), the phenomenological question of what it means to 'be' has generated a vast body of work. This paper reports data from a phenomenological study that investigated what it means to 'be' a youth performance coach. An overview of the interpretive phenomenological methods used is followed by presentation of coaches and data. Data analysis resulted in the identification of three constituent 'essences' of youth performance coaching: (i) care; (ii) a commitment to educate athletes authentically for corporeal challenges to come; and (iii) working with others to achieve a specialised corporeal excellence. The three identified essences manifest themselves in a broad lifeworld that includes settings on and off the field of play (FOP). Given the very different insights into the practice of coaching that emerge from this study, we argue it would be useful for future studies of coaching practice and coach education to extend their focus to take into account coaches' wider lives both on and off the FOP. We also argue for further exploration of coaching by drawing on phenomenological concepts such as care and relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ (CfE) guidelines and associated learning experiences and outcomes have been developed following a national debate on the purposes of education in Scotland. The recent development shifts physical education's (PE) role in Scottish education, changing from contributing to the ‘Expressive Arts’ area of the curriculum, to one central to the newly created curriculum area of ‘Health and wellbeing’ in the CfE. This paper provides an analysis of the broader policy context at national and global levels examining the policy developments for PE in Scotland situating them within a globalised discourse emphasising concerns about ill-health and obesity within society. Drawing on the work of Bowe et al., the paper examines the context of production and the context of influence that has contributed to the recent development of ‘Health and wellbeing’ within the CfE. It is argued that the role for PE and the focus on schools promoting daily physical activity within the CfE masks the complexity of addressing the issues of health and well-being. In conclusion it is highlighted that in the interpretation and implementation of policy there will be further issues for PE and as yet unknown consequences for the context of practice and pupils' experiences of PE in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The concept of the 'professional teacher' is highly contestable, and the array of definitions that circulate in teacher education draw on competing theoretical and ideological positions. This paper explores what discourses about professionalism are currently available within Norwegian physical education teacher education (PETE) and, in particular, asks whether they reflect the needs of postmodern teachers in a 'knowledge society'? It acknowledges that there are currently two dominant discourses about the 'professional' teacher, so-called 'activist' or 'managerial' professionalism, and asks whether, and in what ways, PE student teachers engage with and/or reject the discourses' competing ideas about what counts as 'good' practice. By analysing the student teachers' emerging professional identities, the paper aims to reveal not only the students' subjective meanings about professionalism, but also illuminate the current power structures that operate in PETE about relevant 'professional' knowledge. It draws on data from group interviews with 12 Norwegian PE students in their final year of study for a bachelor degree in PETE, and a critical content analysis of PETE curricula at two institutions of higher education. The paper highlights the way in which views about professionalism in PETE tend to be normative in nature, and are not founded on explicit theoretical ideas about 'good' practice or theoretical understandings of the role of the teacher in postmodern schools. Indeed, PETE programmes seem to do little to disrupt recruits' 'apprenticeship-of-observation', even though Lortie revealed this problematic aspect of professional socialisation over three decades ago. The student teachers' narratives seem to be locked into 'modernist' or 'classical' ideas about good PE practice, which are inappropriate for meeting the challenges of working with socially diverse pupils or in collaborative teacher groups. Recruitment to PETE via examinable PE appears paradoxically to accentuate the students' sports performing (teacher) selves, rather than providing them with a solid understanding of PE's content knowledge on which to develop broader PE teacher professional identities. Therefore, the paper asks whether teacher educators need to reassess their recruitment policies to PETE, as well as to systematically re-analyse their 'taken-for-granted' notions of teacher professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capoeira, the Brazilian dance and martial art is now globalised and taught widely outside Brazil. Instruction is provided by Brazilians who are living in self-imposed exile from their homeland. The authentic capoeira that such teachers provide is a major attraction for non-Brazilian students. However, there is little research available on the motivations and strategies of overseas capoeira instructors. Building on a long term ethnographic study, this paper showcases the goals and strategies of one successful Brazilian teacher, from the Beribazu Group of Capoeira, working in the UK. This teacher reflects upon his four interlocking aims for his students and the strategies for achieving them. They should develop social cohesion, appreciate Brazilian culture, play good capoeira and learn to move their bodies acrobatically, flexibly and beautifully. Two sociologists embed the teacher's perspective on his work in an analytic framework derived from Bourdieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing landscape of the professionalisation of sports coaching and is presented in response to the dearth of empirical research and peer-reviewed literature existing within the field. This absence or 'lack' has, in turn, created a political context in which the discourses that inhabit transitions towards professionalism are becoming increasingly rigid and inflexible. Policies too, have exacerbated this situation, creating imposed reforms that have sought to homogenise coaching practice and further gloss over cultural difference and diversity. While volunteerism is often regarded as a socially embedded activity, and one that is part of the UK's long-established coaching tradition, still there remains an ambition to transform coaching into a form of certified, professionalised activity. That is, a notion of professionalism with clearly benchmarked standards, novel forms of commercial engagement and ever-present systems of formal accreditation. Out of which has evolved a series of treatments prescribing somewhat standardised solutions to otherwise unique and individualised professional challenges. Against this backdrop, this paper adopts a more critical orientation towards the debate on the professionalisation of sports coaching. It examines the tensions, power and resistance that are manifested in practice across different areas of sport, and moves to understand some of the key differences emerging between contemporary reforms, situated practice and socially embedded coaching traditions. Drawing extensively on Bourdieurian and Foucauldian philosophy, the analysis reflects upon the experiences of coaches and stakeholders operating at the levels of voluntary and community-based practice in the north-west of England. It examines notions of resistance and compliance in situ, external factors and policies that have impacted the field, and analyses the complexities that inhabit the profession of sports coaching as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to illustrate how embodied ways of knowing may enhance our theoretical understanding within the field of physical education teacher education (PETE). It seeks to illustrate how teacher educators' viewpoints and understanding of gender relations are inevitably linked to socially constructed webs of emotions, as much as to intellectual rationales. Indeed, the paper argues for the need for PETE research to transcend the dualistic divide of reason/emotion. It builds upon interview data from an investigation interested in illuminating the ways in which teacher educators develop their professional identities, using the lenses of gender equal opportunities and equity to examine the degree to which identities reflect 'managerial' or 'democratic' professional projects. In particular it analyses the way in which 'gender talk' seems to evoke strong emotional reactions, often 'negative' feelings, while at the same time, gender equity concerns remain on the periphery of the discipline, despite increasing research evidence which reveals damaging discriminatory learning environments. By using Hargreaves (2000) concept of 'emotional geographies' the paper contends that 'negative emotions' about gender issues are currently hegemonic on account of today's configurations of human relations in PETE, because the discipline's feeling rules construct 'negative feelings' as being reasonable. Acknowledging that professional identities are on-going projects, and that feeling rules can be re-configured, the paper also seeks to illustrate how competing emotions may in the future lead to gender equality assuming a new role in PETE's 'regimes of truths'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]