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Policy classifies and shapes people/subjects in particular kinds of ways. Focusing on the context of Health and Physical Education (HPE), this paper analyses policy documents from Australia, the United States of America (USA) and Wales. We pay particular attention to how learners are represented within and across the three policy documents, and we apply Bacchi's 'What's the Problem Represented to be?' approach to guide the analysis. For us, problematization is a fruitful and positive process that enables educators to engage with a critical dialogue regarding the policies they are expected to enact. Our analysis highlighted that common across the policies were overlapping discourses of idealism, neoliberalism, healthism, and individualism, which serve to reinforce deficit language and a focus on what learners 'lack'. The problem of 'learner as lacking' is represented within the policies via at least three subject positions: 'the sedentary learner', 'the un-educated learner' and 'the naïve learner'. The findings suggest that the three policies were producing an ideal and perhaps impossible learner (subject) whilst at the same time representing the learner as a problem that the policy could 'fix'. This paper is important because it: (i) demonstrates how certain discourses and voices are amplified and silenced within curriculum policy documents and policy work more broadly; (ii) makes educational and health politics visible; and (iii) creates space for the profession to develop greater critical consciousness related to policy. In terms of future directions, we urge curriculum policy writers and other stakeholders to carefully consider how learners are categorised, represented and governed in and through policy. If curriculum policies, by their very nature, need to produce problems – in this case, the (im)possible subject - we invite educators to engage in critical conversations regarding the policies they are expected to enact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In Australia, Initial Teacher Education Institutions (ITEIs) provide undergraduate Health and Physical (HPE) programmes that meet a number of regulatory requirements, including those of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). In addition, ITEIs must also ensure programme alignment with state/territory-based jurisdictional requirements. While historically varied philosophies and practices have shaped HPE teacher education nationally, ITEIs are thus operating in an increasingly regulated environment. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report research that has critically examined the structure and content of ITEI undergraduate programmes in Australia that prepare teachers for HPE in secondary schools. Analysis at programme and unit levels was undertaken to explore programme variance, ITEI priorities and consideration of the implications that programme structure and content has for graduate secondary HPE teachers and their employers. The paper seeks to contribute to wider debates about the role of teacher education in shaping HPE curriculum futures and the challenges faced by ITEIs to navigate increasing government regulation. Methods: An audit and document analysis of 15 Australian ITEIs identified programme structures and specific units of study for the preparation of secondary HPE teachers. These programme structures were compared to those of an ITEI in Western Australia (WA), similarly preparing secondary teachers of HPE, and undertaking internal programme renewal. The WA ITEI's programme nomenclature and elements therefore provided the reference point for analysis of variation across programmes nationally. Findings: Findings show that graduate secondary HPE teachers in Australia are variously prepared, with ITEI programme structures ranging in nomenclature, breadth of content, positioning of units and the amount and placement of school-based practicums. ITEIs variously meet state, territory and federal accountability and accreditation requirements in preparing secondary HPE teachers. Programme variations may mean that graduate secondary HPE teachers have differing perspectives on HPE curriculum and pedagogy. Schools employing graduate teachers cannot assume all graduate teachers have a common outlook on or backgrounds in HPE, while meeting the graduate standards. Conclusions: The significant variation between programme structure and content at the 15 ITEIs preparing teachers for HPE in secondary schools indicates that in a heavily regulated sector, ITEIs in Australia remain critical players in shaping HPE practices across Australian schools. Further research is needed to appropriately ascertain the impact of ITEI programme variation on HPE teachers' values and professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shares a unique approach to primary Health and Physical Education (HPE) whereby students learn about personal, social and community health through intergenerational arts-led pedagogies. Drawing on socio-critical, socio-cultural and salutongenic perspectives, the unit of work that the students engaged with was underpinned by an assumption that health is complex, socially constructed and should be problematised. We share a case study of one Grade 5/6 class (age 10-12) that participated in a unit of work where they connected with senior citizens from the same geographical community to learn about personal, social and community health. The unit of work served to problematise the potholes of traditional HPE where health is typically politicised, moralised, risk-focused and individualised. Data collection consisted of artwork, observations, field notes, and semi-structured focus-group interviews with 23 students (mean age=11) and 18 seniors (mean age=73). The findings suggest that the intergenerational arts-led pedagogies, allowed for more nuanced understandings of health and health assets to develop, which made visible in practice a combination of socio-critical, socio-cultural and salutogenic approaches in practice. The findings also offered a novel insight into how people from different generations can link together and co-construct shared meanings of personal, social and community health. In the case study presented here, the intergenerational linking and connection led to preconceptions and stereotypes of each other to be challenged, and for traditional power balances to loosen and shift over time and context. We can see these changes as pedagogical possibilities whereby students have the opportunity to further develop their knowledge and understanding of personal, social and community health. These possibilities can only come to fruition, however, if teachers are supported to experiment and be creative in their pedagogical work. We conclude that there is rich potential for intergenerational arts-led HPE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notions of creativity are increasingly central to educational scholarship and policies, but few studies attend to the intersection between Health and Physical Education (H/PE) and creativity. In this paper we explore the literature on creativity in education and identify how creativity is represented across a broad spectrum of enquiry yet limited in relation to specifically H/PE. Writing from an Australian context, we examine how the key ideas and propositions from the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education and the Critical and Creative Thinking capability raise important questions regarding the social emergence of educative creative purpose and potential in H/PE. We outline the utility of a 'creative ecologies' conceptual framework to consider contemporary practices in H/PE, and apply this to two purposively selected resources; to showcase their contextual eminence for creative learning in H/PE pedagogy and practice. The first resource, Phenomenom!, was funded by Horticultural Innovation Australia to develop food literacy and is linked to cross-curriculum learning outcomes. The second resource, Fitter. Faster. Better, is a St Martin's Youth drama-arts performance where students were prompted to design and perform a fitness programme for adults. Utilising the creative ecologies framework we illustrate the complexity of interconnected creative processes in H/PE as a series of networked elements and cultural flows (policies, practices, products, process, material environments, and partnerships). This framework is then used to identify how the two educational resources exemplify and open up a socially creative practice in both H/PE and everyday life. Our theoretical developments offer new ways to identify, design and enact quality creative and contemporary socio-cultural H/PE curriculum within a broader creative ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I (re)define outsourcing in a way that reflects the nature of the practice in education. While business and management definitions of outsourcing have been generative to this point, they are relatively broad and place wide boundaries on the practice. Moreover, they do not acknowledge the interpretation and enactment of outsourcing in contexts where economic models were never supposed to dominate. To create a bespoke and 'stipulative' definition that is a better fit-for-purpose, I selected one school subject, Health and Physical Education (HPE), and one country, Australia, as an illustrative case. I then analysed three literature corpora to find examples and attributes of outsourcing. I argue that recruiting this new definition will allow scholars within and beyond the field of HPE to construct new arguments and generate different types of rich data on the practice in ways that they might not necessarily have been able to previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]