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The role that school health and physical education (HPE) plays in the making of physically active and healthy citizens continues to be rearticulated within the field of HPE practice. In Australasia, for example, this is evident in HPE curricula changes that now span almost two decades with ongoing advocacy for greater recognition of socially critical perspectives of physical activity and health. This paper reports on one part of a larger collaborative project that focused on how HPE teachers understand and enact socially critical perspectives in their practice. The paper draws on interview data obtained from 20 secondary school HPE teachers, all of whom graduated from the same physical education teacher education (PETE) programme in New Zealand, a programme that espouses a socially critical orientation. The teaching experience of the study participants ranged from 1 to 22 years of service. The preliminary analysis involved deduction of common themes in relation to the research questions and then, drawing on the theoretical framework of Bourdieu [1990.The logic of practice. Cambridge: Polity Press], these themes were analysed in more detail to gain insight into how and why the graduate teachers’ expressed their particular understanding of HPE and critical pedagogy. The findings suggested that this PETE programme did have some impact on the participant teachers’ perceptions of physical activity and health, and the role of socially critical thinking. However, there was also evidence to suggest that many of them did not have a clear understanding of the transformative agenda of critical pedagogy. We conclude by suggesting that although this PETE programme did plant ‘seeds’ that had an impact on the graduate teachers’ awareness and thinking about socially critical issues in relation to physical activity and health, it did not necessarily turn them into critical pedagogues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]