Despite extensive critique, the teaching of Health and Physical Education (HPE) continues to be characterised by individualised and performative ideologies which are reflected in part by a continued focus upon fitness testing. There has been little attempt, however, to explore Australian HPE teachers' thoughts and reasoning for its privileged…

This paper makes use of critical discourse analysis and Bourdieu's theoretical framework to explore rural young women's meanings of health and fitness and how the healthism discourse is perpetuated through their experiences in school physical education (PE). The young women's own meanings are explored alongside interview data from their school PE…