Curricula and pedagogies that fail to utilise the cultural resources of students contribute to educational disadvantage. The health and physical education (HPE) learning area is not exempt from these concerns with calls emerging within Australia to include movement forms and ways of knowing of Indigenous and ethnic-minority students. In many…

Background: Laws and legislation have prompted movement from special education towards inclusive education, whereby students with disabilities are included in mainstream physical education (PE) classes. It is widely acknowledged that including students with disabilities in PE presents significant challenges in relation to meeting the diverse needs…

Widening access to higher education is a key aspiration of Australian educational policy. Drawing on a sample of non-traditional undergraduate Health and Physical Education (HPE) students, this study argues that an inclusive curriculum recognises and builds on the resources represented by students from various socio-cultural backgrounds. Aligned…

Now in its third edition, Health and Physical Education: Preparing Educators for the Future continues to provide a comprehensive overview of the theoretical underpinnings, knowledge, understanding and skills required to successfully teach health and physical education in Australia. Emphasising the importance of the development of movement…

Sports media are significant to the construction and representation of sports cultures and sporting bodies. They function as public pedagogies that frame knowledge and learning negotiated within and beyond physical education (PE) lessons. In this capacity public pedagogies of sports media inform young people's understandings of themselves and…

Pedagogical practices in schooling bear a potential to impact on student success, achievement and engagement with schooling. This is especially the case for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are deeply dependent on schooling for their educational resources. Central to this paper are pedagogies for social justice and improved engagement…

Pre-service teachers of physical education (PE) bring understandings about gender and bodies to their university studies. These understandings are partially informed by biographies and experiences and bear potential to mediate learning and processes of becoming teachers. In this paper we explore technologies of power/knowledge and technologies of…

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…

The development of health literacies, in relation to health, well-being, safety and physical activity, is a key pillar of the "Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education". Implications, therefore, arise for teachers of health and physical education (HPE) and their pedagogical practices. These practices of HPE inform ways of…

Pedagogical practices are fundamental to teachers' work, and in the spaces of schooling impact significantly on students' success and achievement (Evans, J. 1986. "Physical Education, Sport and Schooling: Studies in the Sociology of Physical Education." London: Falmer Press.). This is especially the case for students from disadvantaged…

In developed economies, such as Australia, schooling is heavily impacted by neo-liberal and neo-conservative agendas. Policies suggest a homogeneity in students that fails to reflect regional contexts of inequality. For the new Australian Curriculum, which includes Health and Physical Education (AC: HPE), this logic prioritises consistency in…

In this research a number of approaches were used with pre-service physical education teachers in an attempt to foster inclusive and critical approaches to teaching physical education. Physical experiences, storytelling and lab school were used to highlight the multifaceted processes around students' engagement in physical education and…

The body is a powerful symbolic form and all bodily activities are expressions of culture. The look, size, shape and physicality of bodies are perceived by all and compared to particular cultural standards. In this way the body is inscribed with culture and can serve as a site for social control. Various discourses of the body, including those…

This paper focuses on the significance of embodied understandings to the emerging subjectivities and pedagogical practices of pre-service teachers undertaking a Physical Education (PE) specialisation through a B.Ed. (primary/middle). Data from a research project conducted at an Australian university with seven pre-service teachers will be…

The obesity crisis is a hegemonic discourse that has established common-sense understandings that young people are less active and fit than previous generations. Unquestioning acceptance of links between fitness and obesity in turn leads to unproblematic fitness testing of young people. Argument is made that fitness tests motivate and encourage…