The field of education is a vital component of today's society, enriching and facilitating the attainment of new knowledge. Progress continues to be achieved in this area as new methods are envisioned that increase education's value. "Transforming the Future of Learning with Educational Research" brings together diverse perspectives that…

Background: The Digital Forms of Assessment project is a three-year Australian Research Council Linkage research project being conducted by Edith Cowan University's Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) in partnership with the Curriculum Council of Western Australia. The project is investigating the potential for a digital format…

This research focused on the perceptions of pre-service and beginning health and physical education (HPE) teachers in relation to their preparedness for teaching. A questionnaire was designed to engage with teacher professional standards addressing (i), professional knowledge; (ii), professional relationships and (iii), professional practice.…

We argue that gender issues in physical education (PE) remain in some schools, despite advances in PE research and curricula aimed at engaging females in PE. We interviewed five Australian PE teachers (1 male and 4 females) at a co-educational, regional high school about the factors affecting female participation in PE and the strategies they used…

Objective: The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a school-based physical fitness intervention (Fit4Fun) on the physical fitness and physical activity (PA) levels of primary school children. Methods: A group-randomized controlled trial with a 3-month wait-list control group was conducted in…

Why would boys want to dance? Why would anyone want to dance? The argument prosecuted in this paper is that dance educators have tended to see dance as a self-evidently good thing with self-evident benefits for children who learn to dance. In other words, dance educators tend to concern themselves with why students should dance rather than why…

This paper reports on a study investigating the empirical substance of Evans' proposed social construction of ability. Data were collected through text analysis of a Senior physical education (PE) syllabus, semi-structured interviews and participant observations of students and teachers in two senior secondary school contexts (one school situated…

In recent years, various scholars have expounded on the notable pedagogic work that assessment plays in educational contexts, describing its capacity to convey powerful messages on the valued aspect of education knowledge, impacting upon how and what students learn in these contexts. However, not many studies have sought to gain an insight into…

This study assessed the feasibility and impact of introducing a programme of an additional 30 minutes per day of moderate physical activity within curriculum time on learning and readiness to learn in a large elementary school in south-east Queensland, Australia. The programme, Active Kids Active Minds (AKAM), involved Year 5 students (n = 107),…

This paper identifies "quality" as an internationally relevant concept to be problematised in contemporary debates about physical education (PE). Drawing on the conceptualisation of curriculum by B. Bernstein in 1977, pedagogy and assessment as three inter-related message systems of schooling, the paper presents and explores curriculum,…

This review assembles pedometry literature focused on youth, with particular attention to expected values for habitual, school day, physical education class, recess, lunch break, out-of-school, weekend, and vacation activity. From 31 studies published since 1999, we constructed a youth habitual activity step-curve that indicates: (a) from ages 6…

"Taking exercise", whether it be recreational walking, participating in club sport, or joining in a physical education (PE) lesson, is a culturally loaded behaviour. We all see, do and talk about physical activity differently, yet, there has been relatively little research or theorising around difference in race, ethnicity, cultural…

The Beijing olympics prompted educationalists to develop new curriculum resources. These resources focus on the socio-cultural elements of the games, olympism and olympic values, the moral and ethical aspects of sport and select geographical, historical and social dimensions of traditional and contemporary Chinese culture. Typically produced as…

Background: Recent developments in games and sport teaching such as that of Teaching Games for Understanding, Play Practice and Game Sense suggest that they can make a significant contribution toward the development of tactical understanding, ability to read the game, decision-making and a general "sense of the game", yet empirical…

In this paper I argue that the meaning of movement of which embodied knowing, somatic understanding and ecological subjectivity are central tenets, has not received due recognition in the current discourses of physical education. While the interest in the meaning and meaning-making of movement within the physical education discourse has existed…