Traditionally in education, particularly in elementary education, curriculum areas such as PE, Art, and Music have been labeled with the commonly known term "specials." In many cases, this term has simply meant that these classes include "extra" content that enhances the school's overall academics when time is allowed. This…

Nation-states have concerns about the health and wellbeing of their citizens and these concerns have directly or indirectly influenced educational reform and curriculum development. In 2000, China issued a directive of 'Health First' which applied to all elements of the education system. In its scale and scope, this represented a significant and…

Background: Physical Literacy (PL) is a concept enduring controversy. Based on Actor-Network Theory and Venturini's definition, PL is considered a controversy because it is a 'situation' in which actors disagree and there is 'shared uncertainty' around what it is and is not. Given the increasing expectation, in some countries, that PL becomes a…

Background: Physical literacy (PL) has generated substantial international interest across sport, health and education sectors. Teachers play a crucial role in supporting children's PL growth. Despite PL featuring in several physical education curricular texts, research into teacher understanding and perception of the concept is scarce. This study…

The staffing and outsourcing of the marginalised curriculum area Health and Physical Education (HPE) has been an area of growing concern, alongside rising concerns for the decline of students' health due to increased sedentary behaviour and mental health problems, yet there has been little research attention to the staffing and delivery of HPE in…

Health and physical education (HPE) is a discursively white, Western learning domain. Despite minor disruptions through radical scholarship in HPE research and teacher education (often referred to as PETE), and the implementation of curricular devices and/or models-based practices promoting inclusion in HPE teaching, more radical work to honour…

This paper reports on the first phase of a longitudinal project investigating the perceived purposes that different stakeholders have for primary physical education (PE). In the study, the views of 19 teacher educators from seven countries across Europe were sought. While teacher educators may have some influence across the layers of an education…

Beginning and experienced teachers were surveyed on the most important things a beginning health and physical education teacher (HPE) needs to know. The results showed a range of broad topics that affect early career teachers as they are inducted in to the teaching field. Some of the responses are more prescient and relate to current events and…

This research note suggests the emergence of Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbots like ChatGPT pose challenges to the future of higher education. We as a field should pay attention to issues and opportunities associated with this technology across learning, teaching, and research spaces. We propose ignoring, or being indifferent to,…

This paper presents a heuristic tool that can be used to analyse and reflect on the inclusion of digital competences in Health and Physical Education Teacher Education (HPETE) programs. The tool is used to identify and compare how HPETE programs in three Southern Hemisphere countries address digital competency as an aspect of learning to teach…

New Zealand and Australia introduced health and physical education curricula espousing a socially-critical perspective more than two decades ago. Yet, despite growth in advocacy and teaching resources, there is little research exploring how HPE teachers are enacting these pedagogies. This article addresses the challenge of understanding what six…

Concerns about the supply of, and demand for, experts and expertise are prominent in research on outsourcing in health and physical education (HPE), and the state of the subject more broadly. Yet, precisely what is meant by 'expert' and 'expertise' in this scholarship is not always clear or uncontested. In this research, we used a scoping review…

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…

Elementary physical and health education (PHE) teachers play key roles in establishing inclusive learning environments. However, how they attend to inclusive pedagogy are not fully highlighted in the research literature. This study examined how elementary PHE teachers understand their roles in inclusion and how they attend to day-to-day inclusive…

How physical literacy (PL) is presented on 'the web' (i.e. Google) has implications for how health and/ physical education (H/PE) teachers and coaches engage with and understand the concept, and ultimately how it is "made to" act in practice. This research sheds light on the type of PL content they are likely to encounter in their search…