Physical education for health and wellbeing: a discourse analysis of Scottish physical education curricular documentation

McEvilly, Nollaig; Verheul, Martine; Atencio, Matthew; Jess, Michael

doi:10.1080/01596306.2012.745736

Cited by 18 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Previous literature has noted the longstanding dominance of sport and health discourses in PE (McEvilly et al, 2014), with sport traditionally being a major element of PE in England 6 (Herold, 2020). It was not surprising, then, that throughout their written narratives, the participants drew heavily on a sport discourse.…”

Section: What Is Pe?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What is PE and who should teach it? Undergraduate PE students’ views and experiences of the outsourcing of PE in the UK

McEvilly

2021

Sport, Education and Society

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This paper investigates beginning BSc Physical Education (PE) students' views and experiences of the outsourcing of PE in the UK. Outsourcing involves the provision of PE by external providers such as sports coaches. PE in the UK (and other neoliberal Western contexts) is a site in which outsourcing has become increasingly normalised. I anticipated that, as first year undergraduates, the participants would have relatively recent experience of outsourcing as pupils/students (i.e. experience of receiving outsourced PE provision). Data were generated through written narratives (n = 16), completed on the participants' first day at university, and follow-up semi-structured interviews (n = 10). Drawing on a Foucaultian theoretical framework, I employed a poststructural type of discourse analysis concerned with analysing patterns in language. Referring to PE, the participants drew heavily on a sport discourse, often conflating PE and sport and emphasising the necessity of teachers having knowledge and experience of sports content and skills, as well as a pedagogical discourse (and, to a lesser extent, a 'healthy lifestyles' discourse). The participants had a range of experiences of outsourcing in PE, particularly at primary level. They were in favour of primary PE being taught by either specialist PE teachers, or sports coaches (rather than generalist teachers alone). They spoke positively about their experiences of external provision at both primary and secondary school. While few critical comments were provided, participants raised concerns about external providers' pedagogical knowledge, and some questioned if teachers might feel devalued by external providers being brought in to teach aspects of their curriculum. In general, while the participants recognised teachers' pedagogical expertise, they also valued external providers' perceived content knowledge and sporting experience. As such, by conflating PE and sport, they considered that PE should be taught by sport 'experts' and that external providers could enhance schools' internal capabilities.

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Section: What Is Pe?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What is PE and who should teach it? Undergraduate PE students’ views and experiences of the outsourcing of PE in the UK

McEvilly

2021

Sport, Education and Society

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“…Thirdly, following Apple (2004) and acknowledging that policy, as a fundamentally political issue, is central to understanding how power operates, we argue there has been little systematic analysis of the constructions of race in PE and sport policy. Certainly, Rossi et al's (2009) and McEvilly et al's (2014) policy studies both problematise the way in which official curricula, in respectively Australia and Scotland, gloss over and/or ignore students' socialeconomic and ethnic identities. Moreover, in the case of the Queensland syllabus, the research brings our attention to how PE content is "... culturally situated within the dominant forms of Australian sport ... in spite of Australia's claim to be a multicultural society" (Rossi et al 2009, p. 87).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A whitewashed curriculum? The construction of race in contemporary PE curriculum policy

Dowling

Flintoff

2015

Sport, Education and Society

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Analyses of curricula in a range of countries show how they tend to reinforce, rather than challenge, popular theories of racism. To date, we know little about the contribution of physical education (PE) curriculum policy to the overall policy landscape. This paper examines the construction of 'race' and racism in two national contexts (Norway and England) as a means of putting race and antiracism on the PE policy research agenda. It adopts a critical whiteness perspective to analyse how whiteness, as a system of privilege, contributes to the racialisation of valued knowledge in PE and asks, who potentially benefits and/or is marginalised within the learning spaces available in the texts? The discourse analysis reveals that three discursive techniques of whiteness combine to privilege 'white', Eurocentric knowledge content. Unmarked 'white' PE practices and students are constructed as universal, normative and contingent. As a result, non-white PE practices and students are positioned on the margins in contemporary policy texts. By revealing the racialization processes evident in the texts we aim to trouble the profession's taken-for-granted truths about 'race' in PE as integral to working towards the development of an antiracist subject.

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“…Foucauldian-influenced discourse analyses have been widely used in research on PE since the 1990s. This body of research captures how multiple and competing discourses are at play and subject to negotiation and (re)construction by different agents such as PETE teachers and PE teachers (Dowling and Kårhus, 2011; Garrett and Wrench, 2007; McEvilly et al, 2013, 2014, 2015; Olofsson, 2005; Rossi et al, 2009; Varea and Underwood, 2015; Webb et al, 2008; Wright, 2000). Only a few studies have used a post-structuralist approach with respect to discourses about PE in textbooks.…”

Section: Related Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article investigates and problematises how contesting discourses about Physical Education (PE) as a school subject are immersed within textbooks used in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) in Denmark. Several studies have explored the ways that discourses of PE are (re)constructed in different texts such as curriculum and policy documents (Evans, 2013; McEvilly et al, 2014; Olofsson, 2005; Penney, 2008; Rossi et al, 2009; Tinning and Glasby, 2002; Webb et al, 2008). Based on post-structural theory they consider discourses as regular, recurrent patterns of language that both shape and reflect the ideas, beliefs and values of their users and in this way ‘work’ to produce specific effects on practitioners in PE.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contesting discourses about physical education

Svendsen

2016

European Physical Education Review

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This article investigates and problematises how contesting discourses about Physical Education (PE) as a school subject are immersed within textbooks used in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) in Denmark. The paper considers PETE textbooks as powerful documents that construct and maintain discourses about PE, and at the same time as central texts for the reading of such discourses. Fairclough's and Foucault's notions of discourse and discourse analysis are applied to identify dominant patterns in those 20 textbooks that are most used in PETE in Denmark. The findings reveal three different discourses that represent contesting philosophies about the value and practice of PE. These are termed: (1) Developing the potential for sport, (2) Basis for creative sensing and (3) Being part of a cultural ballast. The paper analyses these three discourses critically and concludes that PETE textbooks are deeply involved in the (re)construction, struggling and 'working' of classical discourses in PE. The discussion deals with the way that PETE textbooks comprise powerful documents that through their recurrent use of high modality are unequivocal in their suggestions for PE practices, and how pre-service teachers in this way are exposed to antagonistic discourses in PETE textbooks. We suggest that PETE teachers may use textbook analysis in the educational programme as a tool for reflection upon the working of discourses in PE in general and for discussing central ideological dilemmas in PE.

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Physical education for health and wellbeing: a discourse analysis of Scottish physical education curricular documentation

Cited by 18 publications

References 26 publications

What is PE and who should teach it? Undergraduate PE students’ views and experiences of the outsourcing of PE in the UK

What is PE and who should teach it? Undergraduate PE students’ views and experiences of the outsourcing of PE in the UK

A whitewashed curriculum? The construction of race in contemporary PE curriculum policy

Contesting discourses about physical education

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