Understanding young Chinese Australian's (dis)engagement in Health and Physical Education and school sport

Abstract

Background: School Health and Physical Education (HPE) and sport has increasingly become a complex cultural contact zone. With global population shifts, schools need policies and strategies to attend to the interests and needs of diverse student populations. School HPE and sport is a particularly significant site as it is a touchpoint for a range of cultural values and practices related to physical activity, the body, health and lifestyle proprieties.

Purpose: While there is a high Chinese student population in Australian schools, little research has been undertaken to understand their needs, experiences and perceptions in schools HPE and sport. In addition, research in the physical activity field is accentuated by paradigms that assume and perpetuate the binary notion of cultural beliefs and practices such as ‘West’ versus ‘East’ and in association with ‘Normal’ versus ‘Problematic’ lifestyles in relation to physical activity. We argue that, without conceding the epistemological understanding of ‘difference’, policies and practices that promote diversity can remain socially unjust and superficial.

Research design: This paper focuses on two schools in Queensland. The data collection process was underpinned by critical and interpretive ethnographic methods. The participants in Sage College consisted of seven girls of whom three were in Year 8, three in Year 9 and one in Year 10. At Routledge State High, a state-owned, secular and coeducational secondary school, the cohort consisted of two girls in Year 8, one girl and two boys from Year 9.

Results: This paper draws on Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital, field and doxa and the Chinese Confucianism philosophy of ‘Complementary difference’ to understand the various perceptions and experiences of young Chinese Australians in schools HPE and sport. Results invite us to seek an understanding of students’ subjectivities and disrupt the binary differences in cultural values and attributes to promote multicultural education.

Conclusion and recommendation: Moving beyond the Australia's Anglo-Celtic centred HPE and the limitations of a Western view of exclusive opposites, this paper makes an original contribution to knowledge by presenting a ‘heuristic of difference’ model that accommodates Western and Chinese perspectives in Australian HPE research.

Keywords:

• young Chinese
• Health and Physical Education
• Bourdieu
• Confucianism complementary difference
• multicultural education

Notes

1 In Australia, the term Asia denotes three regions: Southeast Asia (e.g. Cambodia and Singapore), East Asia (e.g. China and Japan) and South Asia (e.g. India and Pakistan) (ABS 2008).

2 In this paper, we have used Anglo-Celtic Australians as a category within the Australian socio-cultural context to discuss those whose English is their first language and with British and/or Irish ancestral origin.

3 South Asians in this study refer to those from Pakistani origin.

4 In the UK, the ethnic categories used include four broad groupings: White, Black, Mixed Race and Asian. White is the majority ethnic group (86% in 2011) (Office for National Statistics 2011). Black is an official category in the national statistics which refers to those with African and Caribbean heritage (Office for National Statistics 2014).

5 In this study, Chinese Australians are those whose English is their additional language and with China, Hong Kong or Taiwan socio-cultural and ancestral origin.

6 We acknowledged that the terms ‘race’, ‘ethnicity/ethnic group’ and ‘culture’ are often used loosely in research. Here, we use the concept of race to examine the power relations and in particular to its social consequences in HPE and school sport practices. Closely tied with race is the term ethnicity. In concurrence with Weber, ‘a group that is different only by race is not an ethnic group’ (1968, 250). In this study, those who identify themselves as Chinese in Australia perhaps will have their own culture in HPE and school sport and thus constituting their own ethnic group.