Indigenous knowledges as a way to disrupt norms in physical education teacher education

ABSTRACT

The maintenance and reproduction of prevailing hegemonic norms have been well explored in physical education teacher education (PETE). A related problem has been the exclusion of Indigenous knowledges around health and physical education (HPE) in students’ experiences of HPE and PETE. The danger is that certain ways of being and becoming a PE teacher, other than the sporty, fit, healthy (and white) teacher, are excluded, positioning other preservice teachers’ experiences, knowledges and ways to teach as deficient. In this paper, we discuss findings from an investigation (Australian Office for Learning and Teaching CG10-1718) into the HPE practicum experiences of Indigenous Australian preservice teachers, illustrating the resources they bring to Australian HPE and PETE through the lens of John’s Dewey’s notion of growth and Todd’s [(2014). Between body and spirit: The liminality of pedagogical relationships. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48(2), 231–245] ideas of liminality of pedagogical relations. This enables us to discuss Indigenous preservice teachers’ capacity in disrupting norms in HPE and fostering the liminality of the pedagogical relations in PETE.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous knowledges
• physical education
• health and physical education (HPE)
• curriculum
• pedagogy
• norms
• Dewey
• physical education teacher education (PETE)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Susan Whatman is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education (HPE) and Sports Coaching at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. Her research interests include health education curriculum decision-making for Indigenous students, particularly girls, embedding Indigenous knowledges in curricula, and the role of school–community partnerships in supporting social and emotional learning and wellbeing in schools.

Mikael Quennerstedt is Professor in Physical Education and Health at Örebro University, Sweden. Quennerstedt’s main area of research is within teaching and learning in physical education and salutogenic perspectives of health education. In his research, questions of health, body, gender, artefacts, subject content, learning processes and governing processes within educational practices have been prominent.

Juliana McLaughlin is a Senior Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, where she lectures in Indigenous culture studies and education, decolonising methodologies and research ethics. Her research is driven by decolonising education, practice of research, respect for and adherence to Indigenous knowledges in professional practice. She is from Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.

ORCID

Susan Whatman http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5793-0952

Mikael Quennerstedt http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8748-8843

Juliana McLaughlin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5984-4799

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Office for Learning and Teaching [grant number CG10-1718].