On behalf of the academic community associated with Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education I pay tribute to the outstanding contribution that Professor Don Hellison made to the profession. I was fortunate enough to meet Don a number of times and will remember him as a very sincere, caring and thoughtful person. Concerned that young scholars were being attracted to volume of outputs rather than depth he once counselled me that, “it's not how ofen you say something, it's what you have to say that matters”! Always one to walk his talk, Don's seminal work around teaching personal and social responsibility was underpinned by his deep commitment to issues of equity and justice. Throughout his 50 years of scholarship Don believed in the potential for physical education to enrich the lives of socially disadvantaged youth. Across his distinguished career Don touched the lives of a great many people, where his memory will live on for many years to come. Vale Don Hellison, long may he be remembered as a great human being and a great physical educator.
The first paper in this edition is an adaptation of the 2017 Fritz Duras Lecture, hosted annually by the University of Melbourne. In this paper Anne Flintoff offers an account of ‘critical whiteness’ as a lens for looking below the surface of dominant ideologies that posit a deficit view of race. Here, Flintoff challenges white physical educators to better understand their own place in reproducing the sensibilities and conditions that allow racial discourses to have such an enduring presence in the domains of sport and physical education. Central to this is the need to problematise whiteness as a standpoint from which to codify ‘others’. Following this, Harvey and colleagues report on a study into the impact that models-based physical education programs have on pre-service teachers. This interview-based study sought to build on existing understandings about teacher's professional knowledge and the various ways that personal commitments and experiences interact with teacher training curricula to produce particular teaching orientations. In contrast to previous claims, they present an optimistic view of the potential for pre-service programs to channel student teachers toward strong teacher perspectives, wherein they are committed to delivering high quality learning experiences through physical education.
The third paper in this edition explores the practical utility of a strengths-based approach to underpin the delivery of health messages in schools. Based on a case study of a primary/elementary school in Sweden, Quennerstedt and colleagues use Brookfields analytic lenses to promote the potential for a salutogenic approach to promote constructive health discourses that recognise both the personal and environmental factors that impact health, and therefore transcend pathogenic perspectives. In the following paper, Stride and Flintoff build on previous work published in this journal to increase cultural understandings of the physical activity practices of young Muslim women. Here, they focus on the experiences of 13 young South Asian women, living in the North of England, to explore the ways in which home and vicinity act as physical, social, cultural and gendered spaces to shape the ways they understand their physical involvement. Their insights propel the need to widen current understandings of ‘doing physical activity’, in and beyond schooling.
In the fifth paper in this collection Barwood and colleagues report on a longitudinal study into the experiences of a male pre-service HPE teacher who is classified as deaf. While there is a growing body of scholarship around diversity and inclusion in the context HPE teacher education, relatively little has been written about the experiences of deaf or hearing-impaired students. Drawing on ‘Jordan's’ practicum experiences in three different teaching scenarios, the paper offers thoughtful insights into the levels and types of support needed for deaf teachers to have the opportunity to deliver effective HPE programs. In the final paper in the collection Davis and colleagues explore the enduring issue of girls’ participation in PE. Propelled by ongoing evidence that girls have lower engagement profiles within PE, the authors report on an interview based study of the experiences and expectations of a cohort of 16 adolescent girls. At the heart of their findings is the girls’ desire for activities that are better suited to their particular aptitudes and skills and are more focussed fun and participation. At a structural level, improving the status and recognition of PE units (core and elective) would further incentivise their participation in these programs.
In conclusion, I am pleased to flag the introduction of a What are you reading?’ initiative for the Journal. Stepping away from the traditional book review format, the “What are you reading?” section is an invitation to academics at various stages of their careers (particularly early-career researchers, or those who are new to journal publication), to report on a piece of scholarly work that has significance to theirs/others research as it relates broadly to the field of curriculum studies in HPE. Details of this initiative will appear on the Journal website for commencement in 2019 but interested participants are invite to contact Dr Leanne Coll, our What are you reading? editor.
I hope that you enjoy the collection of papers presented in this edition of Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education.