How does physical education and health respond to the growing influence in media and digital technologies? An analysis of curriculum in Brazil, Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

The increasing use of media and digital technologies has been modifying how people think over and shape their physical activities and healthcare consumption. This growing trend has been reflected in school curriculum developments for Physical Education and Health. As educators and policy makers adjust local curricula to reflect these technological changes, there is alack of knowledge on how these developments have been undertaken in different national realities. This study employ Media-Education theory and use content analysis to examine how media and digital technologies have impacted on the official Physical Education and curriculum documents from Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand. The findings show that there is acommon assumption and emphasis that educators need to use technology to focus on thinking critically about media content. On the other hand, there was alower emphasis on understanding media and technology as alanguage for social interaction and communication. In that sense, the results show little investment in the production and consumption of media content. Such findings highlight the need to evolve Health and Physical Education as alearning area so that it can provide students with the means to make critical and informed decisions about their health and physical activity needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• technology
• media
• media education
• curriculum document

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Legacy curriculum is defined by Prensky (2012) as a curriculum centred in the past, wherein all content is justified by its historical relevance, and not due to either its future use or need by students.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [Finance Code 001].

Notes on contributors

Allyson Carvalho De Araújo

Allyson Carvalho de Araújo is an Associate Professor in the Physical Education Department at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil). Lab head of studies in Physical Education, sport and media. Allyson’s overarching research interests focus on topics of media and thecnology releted to education.

Jorge Knijnik

Jorge Knijnik is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, Deputy Director of Research Development in the Centre for Educational Research and a researcher in the Institute for Culture & Society at Western Sydney University (Australia). Jorge’s overarching research interests focus on topics of social justice, human rights and social inclusion.

Alan Patrick Ovens

Alan Patrick Ovens is an Associate Professor in Physical Education in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and Social Work. His key research interests are in complexity, teacher education pedagogy and methodologies for self-study research.