Developing Children in New Zealand School Physical Education

This paper critically examines the assumptions about 'childhood' and 'child development' that inform curriculum construction in school physical education. Drawing on insights from poststructuralist social theory and critical psychological perspectives, the paper argues that developmental discourses have a material life embodied in the institutional practices of school physical education. A New Zealand physical education syllabus is used as an illustrative exemplar of the ways in which developmental imperatives shape the construction of learning goals, design of curriculum experiences and teachers' observations of their students. It is argued that the construction of a normative, hierarchical trajectory for child development categorises, classifies and marginalises groups of children whose developmental patterns differ from those mapped out in the syllabus. The paper concludes by examining the conditions of possibility present in more contemporary physical education syllabi and theory that afford opportunities for thinking about physically educated children differently.