A defining time for physical education futures? Exploring the legacy of Fritz Duras

Abstract

This paper explores the legacy of Dr Fritz Duras in order to address the issue of whether the implementation of a new curriculum for health and physical education in Australia represents a defining time for the subject. Dr Duras was Director of the first physical education teacher education course at the University of Melbourne during an earlier defining time, when a new sports and games-based form of physical education was created to replace an older drilling and exercising form of physical training. The paper interrogates what we might mean by the notion of a defining time before investigating key events in the history of Australian physical education between the 1940s and the 1970s. It considers the role of Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation and individual activism in relation to the new curriculum. The paper concludes with a detailed discussion of five things the new curriculum must do in order for it to build further on the legacy of Dr Duras and create a new defining time for the subject in Australian schools.

Keywords:

• health and physical education
• Dr Fritz Duras
• history of physical education
• ACHPER
• activism

Notes on contributor

David Kirk is Alexander Chair in Physical Education and Sport at the University of Bedfordshire and Honorary Professor of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland. He is currently involved in three programmes of research centring on: a reconsideration of the female tradition in English Physical Education, the development of pedagogical models and the outsourcing of local and global needs in health and physical education. His most recent book is Physical Education Futures, published by Routledge in 2010.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise stated, the majority of material from this section is an adapted version of Kirk (1998).