Following considerable negotiation and consultation we will be implementing a name change for the Journal. From the beginning of 2018, the Journal will be rebranded as Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education. Without going into the array of considerations propelling this initiative the editorial executive believe that this change will better define and widen our target audience. Importantly, this change is being positioned as a rebranding of an existing Journal and not the start of a new one. With the assistance of Taylor and Francis we will work strategically to retain, and build on, our history as the Asia Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education.
The first edition of the rebranded Journal as Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education will be a Special Edition focusing on ‘Physical Education Teacher Education in a Global Policy Space’. Under the guidance of guest editors, Mary O’Sullivan and Missy Parker, the edition will feature papers from leading scholars around the world to build the knowledge base and broaden geographical, theoretical and innovative writing about physical education teacher education. We look to your support as we build on our past to position the Journal for a bright and prosperous future.
The opening paper of this edition, by Donna Barwood and colleagues, presents results of a Western Australian-based study into the provision of health education (HE) in lower secondary schools. Using a mixed methods research design, the researchers describe the overwhelmingly lack of discipline-specific training that teachers have in the HE area. Among those charged with the delivery of HE include HPE teachers with almost no formal HE training and teachers being recruited from ‘out of field’. They point to an urgent need for more rigorous professional learning to support the learning goals of the contemporary HE curriculum. In the second paper, Glenn Fyall revisits a ‘chestnut’ in the recent history of physical education, namely how to get students to embrace a level of criticality in their teaching. Set within the NZ context, this agenda finds momentum in the overtly critical aspiration of the national HPE curriculum. Against this backdrop Fyall reveals that despite the deliberate attempts of PETE programs to foreground the critical agenda, its uptake among student teachers continues to be modest. Rather than accept this as inevitable, he posits the potential for strategically disruptive approaches to destabilising the dominant paradigm as a way of embedding critical goals into PETE programs.
The third paper in the edition, led by Amanda Mooney, questions some of the take-for-granted assertions around the theory and practice of teacher reflection. Drawing on a research project which used video recordings of the teacher’s sessions to stimulate the reflective process, the ensuing discussions raised unforeseen tensions. While supporting the importance of teacher reflection, the paper brings into question core assumptions about the unproblematic ‘good' of the reflective process. The research reveals that in the absence of appropriate teacher support and direction the reflective process can be confronting and destabilising. The forth paper, by Robert Ruscitti and colleagues, is built around a review of the literature on Inclusive Physical Education (IPE) spanning 40 years. Focussing on the experiences of students without disabilities the authors reveal that IPE can provide an important vehicle through which to enhance the level of appreciation, respect and tolerance towards students with disabilities. Among the array of strategies within which positive experiences were generated in IPE settings was the integration of Paralympic-related activities.
The fifth paper, by Ian Culpan and Susannah Stevens, is an exploration of the potential for the philosophy of Olympism to provide a framework to lead the establishment of key values and attitudes for physical education. Drawing on the foundational principles of the ancient Olympics they investigate the utility of this philosophy to guide the development of purposeful values and attitudes within physical education teacher education. The final paper in the edition, by Kerry Renwick, undertakes a comparative analysis of the Australian and British Columbian health curricula. Using a form of discourse analysis she interrogates the aspirations of each of these documents and how they position teachers and learners. Emerging from this analysis are some of the tensions that are in play between structure and agency, general and local, and knowledge and behaviour.
As always, the papers presented in this edition cover a broad range of topics, theories and practices, across a range of arenas relevant to the professions of health, sport and physical education. I look forward to releasing the next edition of the Journal in its rebranded form as Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education.