A comparative study of Canadian and Scottish students’ perspectives on health, the body and the physical education curriculum: the challenge of ‘doing’ critical

ABSTRACT

Physical education (PE) curricula in many countries explicitly task teachers with the responsibility to support the health of their pupils. However, there are concerns that a prevailing ‘healthism’ discourse is influencing how PE curricula are enacted. Although we know something about how PE teachers understand and ‘teach’ health, little is known about the perspectives of student PE teachers. We carried out semi-structured interviews with PE student teachers from Canada and Scotland to explore how they conceptualised health and the body. Furthermore, we investigated how their understandings of health and the body influenced their perceptions of teaching ‘health’ in their respective PE contexts. Our post-structural analysis demonstrates how the students’ Initial Teacher Education (ITE) contexts influenced their perceptions of where the responsibility lies for addressing the health of young people. These different perceptions have enabled and constrained practice in various ways. The Scottish students critically deconstructed dominant healthism and obesity discourses but this process did not result in the articulation of critical practice. The Canadian students were less likely to engage in critical inquiry but evidenced creativity and divergent thinking in relation to how they would integrate health outcomes in their teaching. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for ITE programs by advocating an applied approach to critical inquiry.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• healthism discourse
• Initial Teacher Education
• critical pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Shirley Gray is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research investigates the learning experiences of both teachers and pupils in the PE context. Her recent work explores the experiences of young people who have disengaged from PE, and attempts to understand how their experiences are formed and transformed.

Dr Sarah MacIsaac is a Bicentennial Fellow the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research interests lie within the sociology of health, the body and physical education. Her research explores contemporary body-related culture amongst young people, looking specifically at social media use.

Dr William J. Harvey is an Associate Professor at the University of McGill, Quebec, Canada. His research interests include: pedagogy, adapted physical activity, self-regulation, physical activity and persons with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), play and movement skill proficiency, perceptions and professional skill development of physical education teachers.