Welcome to the second edition of the journal under its new name, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education. With the support to Editorial Executive and Board the transition has been a smooth one and the Journal name is rapidly gaining recognition. I also want to again thank the guest editors of edition one, Mary O’Sullivan and Missy Parker, for the wonderful launch they provided the Journal through their compilation of papers around the very timely and topical theme, ‘Physical Education Teacher Education in a Global Policy Space’.
I use this editorial to remind readers that the Journal is applying a broad definition to its focus on ‘curriculum’, as it relates to schools, universities and other forms of educational practice. I encourage potential contributors to familiarise themselves with the Journal’s Aims and Scope to guide the preparation of manuscripts. I also want to emphasise the Journal’s unapologetic orientation toward the social sciences. While we will consider studies that apply mixed methods, such papers much give primacy to social science scholarship. It is expected that manuscripts make reference to other critical work, and/or discuss particular issues of practice-focused research, within HPE and/or its associated professional fields.
In the opening paper of this edition Park and Curtner-Smith explore PE teacher socialisation in South Korea. Whereas we have insights into the development of teacher beliefs and values in numerous Western contexts, this research tests this knowledge in a cultural setting relatively unexplored. Through a qualitative framework the data collected from nine practicing PE teachers reveals some unique aspects of the Korean context that appear to impact teacher socialisation in ways that are subtly different to other cohorts. Influential here are; the relationship between PE and sport, the impact of traditionally focused PETE programs and the relative social status of PE teachers. In the following paper, Lambert presents an interrogation of the Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education against five key propositions about its philosophy and intentionality. Acknowledging that curriculum reform is a complex undertaking, Lambert explores the utility of this curriculum innovation with participants involved in a conference workshop. While the data provides some optimism for the potential for the Australian Curriculum HPE to facilitate meaningful change, there is also a clear recognition of some of the barriers that are liekely to constrain its progress.
In the third paper, Farringdon and colleagues report on four complimentary studies into the relative effectiveness of nutrition education in preparing adolescents to make healthy eating choices. Through these qualitative investigations the authors capture the complexity of nutrition education and the mixed social messages that infiltrate the ways young people make sense of food consumption. Of note here are dominant gender messages about females needing to be thin and males needing to have muscles. The study invokes further interrogations into the extent to which curriculum knowledge about nutrition translates into healthy eating practices. Following this, Gray and colleagues explore student experiences of PE sitting within a Health and Wellbeing curriculum framework. Set in Scotland, the authors employ Self-determination Theory as a framework to interrogate contextual and relational aspects of students’ learning experiences and needs. This mixed methods investigation reveals that while students found some aspects of the curriculum motivating this was highly contingent on the nature of the task and the pedagogy being employed.
Next, Pang and colleagues challenge existing conventions around the philosophy and content of HPE in initial teacher education programs with a view to increasing the level of diversity embedded in them. Drawing on the principles ofCritical Race Theory, they explore the experiences of ‘non-traditional’ learners in one such program. Through the data they provide thoughtful strategies about how HPE teacher educators can better acknowledge and accommodate diversity in their programs. In the final paper, Chong and colleagues present an interesting study into the level of engagement primary school PE specialists have with the health curriculum. Propelled by the increasing integration of these curriculum areas the study uses an ethnographic approach to explore teacher practices in-situ. While the results suggest that health messages are included in the delivery of the PE curriculum, most of these are delivered implicitly and ad hoc.
I’m confident that, like me, you will find the collection of papers presented in this edition of Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education to be interesting and engaging. Happy reading.