Background: Despite dire predictions of its demise, physical education continues to survive across most countries of the world. Moreover, the form of its survival is remarkably similar across cultures. Why has physical education survived as a cultural practice and why is its form so similar given the marked differences that exist between many…

Background: In the last few decades, conceptions about teaching and learning in physical education have evolved from a teacher-centred approach to a more student-centred approach where learners are encouraged to develop problem-solving skills, critical thinking and autonomy of thought. A popular model advocating this approach in physical…

Background: The Digital Forms of Assessment project is a three-year Australian Research Council Linkage research project being conducted by Edith Cowan University's Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) in partnership with the Curriculum Council of Western Australia. The project is investigating the potential for a digital format…

Background: Recent research into coaching has been critical of much previous work, particularly in terms of the tendency to paint a rather unproblematic portrayal of the activity. The criticism has focussed on the erroneous supposition that method can be substituted for individuals, thus giving a synthetic account of a most messy of jobs.…

Background: A lack of physical activity (PA) and the occurrence of overweight and obesity among school-aged youth have become a major societal problem. Arising from the general concern about the future generations' health, schools have been found to be potentially important settings to promote positive health behaviour, since all pupils can be…

Background: Performance evaluation in the context of creative dance or expressive movement is often a challenging prospect for educators. Nonetheless, the process is a necessary one, not least of all because of the potential as a stimulus to growth. Ideally, assessment becomes a part of the feedback process, assisting teachers and students to…

Background: Physical activity holds great promise as a natural and enjoyable setting for learning and for behavioral change. Despite claims that engagement in physical activity can promote socially desired behaviors, there remains a lack of a clear conceptual base that can guide interventions as well as research endeavors in this field. This…

Background: At the heart of this polemic lies the view that contemporary research in PE and Health (PEH) has largely overlooked one of the key determinants of social behaviour, social class and its expression in and outside schools; an omission that has quite serious consequences for how we (researchers and teachers) think about and conceptualise…

This paper addresses an increasing concern within physical education and sports research to engage with young people to find out more about their experiences of physical education and school sport. In particular, I centre my concerns on the experiences of five young disabled pupils. I use the conceptual tools offered by Bourdieu to extend…

In this contribution to the special issue on Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), we outline how the Sport Education curriculum model constitutes an organisational framework within which a TGfU pedagogy might productively be located and utilised. In addition, we describe our application of the development-refinement process to the progress of…

Time and acceptance are criterion often used to measure the legitimacy and worth of an idea. Two decades have passed since the first publications that introduced Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) as a means to conceptualize games teaching and learning. For over two decades various professionals have advocated for TGfU as a sound idea, which…