The positioning of physical education in the school curriculum continues to reflect external discourses circulating in political and social milieu. As increasing austerity measures influence and restrict educational priorities, we consider that there is an urgent need for physical educationalists to articulate a rationale for an educational…

Over the last one of two decades, researchers within the physical education (PE) and sport pedagogy research frequently use the concept "the material body". An initial purpose of this article is to explore what a concept of a "material body" might mean. What other bodies are there? Who would dispute the materiality of bodies? I…

The European Union Sport Unit has identified the societal and educational role of sport as a central topic in its new research agenda. It is argued that European Union (EU) citizens should be supported to learn continuously across the life course. In the sport/physical activity (PA) context, the role of teachers, coaches and exercise instructors…

How might Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) communities in the UK, Europe, Australasia and elsewhere go about researching the implications of neoliberalism and increasing privatisation of Education for the entitlements of young people to a common, comprehensive, high quality, equitable Physical Education (PE)? Our analyses suggest that…

One important challenge ahead for sport and exercise pedagogy (SEP) researchers is to consider afresh questions about learning. Learning in the fields of sport, physical activity and physical education (PE) is a particularly complex business. Most existing theories of learning are defined cognitively, yet learning in sport and physical activity…

Despite the volume of research devoted to the many ills that beset the pedagogical field of physical education and sport, we begin by arguing that there has been insufficient attention given to the way scholars conceptualise change and imagine bringing it about. In particular, we point to a tendency within the field to prioritise…

While e-support has been positioned as a means, to overcome some of the time and financial constraints to professional learning, it has largely failed to act as a medium for professional learning in physical education. Consequently, this paper positions teachers prior interest with social media acts as a type of "leverage" for using…

Looked-after children are arguably one of the most disadvantaged groups in society and constitute a "hidden group" in relation to sport and physical activity research, policy and practice. Research on looked-after children has explored the views of caregivers, practitioners and policy-makers who have often been asked to speak for…

During the past decades, significant progress has been made in the development of physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP) research with the field reaching a level of maturity and critical mass. In light of this development, it seems worthwhile to take an overarching view on existing evidence in order to identify a number of emerging…

Three decades after Daryl Siedentop announced sport pedagogy to be the forgotten sport science, the seven articles in this special issue collectively present sport pedagogy as an emergent field of research and practice. Each contribution presents one or more foci that invite attention to what and how we conduct our research, the political…

This paper offers a genealogical account of safeguarding in sport. Drawing specifically on Foucault's work, it examines the "politics of touch" in relation to the social and historical formation of child protection policy in sports coaching. While the analysis has some resonance with the context of coaching as a whole, for…

Through critical readings of several images and texts, including photographs and artifacts in this collected montage, my aim here is to use multiple interactional analyses (visual culture techniques and deconstructive techniques) to assist in the critique of these presented visual images that represent current coaching policies in the USA.

This paper explores the insecurities and discursive moral panics elicited by the discussion of intergenerational touch in education, and their subsequent manifestation in "classroom panopticism". In a number of contexts, public hysteria has grown around the interaction between adult and child, and whether this interaction stays within…

Coach-athlete romantic relationships and consensual sexual relations are commonly accepted among coaches and athletes, although a growing number of sport organisations discourage or prohibit such relationships. In research, coach-athlete sexual relationships are lumped together with sexual abuse, suggested to harm athletes' well-being,…

This paper has three principal purposes. The first involves locating the "politics of touch" as related to coaching within Noddings' theory of pedagogical caring. Noddings' framework is presented not so much as a prescription of "good practice", but as a potential way to raise the profile and somewhat problematise the…