Teaching basic swimming, water safety and rescue skills is recommended by the World Health Organization for all school-aged children. However, there is a lack of evidence on effective pedagogies to develop swimming competency and the success of swimming lessons as a drowning prevention intervention. This study used a self-report questionnaire and…

Healthism is both an ideological and a regulative discourse that manifests as a tendency to conceive health as a product of individual choice. Healthism represents a collection of taken-for-granted assumptions, positioned at the intersection of morality, blame and health, that can lead to a privileging of 'healthy' and 'productive' individuals. It…

Adolescent boys living in disadvantaged communities are considered a vulnerable group at risk for developing obesity and associated health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and type-2 diabetes. While short-term health promotion programmes often produce effective results during the implementation of the intervention, according…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a literature review on the motivational processes in a Sport Education curriculum model among high school-aged students using self-determination theory and achievement goal theory as theoretical frameworks. Literature for analysis was searched through electronic databases including Academic Research…

Educational institutions have been identified as ideal locations to implement health promotion strategies that aim to prevent and treat youth obesity. However, the tertiary training of future health promoters currently lacks health and nutrition instruction. This study sought to investigate attitudes towards youth obesity and perceptions of the…

Changes to the purpose and scope of health and physical education (HPE) in schools have prompted revisions in teacher education degrees within Australia. Using a qualitative approach, this study explored HPE teachers' perceptions of these changes. Of particular interest was pre-service HPE teachers' reflections on the importance of skill…

Research among former Physical Education (PE) school students has demonstrated how fat phobia in PE classes is oppressive and makes it extremely difficult for most students to develop positive subjectivities. This study explores how a group of pre-service Health and Physical Education (HPE) specialist teachers from an Australian university…

In sport, schools and physical education (PE) ability has invariably been understood as an inherent and relatively immutable capacity, amendable to varying degrees by interventions such as training regimes and education. Differences in achievement are assumed to be an inevitable consequence of natural variations in ability and an indication of…

This paper examines the usage of "race" in high school physical education textbooks in Australia. In particular, it examines the concept of biological "race" in connection with human performance in sport. DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. A content analysis of…

Movement skill competence is important to organised youth physical activity participation, but it is unclear how adolescents view this relationship. The primary aim of this study was to explore adolescents' perception of the relationship between movement skills, physical activity and sport, and whether their perceptions differed according to…

This study compared the self-reported physical activity, perceived social support for, and perceived barriers to, physical activity of primary and secondary school children from Hong Kong and Australia. Hong Kong boys and girls reported spending significantly less time, outside of school hours, on physical activity than their Australian…

Despite the diversity of cultural settings within which it is now being implemented, research on Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) is yet to address the impact of culture on teaching and learning. With its growth in Asia, in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong that are culturally distinct from western settings, this seems to be an area of…

In an earlier article, we considered the pedagogy and assessment practices enacted by physical education (PE) teachers when attempting to translate a centrally prescribed rationale into meaningful performance-led teaching within an integrated curriculum--Higher Still Physical Education (HSPE) in Scotland. Through further research this article…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact that two instructional approaches to teaching rugby had on students' learning, enjoyment and affect. Fifty-three boys (aged 12-13) from a large metropolitan private boy's school in eastern Australia participated in either a 20 lesson unit of rugby union taught using a skill-drill-game approach (n…