Since a critical turn was embarked on two decades ago, research into sports coaching has increased in quality and quantity [see Jones, R. L. (2019). "Studies in sports coaching." Cambridge Scholars Publishing]. Despite such welcome advances, the essence or heart of the activity remains contested terrain [Abraham, A., & Collins, D.…

National styles of 'doing sociology' exist, all celebrating respective 'founding fathers'. Timid, British pragmatism has tended to misrecognise Durkheim ever since our barely transcended early 20th century origins. In relatively low-status teacher education, even when sociology of education was popularly taught from the late sixties through the…

Despite the long history of the idea of democratic education, the articulation of how teacher educators enact democratic practices remains elusive. The purpose of this research was to examine how we understand and enact democratic principles in our physical education teacher education (PETE) practices. Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices…

This paper draws upon education policy sociology, and sport coaching literature, in critically examining sport coaches as policy actors. Stephen Ball and colleagues' conceptualisation of different policy actor positions and roles provided the framework for research that investigated how eight professional swimming coaches in Victoria, Australia,…

Scraton's [1992. "Shaping up to womanhood: Gender and girls' physical education." Open University Press] ground breaking research highlighted how Physical Education (PE) contributed to the reproduction of gender power relations; more specifically, how three messages around motherhood, sexuality and physicality, reflected through PE's…

Within the Australian context physical education (PE) and more recently health and physical education (HPE) have long been ascribed utilitarian value for producing healthy citizens. Whilst this has not been a linear progression over time, traces from the past do inform current assumptions about this utilitarian role. Of consequence are historical…

This paper shares a unique approach to primary Health and Physical Education (HPE) whereby students learn about personal, social and community health through intergenerational arts-led pedagogies. Drawing on socio-critical, socio-cultural and salutongenic perspectives, the unit of work that the students engaged with was underpinned by an…

In this article, we explore the pedagogies of (de)liberation promoted in the sports-based intervention Midnight Football (MF), carried out in a suburban and socio-economically disadvantaged residential area in Sweden. Based on interviews with coaches and managers and on-site observations, we examine how socio-pedagogical rationalities and…

Formal coach education has been described as an activity which promotes conformity from course attendees. To date, however, few studies have looked at how coach education has been socially constructed over time. The present study addresses this gap and provides a Freirean account of English Football Association (FA) coach education since 1967.…

Teachers in the school subject Health and Physical Education (HPE) need to be able both to teach health and to do so in a healthy (equitable) way. The health field has, however, met with difficulties in finding its form within the subject. Research indicates that HPE can be excluding, meaning that it may give more favours to some pupils (bodies)…

Through an examination of the experiences of young people in one disadvantaged area, this paper adds to an emerging body of knowledge focused on what place physical activity occupies in the lives of young people in areas of disadvantage. A total of 40 young people (21 males, 19 females) participated in focus group interviews. The research question…

Taking our lead from Rainer Maria Rilke's (1929) "Letters to a Young Poet", our broader project aimed to create a space for dialogue and intergenerational learning between Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) Early Career Academics (ECAs) and members of the PESP professoriate. This paper focuses specifically on the experiences of…

This article explores how our understandings of gender and Physical Education (PE) have developed since the publication of "Shaping Up to Womanhood" in 1992. I reflect back on my research which, using qualitative methodology and a socialist feminist lens, explored dominant gender relations in the teaching of girls' PE in English…

Developing teacher education programmes founded upon principles of critical pedagogy and social justice has become increasingly difficult in the current neoliberal climate of higher education. In this article, we adopt a narrative approach to illuminate some of the dilemmas which advocates of education for social justice face and to reflect upon…

This paper investigates how two male teachers construct health and physical education (HPE) as a particular site for schooling the gendered body. Using knowledge of productive pedagogies and a theoretical framework that draws on the work of Foucauldian analytic categories, we foreground how issues of identity, the body and gendered knowledge/power…