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What is PE? Sport, education and society

Coulter, Maura orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-0892-6591 and Ní Chróinín, Déirdre orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-0920-980X (2011) What is PE? Sport, education and society. Sport, Education and Society, 18 (6). pp. 825-841. ISSN 1470-1243

Abstract
Physical education is a socially constructed activity that forms one component of a wider physical culture that includes sport and health/physical activity (Kirk, 1999, Lake, 2001a: 69, Penney, 1998). The terms sport and physical education are often used interchangeably in school contexts, where sport and health continue to shape what is understood by the term physical education (Capel & Blair, 2007). This study explores discourses shaping pre-service primary teachers’ understandings of the nature and purposes of physical education within an Irish context and the relationship between these understandings. A ten minute writing task (Pike, 2006) prompted by the question ‘what is physical education?’ was completed by a sample of pre-service teachers (n=544, age range 18-46, 8.8% male) from two colleges of education, prior to the physical education component of their teacher education programme. Content analysis involved an initial text frequency search to create categories which were collapsed into three broad areas of students’ understandings of physical education – sport, health and physical education. The research design allowed access to preservice teachers’ understandings of physical education. Participants’ understandings reflected their own school experiences and were framed within health and sport ideologies of physical education. Although acknowledged as an important part of school life physical education was perceived as a break from academic subjects where the purpose of learning was to learn sports and activities to stay fit and healthy. While the overwhelmingly positive nature of participants’ experiences and the changing discourses around competition and team games are encouraging the dominant discourses of physical education continue to reflect the dominant aspects of wider physical culture in Ireland. The capacity of physical education to move beyond reproducing dominant sport and health ideologies provides a significant challenge to teacher education contexts, to challenge dominant discourses and recreate understandings of physical education for future action.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Sport; Physical education;Culture; Physical Activity; Initial Teacher Education
Subjects:Social Sciences > Education
Medical Sciences > Health
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Institute of Education > School of Arts Education & Movement
Publisher:Taylor and Francis
Official URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2011.613924
Copyright Information:© 2011 Taylor and Francis. This is an electronic version of an article published in Sport, Education and Society. It is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2011.613924
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
ID Code:21488
Deposited On:02 Dec 2016 10:22 by Thomas Murtagh . Last Modified 04 Aug 2022 12:27
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