Sport studies

The sport-for-development movement has grown exponentially in the last decade generating increasing academic attention. However, existing research has rarely sought the views of young people despite them being both the main target audience of initiatives and frequently the deliverers. This paper seeks to address young people's absence within research and advocate the importance of engaging them in sport-for-development debates to enhance understanding of current delivery and to improve policy and practice in the future. The paper examines Zambian young people's views of HIV/AIDS peer-led education delivered through sport considering particularly whether young people believe such interventions can encourage empowerment and subsequent behaviour change. The paper outlines the importance of improving understanding of how young people can begin to translate knowledge into agency. The paper concludes with the suggestion that change is more likely if peer-led education through sport programmes are combined with multi-layered interventions directed at all levels of communities.     

Teacher adaptation to flexible learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Teaching practices respond to the prompts, resources and inherent potential of a school’s physical, social and cultural landscape. This study involved how...     

Using discursive strategies,playing policy games and shaping the future of physical education

This paper presents a critical analysis of the representation of physical education (PE) in the 1992 Senate inquiry into ‘Physical and Sport Education’ in Australia. Analysis focuses specifically upon how and why a new professional discourse, fundamental motor skills (FMS), gained a privileged position in the inquiry, the inquiry report and in subsequent PE policy and practice across Australia. This paper examines the complex policy processes and power-relations underpinning the progressive legitimisation of the FMS discourse, and identifies subtleties and variations in the expression of the discourse. Attention is drawn to the strategic appropriation of established professional discourses and utilisation of crisis discourses in establishing and gaining support for the FMS discourse. The analysis reaffirms policy arenas as sites of contestation but highlights that they are simultaneously sites of possibility for PE professionals who are prepared and able to use discursive resources in strategic ways. The contemporary relevance of the discourses privileged in 1992 and lessons to be learned from events surrounding the Senate inquiry are discussed.