United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Promoting health and well-being through physical education partnerships

The United Nations recently approved the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which forms a guideline policy for all nations. While the UN have strongly advised that partnerships are essential for the implementation of these global goals, within local communities there is little evidence of how this is best done or what it looks like in practice. This paper shares a health and wellbeing community initiative that achieves goals three and four of the SDGs, and in doing so models how to implement physical education partnerships as advocated by the UN. The highly successful innovative initiative is “Best Start: A community collaborative approach to lifelong health and wellness” (2011–2014).This paper shares a health and wellbeing partnership, modelling implementation of physical education (PE) advocated by the United Nations (UN). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exemplifies global efforts towards equality, specifically Goal 3 and 4 address health and wellbeing. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into cross sector “partnerships”, identified as essential for the implementation of the SDGs. This is significant as the UN acknowledge a present gap of information on partnerships in action and a need for reporting from the ground level. The project “Best Start: A community collaborative approach to lifelong health and wellness”, began as a partnership between a university and nearby schools and quickly grew to involve Australian Registered Training Organisations, the local health industry, Education departments and sport governing bodies. The collaborations involved pre-service teachers teaching Health and PE lessons to children in a disadvantaged socio-economic area, creating valuable learning experiences for stakeholders. Local and global communities were involved in research and reform. The project creatively optimised resources available through state, Australian and international connections. International partnerships enabled identification of unique contextual opportunities. Programme planning was strengthened with data gathered from an England and Wales Ofsted awarded Primary Physical Education course. Various methods, including; semi-structured interviews, reflective journal, observations, document analysis, and Student Evaluation of Teaching Units (SETU) were adopted. SETU is valid and reliable data collected by the university for the purposes of research. The findings support that partnerships enable SDG implementation and the research paper offers direction for localisation

The translation of articles from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into education legislation:the narrowing of Article 12 as a consequence of translation

This paper is concerned with the inclusion, exclusion and reshaping of articles within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as they are translated into English education legislation. The CRC comprises 54 articles aimed at outlining rights and freedoms for children and was ratified by the United Kingdom (UK) government in 1991. The paper builds on a previous publication by the authors which highlighted how the mobilisation of articles within the CRC into professional practice undergoes multiple translations. This paper takes an in‐depth and critical look at the first stage of the translation process in which articles are mobilised from the CRC into national legislation. Specifically, the paper presents findings from a documentary analysis which explored the translation of principles pertaining to Article 12 of the CRC into English Education Regulations, Acts and Statutory Guidance for schools. Findings demonstrate that the reshaping of the article within education legislation strongly reflects the government's priorities and agendas. The study raises new insights into the need to establish processes to ensure the full mobilisation of Article 12 and questions whether specific principles pertaining to the article could or should be incorporated into national legislative systems.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin

Accessing parental perspectives to inform the development of parent training in autism in south-eastern Europe

Parent training has been shown to be an important means of supporting families living with autism – but such services are not universally accessible. A multinational project funded by the European Commission has been developed in order to establish such parent training in three south-eastern European countries. To ensure that the training was relevant and appropriate, a survey was carried out in autumn 2015 to ascertain the attitudes of parents of children with autism in Croatia, Cyprus and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia regarding this issue, and to identify the areas of training that they felt most important. Two hundred and fifty-three surveys were distributed, and 148 were returned, a response rate of 58%. Respondents in the three counties were overwhelmingly positive about parent training, with almost 90% stating that they would like to attend such training. Weekend training sessions were preferred by the majority of respondents. There was wide variation between the three countries with regard to what content was felt important to be included, with parents in the FYR of Macedonia seeking information in the greatest number of areas. Five topics were prioritised by parents across all three countries. These were: • Strategies for enhancing my child’s communication • Strategies on facilitating my child’s interaction with other children • Sensory integration and development • General information on behavioural management strategies • Identifying and/or developing socialisation opportunitie

Time to stop polishing the brass on the Titanic: moving beyond ‘quick-and-dirty’ teacher education for inclusion, towards sustainable theories of change

Interest in inclusive education in the global south has grown significantly since the adoption of the Salamanca Statement in 1994. Increasingly, those who fund and provide education want to be seen taking action on inclusion generally and disability inclusion specifically. However, the much-welcomed enthusiasm to respond to global commitments is not always matched with the necessary expertise and commitment to longer-term action and change. The growth in inclusive education policies and pilot projects in the last decade is hard to miss, but changes resulting from these interventions are often less apparent. Why is that? Drawing on the Enabling Education Network’s 22 years of experience as a global inclusive education network and consultancy provider, we present alternative pathways for change in teacher education for inclusion. We stress that change in teaching practice remains limited not because inclusive education is a fundamentally flawed concept, but because too much focus is given to ‘quick-and-dirty’ trainings that quickly yield donorpleasing statistics and publicity-attracting case studies, but fail to elicit sufficiently extensive and sustainable change to education systems and cultures

Work to be done? A survey of educational psychologists exploring their contribution to special schools for profound and multiple learning difficulties

This article explores the perspectives of educational psychologists across England with regard to their professional involvement, role and contribution to special schools for children and young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). An online survey was distributed to all educational psychology services in England and to private educational psychology practices. Data collected from 207 respondents were analysed using descriptive statistics and quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The findings suggest a complex national picture, including great variation in the frequency of educational psychology visits and indirect contact with the special schools. While the work carried out by educational psychologists in these special schools is primarily individual, statutory-led casework, systemic work is considered to be the ‘ideal’ contribution. Educational psychologists’ views on their role in PMLD settings seem to feature limited ideas. The authors suggest that improving educational psychologists’ skills and knowledge of PMLD, building relationships with special schools and finding a niche in supporting, among other things, the emotional well-being of the school’s community, might be ways forward for working in PMLD schools. The article concludes by emphasising the continued need for the profession to understand and market the specific role it can play in PMLD settings

The discursive construction of childhood and youth in AIDS interventions in Lesotho's education sector: Beyond global-local dichotomies

This is the post-print version of this article. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning D,Society and Space 28(5) 791 – 810, 2010, available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 Pion.In southern Africa interventions to halt the spread of AIDS and address its social impacts are commonly targeted at young people, in many cases through the education sector. In Lesotho, education-sector responses to AIDS are the product of negotiation between a range of ‘local’ and ‘global’ actors. Although many interventions are put forward as government policy and implemented by teachers in schools, funding is often provided by bilateral and multilateral donors, and the international ‘AIDS industry’—in the form of UN agencies and international NGOs—sets agendas and makes prescriptions. This paper analyses interviews conducted with policy makers and practitioners in Lesotho and a variety of documents, critically examining the discourses of childhood and youth that are mobilised in producing changes in education policy and practice to address AIDS. Focusing on bursary schemes, life-skills education, and rights-based approaches, the paper concludes that, although dominant ‘global’ discourses are readily identified, they are not simply imported wholesale from the West, but rather are transformed through the organisations and personnel involved in designing and implementing interventions. Nonetheless, the connections through which these discourses are made, and children are subjectified, are central to the power dynamics of neoliberal globalisation. Although the representations of childhood and youth produced through the interventions are hybrid products of local and global discourses, the power relations underlying them are such that they, often unintentionally, serve a neoliberal agenda by depicting young people as individuals in need of saving, of developing personal autonomy, or of exercising individual rights.RGS-IB

Assessment or referral tool: the unintended consequences of a dual purpose common assessment framework form

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) was designed to facilitate early intervention through multi-agency working and the active involvement of families. The underlying principle was to move away from a risk-focused, needs-led or service-led culture to assess need and match needs to identified services. It was anticipated that services and assessments would become more evidence-based, and a common language between professionals and agencies would evolve. Taking a social constructionist approach this study explored professionals’ experiences of the use of the Common Assessment Framework form. Forty-one professionals from four different local authorities and a variety of agencies took part in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed utilizing thematic analysis. Findings suggest the unintended consequences of the use of the CAF were influenced by local authority policy. As the local authorities adopted the policy of utilizing the CAF as a referral mechanism, rather than to assess needs, profes-sionals unintentionally perceived the CAF form as a referral tool, to refer families to existing service provision. Further to this, professionals referred to the CAF form itself, as a ‘means to an end’, implying that this was a step that had to be overcome in order to access services

"Physical education", "health and physical education", "physical literacy" and "health literacy": Global nomenclature confusion.

The title “physical education” (PE) is the traditional taxonomy used to represent the education discipline. Health and physical education (HPE) is regarded to be an all-encompassing health-dimensional title that has been recently embraced by various education systems around the world. Hence, it can be argued that PE and HPE are often used interchangeably by educationalists, portraying a similar meaning and understanding. This can be regarded as internationally confusing, as historically PE and HPE have represented different and at times paradoxical discourses and ideologies. Amongst the ambiguity of which title to use, PE or HPE, new terms of branding such as “physical literacy” and “health literacy” have re/emerged. The purpose of this interpretivist study is to identify if associated terms used for the original PE label are a help or hindrance to practitioners? Participants were asked an open-ended question relating to PE nomenclatures. The data gathered were analysed and findings confirmed that practitioner confusion does exist. It is suggested that children are first and foremost “physically educated”; therefore a strong, clear and comprehensive grounding in quality PE is essential for teachers and students