Building a Community of Collaborative Inquiry: A Pathway to Re-imagining Practice in Health and Physical Education

On-going critiques of existing practices in schools focus on the ability of generalist teachers to deliver quality Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the primary sector. As well, there are concerns regarding the influx of outsider providers in school spaces and the potentially damaging body pedagogies and practices that are pervading education settings. We are interested in how these issues contour teachers’ practice, what this might mean for diverse learners in schools, and what processes support classroom teachers to re-imagine and practice HPE in ways that celebrate and meet the varied needs of students. In this paper we draw from a collaborative ethnographic action research project with four primary school teachers and three university lecturers. In particular, we explore the pathway that supported both academics and teachers to re-imagine HPE in two primary schools in Aotearoa-New Zealand. We direct attention to three key processes: the importance of identifying teachers’ and students’ preconceptions of HPE and the pedagogies employed; the need for ongoing, critical dialogue and questioning about current orthodoxies and classroom practices; and the momentum provided by the enunciation of a shared ethos or philosophy of HPE. These are proposed to have been fundamental to our subsequent endeavours to re-imagine classroom HPE in ways that met the needs of diverse learners. We conclude that innovative, inclusive programmes and practices in HPE are possible when teachers and researchers work collaboratively, and teachers increasingly ‘drive’ both the research and the change process in their own classrooms

Cruel optimism? Socially critical perspectives on the obesity assemblage

Socially critical scholars in Health and Physical Education (HPE) have been raising questions about the ethical, moral and social consequences of charging schools with the burden of ameliorating an ‘obesity’ problem for years, yet there is little sign of any substantial shift in the thinking that drives obesity strategies and policies in and around schools. Drawing on exemplars from our own and others’ practice, we interrogate the extent to which socially critical obesity work, and post-structural work, in particular, can contribute to new understandings of the ‘obesity assemblage’. Can our own repetitive aspirations to disrupt dominant discourses be regarded as yet another exemplar of ‘cruel optimism’ or can a flourishing body of critical enquiry actually do something both for young people in the context of health and physical education and for cultural understandings more widely

Health invaders in New Zealand primary schools

Escalating concern over childhood obesity rates, children’s eating habits and their physical activity regimes has fuelled the development of multiple health policies and resources. Many of these are reaching into primary schools, contouring pedagogical opportunities and influencing how young people may come to understand themselves as healthy (or not). In this paper, we map the health policy/resource context in New Zealand emergent over the past two decades, examining the form and content of health messages circulating and their incursions into primary school environments. We also consider the potential effects for teachers and students of enduring health ‘invasions’ in the primary school space

Response to letter ‘New Zealand’s shocking diabetes rates can be reduced—9 urgently needed actions’

We are writing in response to the letter published in the 12 August 2011 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal by Signal et al: http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/124- 1340/482

Newborn DNA-methylation, childhood lung function, and the risks of asthma and COPD across the life course

Rationale: We aimed to identify differentially methylated regions (DMRs) in cord blood DNA associated with childhood lung function, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) across the life course. Methods: We meta-analysed epigenome-wide data of 1688 children from five cohorts to identify cord blood DMRs and their annotated genes, in relation to forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), FEV1/forced vital capacity (FVC) ratio and forced expiratory flow at 75% of FVC at ages 7-13 years. Identified DMRs were explored for associations with childhood asthma, adult lung function and COPD, gene expression and involvement in biological processes. Results: We identified 59 DMRs associated with childhood lung function, of which 18 were associated with childhood asthma and nine with COPD in adulthood. Genes annotated to the top 10 identified DMRs were HOXA5, PAOX, LINC00602, ABCA7, PER3, CLCA1, VENTX, NUDT12, PTPRN2 and TCL1A. Differential gene expression in blood was observed for 32 DMRs in childhood and 18 in adulthood. Genes related with 16 identified DMRs were associated with respiratory developmental or pathogenic pathways. Interpretation: Our findings suggest that the epigenetic status of the newborn affects respiratory health and disease across the life course

Developmental discourses in school physical education

This poststructuralist study critically examines the nature and function of developmental discourses in N e w Zealand school physical education. Since the inception of formal schooling in N e w Zealand, physical educators have insisted that physical education can and does assist children to develop their physical, cognitive, emotional, social and spiritual selves. These disciplinary claims provide the conceptual foundation upon which the profession rests. They legitimate particular professional and research practices, dispositions toward children and relationships between students and teachers. This thesis explores the historical and contemporary discourses about child development that physical education theorists and practitioners have drawn on to argue for a central role for physical education in the development of children. Despite the resonance of orthodox disciplinary claims with our commonsense understandings about child development, there are good reasons for subjecting these claims to close scrutiny. Drawing extensively on poststructural social theory and the insights of Michel Foucault, in particular, the thesis interrogates the \u27regimes of truth\u27 which have contributed to the incorporation of developmental discourses in school physical education throughout history. It argues that developmental explanations of human change have shaped the way contemporary physical education theorists have come to think about the \u27child\u27 and his/her \u27development\u27. It also argues that when discourses of child development are examined within different social, cultural, political, economic and historical contexts, the truth status of those regimes is substantially ruptured. Appealing to a relatively recent branch of psychological study - critical psychology - this thesis problematises orthodox conceptualisations of the twin objects of developmental psychological enquiry - \u27the child\u27 and \u27development\u27. The study shows how commitments to an individualised conception of \u27the child\u27 and a sequential, hierarchical pattern of \u27development\u27 construct the child at the centre of physical education practice in ways which privilege one, narrowly conceived version of \u27childhood\u27, over the possibility of multiple, diverse \u27childhoods\u27. A detailed analysis of two recent N e w Zealand physical education syllabi is used to show h o w ideas about who children are, and how they develop, remain embedded in the practices of contemporary physical education curriculum writers. This analysis suggests that developmental discourses are not merely intellectually interesting, but also yield consequences in the realm of practice. Discourses of \u27child development\u27 construct particular subjectivities and power relations in schooling which normalise and exclude many children. Results of the study indicate that although developmental discourses remain entrenched in much of the practice of the discipline, there are \u27spaces\u27 or \u27conditions of possibility\u27 opening up in new physical education syllabi which may enable teachers and students to experience and practise child development differently. In addition, the study suggests several theoretical and empirical research routes which could assist in a re-conceptualisation of the raison d\u27etre of school physical education - the \u27developing child\u27

Biopedagogies and family life: A social class perspective

In this chapter we draw on our work with young people and families to explore the utility of poststructural theoretical resources in understanding engagement with health imperatives. While we suggest that concepts like biopedagogies, discourse and subjectivity (amongst others) usefully frame our research, we also focus on what cannot be thought/understood with these resources alone. We explore how the complexity of family life, the ways culture, class and biopedagogies of the body intersect in ‘real’ lives and the translation of school-based health messages to home environs may require alternate theories