Happy 21st birthday sport education: Where are we now?

The article focuses on the pros and cons of the Sport Education Curriculum (SEM) that is used in New Zealand. Comments made by former professional rugby player Chris Laidlaw show how important sport is to New Zealanders. Educator Daryl Siedentop believed that sport education was necessary and his play theory is analyzed

Plato makes the team: the arrival of secondary school sport academies.

Since sport captivates many young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is not surprising that it is being situated in a new form of educational setting. This is evidenced through the emergence of secondary school sport academies over the last four years. The first academy was established in 1997 at Aranui High School in Christchurch and now there are over 70. This paper examines the changing role of sport in secondary education, discusses the emergence of sport academies and comments on the development of three of these. The academies provide the context - where sport takes place - which is crucial to the education and sport nexus (Gerdy, 2000). Clearly, if sport can achieve educational purposes through sport academies, then we must explore their operation as an educational tool

Is physical education relevant? Interpersonal skills, values and hybridity

Discussion surrounding the relevance of the document Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum has focused on a range of areas. While some writers claim it has the potential to be emancipatory and the inclusion of interpersonal skills and values is important and meaningful, others have levelled criticisms that the document is trying to do too much and has a middle class agenda. This article reports part of the findings of a small study which explored how some Maori and Pasifika students viewed their experiences of physical education in one major urban New Zealand high school. The experiences of these students are related to Besley's notion of hybridity. Her argument suggests that young people actively negotiate and make critical decisions about what they think is relevant to them. The students believed physical education has provided them with opportunities to develop and practice care for others and to learn and apply interpersonal skills as well as to gain confidence and apply their skills in situations outside the school setting. The study argues the need for curriculum to connect with the wider lives of students and any degree of connection can only occur if students are given a voice in the curriculum implementation process

Introduction to special section on bodies in motion: Sport, health, physical activity and physical education.

The article focuses on health and physical education. Rachel Saunders presents a narrative that typifies many sporting communities in this country. Her story illustrates the nature and influence that significant adults can have on young people within sport contexts. This narrative will ring true for many readers and highlights how many apparent rituals and routines should never be taken for granted by adults. Karen Barbour draws on feminist research to explore how knowledge can be constructed by individuals and groups based on lived experience. She argues for "embodied ways of knowing" as an alternative to traditional epistemologies that have dominated Western thought

Sport and education: Sport in secondary schools for all or for some?

The place of sport in schools has always been controversial and struggled to gain legitimacy and acceptance as a part of the formal curriculum. While some commentators argue sport has no place in the curriculum, others claim it is too important to be left to chance and, like other aspects of education, it can and should be pursued for its own intrinsic value. For example, Siedentop (1982, p. 2) stated, 'if sport is equal to other ludic [movement] forms (art, drama, music and dance) both for the individual and the culture; and if more appropriate participation in sport represents a positive step in cultural evolution then sport in education is justified'. From another but still supportive perspective, Arnold (1997, p. I) claimed, 'sport is a trans-cultural valued practice ... and despite its corruption from time to time it is inherently concerned with concepts, ethical principles and moral values which are universally applicable and justified as a form of education

Playing to win or trying your best: Media representations of national anxieties over the role of sport participation during the 2002 commonwealth games.

In the last few years, growing concern has emerged in New Zealand sport about the shift towards a more commercial or professionalised model of sport and away from a mass participation-based model. In the midst of a relatively intense period of debate and concern over this change in direction, the 2002 Commonwealth Games took place in Manchester, England. In this article, we analyse how media coverage of the Games articulated with the broader public debate over the direction of New Zealand sport. Grounded in the assumption that the media both reflects and impacts on public understandings of cultural issues, we believe this analysis of coverage of the Games reveals a profound ambivalence over a more profess ionalised model of sport and points to an unwillingness to give up traditional values of sports participation in order to win. We explore how this debate articulates with current tensions in the realm of Physical Education and suggest that health and physical educators have an important role to play in challenging current pressures towards a win-at-all-costs approach to sport

Overtraining and the complexities of coaches’ decision making: Managing elite athletes on the training cusp.

In many elite sport performance contexts overtraining is a critical issue for coaches to understand, recognise and respond to. While the indicators and effects of overtraining have attracted considerable research interest, there are no diagnostic tests that reliably predict impending overtraining. This study explored the practices and beliefs of three highly successful professional elite rowing coaches as they predicted and managed the risk of athlete overtraining during crucial periods of intensive training. These coaches took part in a series of semi-structured interviews that explored their practices, philosophies and experiences. The research draws on sociological perspectives pertinent to coaching pedagogy and more specifically, the tenets of naturalistic decision making in exploring how the coaches define and make decisions about overtraining. In doing so it recognizes that coaching involves decision-making in complex and demanding situations. The coaches were found to monitor the fatigue of their rowers through observation, communication and measures of training pace. In general, the intuitions and cues that were used by coaches had little in common with overtraining markers or indicators that are promoted in the sport science literature. Coaches’ decision-making was based largely on subjective information and processes that were influenced by a range of stressors unique to their positions. We contend that the research provides an important new perspective on coaches’ definitions and management of overtraining and enables management of overtraining to be better understood as a key element of coaching pedagogy in elite performance settings. In this article we argue successful coaches have unique insights into this topical area and this is worthy of future exploration

Schooling for violence and peace : how does peace education differ from ‘normal’ schooling?

This article reviews literature on the roles of schooling in both reproducing and actively perpetrating violence, and sets out an historical explanation of why schools are socially constructed in such a way as to make these roles possible. It then discusses notions of peace education in relation to one particular project in England before using empirical data from research on the project to examine contrasts between peace education approaches and ‘normal’ schooling from the viewpoints of project workers, pupils and teachers. It concludes that such contrasts and tensions do indeed exist and that this raises serious questions about the compatibility of peace education and formal schooling

Whole home exercise intervention for depression in older care home residents (the OPERA study) : a process evaluation

Background: The ‘Older People’s Exercise intervention in Residential and nursing Accommodation’ (OPERA) cluster randomised trial evaluated the impact of training for care home staff together with twice-weekly, physiotherapist-led exercise classes on depressive symptoms in care home residents, but found no effect. We report a process evaluation exploring potential explanations for the lack of effect. Methods: The OPERA trial included over 1,000 residents in 78 care homes in the UK. We used a mixed methods approach including quantitative data collected from all homes. In eight case study homes, we carried out repeated periods of observation and interviews with residents, care staff and managers. At the end of the intervention, we held focus groups with OPERA research staff. We reported our first findings before the trial outcome was known. Results: Homes showed large variations in activity at baseline and throughout the trial. Overall attendance rate at the group exercise sessions was low (50%). We considered two issues that might explain the negative outcome: whether the intervention changed the culture of the homes, and whether the residents engaged with the intervention. We found low levels of staff training, few home champions for the intervention and a culture that prioritised protecting residents from harm over encouraging activity. The trial team delivered 3,191 exercise groups but only 36% of participants attended at least 1 group per week and depressed residents attended significantly fewer groups than those who were not depressed. Residents were very frail and therefore most groups only included seated exercises. Conclusions: The intervention did not change the culture of the homes and, in the case study homes, activity levels did not change outside the exercise groups. Residents did not engage in the exercise groups at a sufficient level, and this was particularly true for those with depressive symptoms at baseline. The physical and mental frailty of care home residents may make it impossible to deliver a sufficiently intense exercise intervention to impact on depressive symptoms