The continuity of PE-as-sport: exploring secondary school students’ accounts of the meaning and purpose of PE in England

Berkshire, M, Mason, J and Hardwicke, J ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1152-0920, 2024. The continuity of PE-as-sport: exploring secondary school students’ accounts of the meaning and purpose of PE in England. European Physical Education Review. ISSN 1356-336X

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Physical education (PE) has long been contested as various discourses compete and conflict on what the subject is and what its purpose ought to be. Within these discussions, less attention has been placed on student accounts of the purpose of compulsory secondary school PE in England, nor on the meanings constructed based on experiences of the subject. Therefore, this study sought to build on and extend the insights in this area from the student perspective. Drawing on data generated through six focus groups with 27 students, aged between 11 and 14, we show the obdurate nature of dominant sport discourses within PE in England. The meaning and purpose of PE was largely constructed as sport and positive experiences of PE came mostly from students who enjoyed and participated in sport. PE-as-sport was reported to broadly, and sometimes negatively, influence student experiences based on ability, gender and through lack of choice and autonomy within the subject. We do not conclude with clear ‘practical’ recommendations for change in practice, but instead suggest a continued focus on critically questioning the role of sport in PE amongst practitioners and researchers is necessary.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: European Physical Education Review
Creators: Berkshire, M., Mason, J. and Hardwicke, J.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 30 May 2024
ISSN: 1356-336X
Identifiers:
Number
Type
10.1177/1356336X241256866
DOI
1891768
Other
Rights: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Divisions: Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by: Laura Ward
Date Added: 03 May 2024 13:09
Last Modified: 17 Jun 2024 09:32
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/51383

Actions (login required)

Edit View Edit View

Statistics

Views

Views per month over past year

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year