The concept of health-related exercise (HRE) emerged within the Physical Education (PE) profession during the 1980s (Green, 2008). Subsequently, HRE has gained momentum within many UK schools and the position of health has increased within the National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE). The ambiguous nature of the NCPE, over this period, led to educationally undesirable practices in HRE (Cale and Harris, 2009a; Harris, 2009, 2005, 2000a). This has been exacerbated by the NCPE only outlining the content to be taught and not 'how' the content should be implemented (Harris, 2009). The purpose of this study was to explore HRE delivery methods (permeated-only, discrete-only and combined approaches) in secondary school PE lessons. Fifteen PE teachers (7 female and 8 male; aged 22-54 years) and forty-seven pupils (35 male and 12 female; aged 11-16 years) were selected from four secondary schools. A qualitative multiple site design was adopted that utilised semi-structured interviews of PE teachers and pupils, and direct lesson observations. The study revealed that the discrete approach was by far the most popular method of delivering HRE. PE teachers preferred the discrete approach because it allowed a designated time slot to undertake meaningful health and fitness work. Pupils also preferred HRE being delivered in a discrete manner because it was more 'functional' than other approaches and allowed them to concentrate on one aspect at a time within a lesson. The two other approaches investigated displayed mixed fortunes. Results are discussed in relation to the implications for research and practice and provided the first insights into pupils' and teachers' perceptions of the range of HRE delivery methods 'in situ' HRE practice. Future research should investigate the most effective method of HRE delivery.

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An attempt is made to identify factors leading to the development of Outdoor Pursuits (ODP) in French education from the beginning of the nineteenth century to recent years. Research questions were posed based on early and subsequent knowledge of the field, from them hypotheses were developed grounded in the data found and the insights arising from visits, reading and discussion. Examination performance is of overriding importance in French education; giving time to non-academic subjects such as Physical Education arouses teacher and parent concern for possible effects on career prospects. Influences affecting the spread of ODP in education from the early 1800s include an increasingly affluent population and growing popularity of ODP in society. Belief in the value of contact with nature, and the therapeutic benefits of fresh air for city children encouraged charities from the mid-1800s to arrange country or seaside holidays for poor families and children Some schools for the well-to-do arranged holiday time mountain expeditions, reflecting practices in their social class. New Education was introduced into France in 1899; its influence was apparent in the Popular Front government (1936-38) which made the forty hour week and two weeks paid holiday obligatory for all employees. Thus, ODP, formerly the domain the well-to-do, were more open to the general populace. To some extent New Education was apparent in Vichy government (1940-44) methods, and, more distinctly, for some years after the war, through government controlled experiments in 'active' education and school time ODP. The traditional pressure of examinations and the spread of ODP in society have resulted in term time primary school visits which incorporate both academic work and ODP, so quieting the fears of teachers and parents; secondary school ODP meet more difficulties. Benefits claimed from ODP experiences are many and varied.

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Over the last 40 years, there has been an expansion, what some have termed an “explosion” (Green, 2001) in the provision of Physical Education (PE) related qualifications, both academic and vocational, in English Secondary schools. In the context of the emergence and rapid growth of the 14-19 PE curriculum, a number of issues have emerged for both PE teachers and their pupils (Green, 2008). It is important to consider these issues and the implications for PE teachers and their pupils. This research study explored the perspectives of secondary school PE teachers towards the subject of PE within the 14-19 curriculum. Specifically, the research focused on PE teachers’ perceptions relating to (i) the broader social processes which have influenced the development of 14-19 PE, and (ii) the impact of the development of 14-19 PE for the subject of PE, PE teachers themselves, and their pupils in English secondary schools. 52 semi-structured interviews were completed over a 14 month period. The research participants, from 22 different secondary schools, consisted of both male and female PE teachers who held varying positions in schools, from PE teachers through Heads of PE to Assistant Headteachers and Headteachers. The research participants were aged between 23 to 59 years of age. The level of teaching experience ranged from between 3 months to 38 years, with 616 years of teaching experience between them. The primary data collected from the interviews were analysed both inductively and deductively. That is to say, first, using a ground theory methodology, emerging themes were identified that were ‘grounded’ within the data itself. Second, the sensitizing concepts offered by a figurational sociology perspective were used to interpret and ‘make sense’ of the themes emerging from the data. The key findings from this study have been broken down into two main themes. With regard to the first theme – PE teachers’ perspectives on the development of the 14-19 PE curriculum (in general, and in their schools in particular) – it was evident that there had been an expansion, over the last decade, of the accreditation opportunities available to more pupils, across more schools, through 14-19 PE, with the ‘drivers’ of such change being located within both ‘local’ and ‘national’ contexts. In terms of the second theme – PE teachers’ perspectives of the impact (both intended and unintended outcomes) of the development of PE within the 14-19 curriculum – it was evident that PE teachers’ views centred initially on the benefits of 14-19 PE for their pupils, and their departments and schools. However, it was evident that there were benefits to be had from 14-19 PE for PE teachers themselves, which meant a change in their ‘working climate’, although there were unplanned consequences also. For PE teachers this meant a change in their ‘work demands’. Sociologically speaking, it is suggested that 14-19 PE may be seen to have developed within a context of complex developmental processes, more specifically through networks of interdependency, characterised by power balances/ratios, and which have led to outcomes both intended and unintended. Specifically, it was suggested that the nature and purposes of PE and the role of PE teachers has markedly changed, indeed transformed. From the findings of this study, recommendations are proposed that focus upon policy implications and future developments, particularly in relation to the unintended outcomes of the development of 14-19 PE.

This research enquiry builds on and contributes to studies in the field of physical education, focusing specifically on pupils’ experiences of Year 12 physical education in a private secondary phase school in Turkey. Although there is scholarly work that examines the performance of gender in the physical education curriculum, there is little work attempting to interrogate the relationships between young people’s bodies, physicality, and the social landscape of a school. There has been even less work in the cultural context of Turkey that maps the various social forces which guide and determine the participants’ own physical education subjectivities. The research enquiry utilises physical cultural studies sensibilities that are based at the borders of inter-locking paradigmatic approaches. I am critically self-reflexive throughout the research enquiry as I represent, articulate, and rework the young people’s experiences gleaned from participant observations and interviews. An important finding to emerge from these narratives is the desire to reclaim the fun and play elements in physical education. However, the yearn to have fun in physical education becomes problematic when juxtaposed against the disempowering body practices surrounding engagement in the subject. In fact the workings of the body are afforded only a few positive comments from participants. The engagement of the participants in physical education thus contrasts with the performative and health discourses currently shaping Western physical education policies and curriculum practices. This research enquiry produces value-relevant knowledge to inform scholars and practitioners, aiming at a greater understanding of pupils’ experiences of the self, and opens future avenues for discussion when revising physical education policies, curricula, and practices. Furthermore, the research enquiry adds new insights into how the participants negotiate their own physicality and subjectivities in a physical education setting where Eastern and Western cultures meet, intersect, and collide.

While the close investigation of teachers’ classroom practice received considerable attention in the 1960s and 1970s, fine-grained observational studies of classrooms have progressively disappeared from the research landscape. Research in recent decades has tended to have a restricted focus of attention, concentrating on the objective measurement of ‘effective’ teaching to identify forms of classroom practice that can raise educational standards. This research agenda has been increasingly critiqued for oversimplifying the complex nature of classroom life, but capturing a more complete picture presents a number of challenges. There is a need for researchers to provide a fine-grained account of teachers’ practices in the classroom while giving a sense of the purposes framing these actions together with an alertness to salient contextual influences. The study presented in this thesis set out to engage with all these challenges and provide a ‘fresh’ interpretation of teachers’ day-to-day practices in comparison to many past studies. Given the intent to capture both teachers’ practices and how they framed these actions, Robin Alexander’s definition of ‘pedagogy’, which highlights the need for researchers to adopt a ‘bigger picture’ perspective, was an appropriate heuristic guide for this study. Six teachers of physical education working in different secondary school contexts participated in this study and a key concern in sampling was the desire to recruit highly competent practitioners. A pilot study and conversations with a number of key informants ensured the participants chosen were highly skilled teachers. This study was conducted in two inter-related phases. The first phase of the research involved tracking these teachers in their school context and 88 lesson observations were conducted to view them ‘in action’ with classes. The second phase involved conducting a semi-structured interview with each teacher to explore the insights gained about their practice during the observation phase of the research. A theoretical framework – featuring five framing categories and a ‘teacher-pupil power dynamic’ element – was constructed to encapsulate the main findings from the observation and interview research. The five framing categories represent the patterns of classroom interaction identified in this study, i.e.: teacher-directed, teacher-guided, pupil-led, pupil-initiated, and teacher-pupil negotiated practice. There was a degree of variation in all the participant teachers’ practices that were observed in this study, contrasting markedly with research in the physical education literature reporting an over-use of ‘direct’ teaching. The ‘teacher-pupil power dynamic’ derived from observation and interview work and is composed of two related dimensions. The first dimension captures the ‘fine-tuned’, ‘negotiated’ and ‘responsive’ nature of these teachers’ practices and highlights how teachers and pupils simultaneously shape classroom events. The second dimension encapsulates the core factors – respect, familiarity, time, and context – shaping teacher-pupil relationships and the decisions made about classroom practice. The thesis sets out how the teachers in this study carefully enacted a repertoire of teaching approaches by: ‘fine-tuning’ practice in advance of lessons taking place; ‘responding’ to situations in the immediate act of teaching; ‘negotiating’ the learning intentions for lessons with the pupils; and making judgements about practice against the changeable nature of teacher-pupil relationships. These insights contribute to the education and physical education literature by presenting a dynamic picture of classroom life and suggest that a more responsive, interactive form of teaching was displayed by these teachers than is revealed in the majority of past research studies. The central insights gained from this study contribute to research on pedagogy by providing a close analysis of the micro-interactions that take place in school classrooms and the influences shaping these interactions. A related and equally important contribution to pedagogy emerged from the sustained period spent observing these teachers, which developed a deep understanding of their teaching actions over time and across different physical activities and stages of schooling. The teachers in this study both responded to, and shaped, the dynamics of the classroom; and the interactive forms of teaching that they displayed are not adequately captured in existing definitions of pedagogy. Accordingly the thesis presents an expanded version of Alexander’s definition of pedagogy that foregrounds the dynamic nature of teacher-pupil relationships.

The development of physical education and school sport (PESS), a once ‘marginalised’ subject within the school curriculum, over the period 2003-2010 has often been referred to as the ‘quiet revolution’. An increased political interest in PESS and the idea that sport could be used to address wider social issues resulted in two major strategies, Physical Education, School Sport and Club Links (PESSCL 2003-2008) and Physical Education and Sport Strategy for Young People (PESSYP 2008-2013) and £2.4billion of funding. Drawing on Bernstein’s concept of the pedagogical device, this thesis seeks to understand how these two strategies were transmitted, transformed and realized in the secondary field and examines the extent to which they impacted on the pedagogic practice of PESS. This research study, conducted from within a School Sport Partnership, draws on a range of ethnographic methods including in-depth interviews with Partnership Development Managers, School Sport Coordinators, Primary Link Teachers and physical education teachers across a sub-regional area of London. This data was supplemented with extensive field diaries, partnership documentation and emails. Analysis of the data was conducted using grounded theory in NVivo9. The research findings are presented in three data chapters. The first examines the positioning of the PDM in the space at the interface between the recontextualising and secondary fields. The second results chapter investigates the realization of the PESS strategies and specifically examines the process of transmission and transformation of discourse as it passes through the complex infrastructure of School Sport Partnerships. The final data chapter discusses the impact of the PESS strategies on the pedagogic practices of teachers, and focuses extensively on the target driven culture which dominated practice within the secondary field. The lack of impact on pedagogic practice, particularly within secondary physical education, emerges as a key issue. The dominance of policy targets as the core evaluative rules of the PESS strategies emerged as a limiting factor in the realization of change. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the key findings and the implications for agents and/or agencies tasked with implementing and enacting change in the school setting. In applying the pedagogic device, we are able to analyse the role that the evaluative rules have in prioritising aspects of policy implementation and investigate the challenge of innovation and change. However I argue that Bernstein’s theory is not sufficiently sensitive to a number of the complexities of the contemporary educational landscape and needs further development and adaptation if we are to continue to use the pedagogic device to examine the process of recontextualisation and realization of policy in PESS.

This study compares and explains the knowledge base (Kirk et al, 1997; Shulman, 1987) for teaching physical education in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programmes in England and Korea from the 1960s to the present. In the USA (Siedentop, 1989), the UK (Kirk, 1992) and Australia (Macdonald et al, 1999), the erosion of time spent on content knowledge (CK) for sports and other physical activities has been noted as a matter of concern. The academicisation of the physical activity field and the marginalisation of PETE within it are major factors in the shift in the knowledge base. Data was presented from a comparative study of four PETE programme in two countries in respect of social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). The historical resources such as timetables, curricula and official documents were analysed using documentary methods and grounded theory. Grounded theory was also used to analyse interviews with previous and present teacher educators, student teachers, and teachers who graduated from each university. I found that for universities in both countries, first, the hours of theoretical content knowledge (TCK) and practical content knowledge (PRACK) in PETE had been reduced over time. Time for units of physical activity had decreased significantly. Second, student teachers learnt physical activity to introductory levels only, and the spiral system for the physical activity curriculum, where students ideally move from introductory to advanced levels of knowledge, did not work well. In terms of differences between the countries, first, in England there were many sessions where PRACK was interrelated with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and knowledge of learners and their characteristics (KLC). However, this was less common in Korea. In particular, interrelationships between PRACK and PCK and KLC were very weak because the Korean system is based on the study of kinesiology. Second, many students and teachers in England requested sessions to assist them to teach at GCSE and A Level. In Korea, in contrast, the need for PCK and KLC was identified. I conclude by confirming that CK forms only a small proportion of the knowledge base for teaching physical education confirming that there is a gap between the knowledge base in PETE and the knowledge requirements for teaching physical education in schools. I suggest developing special units in the PETE course based on models of learning, teaching and philosophy and being suitable for inclusion in the academic and scholarly culture of the university.

The purpose of this research was to explore and gain insight into year 1 undergraduate Physical Education student experiences of learning and develop understanding of the means by which students are supported in the transition to university. It explores the perceived cognitive, affective and social demands on learning; and the challenges and barriers faced by students in becoming academic learners in Higher Education. A qualitative phenomenological approach was adopted. Interpretative phenomenological Analysis (IPA) provides a methodological framework and analytical approach that enables an exploration of the individual [and shared] lived experience of the six research participants. The research is idiographic starting with a detailed exploration of individual experience and perspectives, followed by an interpretative analysis that preserves the participant voice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three key points during the first year of study and transcripts were analysed using an iterative, hermeneutic approach. A process of abstraction identified four recurrent master themes that capture the student experience of learning. It is by presenting a holistic understanding of the role that ‘Self’, ‘Becoming’, ‘Belonging’ and ‘Motivation’ play in defining student experiences of learning that this research makes its contribution to knowledge. The findings of this research show that student experiences of learning are individually unique and illustrates the importance of re-evaluating transition. Participants were self-aware but held compound self-concepts that are emotionally and socially defined. Situated and meaningful interaction is critical in fostering resilience and a sense of control over learning and tensions between the relational and connected nature of experience are brought into view. Participants encountered disconnection between certain pedagogies and learning, self-determination and the regulation of study. The conclusion identifies a series of developmental themes that can inform understanding and contribute to further research where the agenda for change seeks to respond to student needs through improvements in teaching and learning; student-centred pedagogy, connectedness, emotional coping, inclusion or exclusion, and mastery oriented learning.