What is the meaning of PE? Exploring the influence of an educational curriculum approach on students’ participation and non-participation in physical education

Abstract

There is evidence that the longstanding multi-activity sport-based approach to physical education (PE) limits the opportunities for students to participate in and learn from PE. Furthermore, studies of educational approaches to PE have identified a willingness to re-orientate and re-structure PE by exploring diverse ways of learning in, through and about movement. This study endeavours to advance this issue through an empirical analysis of how an educational PE curriculum approach influences student engagement. Using the concept of the landscape of practice, it explores how students’ participation or non-participation in PE is moulded by various communities of practice (CoPs), with a specific emphasis on the school as a learning community. The study is based on a qualitative single case study in a state school in Denmark. Data generation included weekly observations of PE lessons taught with an educational approach and focus groups with a total of 33 students from the seventh and ninth grades (13–15 years old). The material was processed using Massey's model for thematic analysis. Our analysis reveals that an educational approach supports student engagement with a broader landscape of PE that is no longer solely associated with communities of sport and physical recreation, but with the school as a community of learning. Such new articulations of PE, which were constructed on the boundaries between multiple CoPs, influenced the students’ willingness to participate in and learn from PE, depending on their positions within the landscape. We discuss the implications for the future design and development of a PE curriculum.