Reengaging with Don Hellison's legacy: a humanistic pedagogy to social justice in physical education through a Freirean lens

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how Hellison's legacy and pedagogies can be reinterpreted through the lens of Freirean social justice. Utilising qualitative reanalysis, we revisited data from previous articles on Hellison's pedagogical contributions. Three themes frame the findings: (a) beyond the banking concept–both Freire and Hellison rejected the banking concept of education, advocating for relationality and active engagement; (b) personal experience, grounded in practice–their pedagogies were deeply informed by lived experiences and real-world application; (c) implicit and explicit approaches to transformation–Freire explicitly aimed to reshape reality through conscientização (critical awareness) and praxis to address systemic oppression, while Hellison's approach was more implicit, using sport and physical education as a tool for fostering individual and social responsibility. By juxtaposing Hellison's and Freire's pedagogies, we highlight diverse pathways to enacting social justice in physical education and expand Hellison's ideas within the TPSR framework.