Expanding curriculum pathways between education for sustainability (EfS) and health and physical education (HPE)

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is now firmly a contemporary challenge for health researchers. The recent release of the Australian Health and Physical Education (HPE) Curriculum provides a timely opportunity to examine health knowledge(s) and consider the possibilities for alternative understandings of health and wellbeing in relation to interconnectedness with the human and more-than-human world. In this chapter, I reflect upon photographs generated by primary school students exploring their outdoor school environments, in order to re-imagine possibilities for integrating sustainability as a contemporary health issue within the HPE curriculum. I seek to consider this visual data from a recent project in Australian primary schools through my own emergent thinking about posthumanist and relational materialist perspectives. The discussion focuses on being attuned to particular places where children feel a sense of connection, relatedness, or enchantment, and to recognise the importance of the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human world. I draw on two examples of school gardens to wonder about their potential to bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries. I argue that while there is scope in the HPE Curriculum to address the cross-curricular priority area of Sustainability, addressing this aim necessitates a renewed focus on alternative approaches and discourses that may not be explicitly associated with HPE in its current conceptions. Building the parallels between wellbeing and sustainability frameworks may lead to creative pathways between education for sustainability (EfS) and the HPE curriculum in a way that fosters embodied learning experiences for students, which may be catalysts towards deeper connections with self and others.