Research

Empowering Knowledge

Research plays a role in highlighting disparities and inequities within education and disseminating meaningful examples of HPE teaching practices and effective professional learning. Research plays a role in shaping policy. This page serves as a repository for current research articles that explore the intersections of social justice and Health and Physical Education. The aim of this page is to showcase research that contributes to conversations on issues and practices within HPE classrooms.

Five Principles of Transformative Pedagogies in Physical Education Teacher Education

Referring specifically to the context of PE/PETE, Tinning (2017) described transformative pedagogy as an “educational perspective” that concerns itself with questions of justice, democracy and ethics. In this post, we outline five underpinning principles of transformative pedagogies that can guide HPE teachers and HPE teacher educators through the complexity of their own individual contexts.
May 6, 2024
15 min read

Sometimes unfair is fair: New Zealand HPE teachers’ perceptions of social justice

This study shows that New Zealand HPE teachers perceive that social justice is an important concept in their teaching, but it is complex and understood in different ways. The teachers identify how they take action for social justice through practices that reflect a focus on representation of student voices, recognition of differences, and redistribution of the classroom resources.
June 13, 2024
20 min read

Caring teaching and the complexity of building good relationships as pedagogies for social justice in health and physical education

Caring teaching is a complex practice. This study shows that to develop good relationships teacher should: (1) actively attempt to develop knowledge about their students, (2) deliberately reflect on aspects of building good relationships and (3) convert this into good caring teaching strategies.
May 6, 2024
5 min read

School Health and Physical Education: Is this the place and space for developing social cohesion in post-Covid schools?

What is the role of HPE in relation to working for social inclusion and social justice? It provides an ideal interactive learning context for the teaching of social cohesion and through extension social justice, by providing active learning experiences where students can learn with and about other students with whom they may not normally associate with in their daily lives and develop personal and social behaviours that can ultimately lead to both increased student and societal health and well-being.
March 8, 2024
5 min read

Part 1: The A to Zs of teaching for social justice in HPE

This article proposes a range of strategies that can be used by HPE professionals to ensure that the subject is meaningful and beneficial to all students. As every teaching context is enabled and constrained in different ways, teachers will need to use their professional judgment to recognize whether the ideas and strategies outlined are appropriate for their teaching space.
May 6, 2024
15 min read

Drawing on indigenous knowledge as part of a critical pedagogy in Health and Physical Education in Aotearoa New Zealand

Drawing specifically on the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, the authors describe the principles of Kaupapa Māori and how these principles have been articulated in HPE in Aotearoa New Zealand.
May 7, 2024
20 min read

Using TPSR as a model for social justice in Physical Education

This article proposes five steps for teachers wishing to connect the well known instructional model 'Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility' to social justice
June 13, 2024
20 min read