Students' conceptions of sport and sport education

This article explores a class of Grade 5 (age 9 and 10) children’s conceptions of sport during a season of sport education at Forest Gate Primary School. The purpose, following Kirk and Kinchin (this issue), is to examine the extent to which the potential transfer of learning between school and sport as a community of practice may be possible through sport education in school physical education. With reference to student interviews and drawings we report and discuss children’s conceptions of sport, their experiences of sport outside of the school, and their emerging conceptions of sport education in light of these prior understanding and experiences. We conclude that there was an evident level of compatibility between students’ experiences of sport education and their conceptions of sport more broadly.

Muscularity, the habitus and the social construction of gender: Towards a gender-relevant physical education

This paper begins to develop the concept of gender-relevant physical education, combining the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his notion of the habitus and feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young's analysis of feminine motility. It draws on data generated from a study of young people's articulation of the relationships between muscularity, physicality and gender. The social construction of the body has been of central importance to the construction of femininities and masculinities, and has formed an enduring meta-theme through much of the research on physical education and gender. We build on the young people's insights to argue that Bourdieu's notions of the habitus and the exchange of physical capital provide a useful means of conceptualizing issues of embodiment and gender in school physical education and sport. We conclude by sketching an outline of gender-relevant physical education as a process of interrupting the habitus.

A randomized controlled trial of intensive neurophysiology education in chronic low back pain

Objectives: Cognitive-behavioral pain management programs typically achieve improvements in pain cognitions, disability, and physical performance. However, it is not known whether the neurophysiology education component of such programs contributes to these outcomes. In chronic low back pain patients, we investigated the effect of neurophysiology education on cognitions, disability, and physical performance. Methods: This study was a blinded randomized controlled trial. Individual education sessions on neurophysiology of pain (experimental group) and back anatomy and physiology (control group) were conducted by trained physical therapist educators. Cognitions were evaluated using the Survey of Pain Attitudes (revised) (SOPA(R)), and the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS). Behavioral measures included the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ), and 3 physical performance tasks; (1) straight leg raise (SLR), (2) forward bending range, and (3) an abdominal drawing-in task, which provides a measure of voluntary activation of the deep abdominal muscles. Methodological checks evaluated non-specific effects of intervention. Results: There was a significant treatment effect on the SOPA(R), PCS, SLR, and forward bending. There was a statistically significant effect on RMDQ; however, the size of this effect was small and probably not clinically meaningful. Discussion: Education about pain neurophysiology changes pain cognitions and physical performance but is insufficient by itself to obtain a change in perceived disability. The results suggest that pain neurophysiology education, but not back school type education, should be included in a wider pain management approach.

Risk reduction: Recontexualizing health as a physical education curriculum

While there is sufficient evidence to suggest that physical activity is inversely related to lifestyle diseases, researchers are far from being certain that this evidence extends to children. Nevertheless, the school physical education curriculum has been targeted as an institutional agency that could have a significant impact on health during childhood and later during adulthood if individuals could be habituated to assume a physically active lifestyle. The purpose of this article is to examine the recontextualization of biomedical knowledge into an ideology of healthism in which health is conceived as a controllable certainty and used as a pedagogical construction to transform school physical education. Using a Foucauldian perspective, we explore how the atomized biomedical model of chemical and physical relationships is constructed, reproduced, and perpetuated to service and empower the discourse and the practices of researchers and scholars. In this process the sociological or cultural aspects of public health are marginalized or ignored. As a result of this examination, alternative approaches are proposed that engage the limitations of the biomedical model and openly consider the insights that are available from the social sciences regarding what participation in physical activity means to individuals.