Looking beyond what's broken: towards an appreciative research agenda for physical education and sport pedagogy

‘It has really amazed me what my body can now do’: boundary work and the construction of a body-positive dance community

“…This possibility for transformation resonates strongly with the context at the heart of this research and provides a valuable framework for understanding, in part, how the body-positive focus of an alternative dance community helps to facilitate and support individuals' construction of embodied identities. It is also very much in line with the strengths-based approach underpinning this research (Enright, Hill, Sandford and Gard 2014), which, in turn is driven by a desire to uncover 'what works' as the starting point for positive change and ongoing development.…”

“…Various typologies of the AI process have been outlined with the most popular model being Cooperrider and Whitney's (2001) 4D cycle: discover the best of what is, in order to then dream the best of what can be, design proposals for change based on common dreams, and realise a destiny by creating sustainable transformation. Following our identification of AI as an alternative approach to researching what works in physical education (Enright et al 2014), we sought a case study with which we could work to investigate the best elements of a physical education-related positive movement subculture. The case presented here is a London-based dance school called Irreverent Dance (ID), which identifies as a body-positive space.…”

Mixed messages: pre-service Health and Physical Education teachers’ understandings of health and the body and the expectations of the Australian curriculum

“…Enright, Hill, Sandford, & Gard, 2014;McCuaig, Quennerstedt, & Macdonald, 2013). Some others doubted the wisdom of having a unified curriculum area of health and PE (Gard, 2014), and claimed that the relationship between PE and health has long been the subject of debate (Kirk, 2006;Quennerstedt, 2008).…”

Learning movement cultures in physical education practice

“…The expanded didactic triangle (Hudson & Meyer, 2011, p. 8) Here it is clear that the research interests of didactics, learning and teaching share many of Wertsch's (1998) ideas about exploring learning socioculturally, as well as the interests of research within the field of PE around critical inquiry and critical pedagogy (cf. Enright, Hill, Sandford, & Gard, 2014;Oliver & Kirk, 2014;Stirrup & Damant, 2014). However, sometimes research in didactics ask slightly different questions regarding educational practice, where didactical questions traditionally are addressed by the questions what, how and why, in terms of what and how teachers teach, what and how students learn and why this content or teaching is taught or learned.…”