Understanding young Chinese Australian's (dis)engagement in Health and Physical Education and school sport

Abstract

Background: School Health and Physical Education (HPE) and sport has increasingly become a complex cultural contact zone. With global population shifts, schools need policies and strategies to attend to the interests and needs of diverse student populations. School HPE and sport is a particularly significant site as it is a touchpoint for a range of cultural values and practices related to physical activity, the body, health and lifestyle proprieties. Purpose: While there is a high Chinese student population in Australian schools, little research has been undertaken to understand their needs, experiences and perceptions in schools HPE and sport. In addition, research in the physical activity field is accentuated by paradigms that assume and perpetuate the binary notion of cultural beliefs and practices such as 'West' versus 'East' and in association with 'Normal' versus 'Problematic' lifestyles in relation to physical activity. We argue that, without conceding the epistemological understanding of 'difference', policies and practices that promote diversity can remain socially unjust and superficial. Research design: This paper focuses on two schools in Queensland. The data collection process was underpinned by critical and interpretive ethnographic methods. The participants in Sage College consisted of seven girls of whom three were in Year 8, three in Year 9 and one in Year 10. At Routledge State High, a state-owned, secular and coeducational secondary school, the cohort consisted of two girls in Year 8, one girl and two boys from Year 9. Results: This paper draws on Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital, field and doxa and the Chinese Confucianism philosophy of 'Complementary difference' to understand the various perceptions and experiences of young Chinese Australians in schools HPE and sport. Results invite us to seek an understanding of students' subjectivities and disrupt the binary differences in cultural values and attributes to promote multicultural education. Conclusion and recommendation: Moving beyond the Australia's Anglo-Celtic centred HPE and the limitations of a Western view of exclusive opposites, this paper makes an original contribution to knowledge by presenting a 'heuristic of difference' model that accommodates Western and Chinese perspectives in Australian HPE research.

Impact of Physical Education Lesson on Adaptation of Syrian Refugee School Age Children in Turkey

“…(Patherick, 2017). Students' cultural background provides information that how they engage with and participate in PE and how they come to understand being healthy (Pang & Macdonald, 2016). Internationally, there is a burgeoning body of research examining issues of how racialization and racism operate in overt and covert ways in PE and school environments (Azzarito, 2009;Fitzpatrick, 2013;Flintoff et al, 2015).…”

Rethinking the ‘aspirations’ of Chinese girls within and beyond Health and Physical Education and physical activity in Greater Western Sydney

“…We highlight the notion of an 'autonomous' and 'dependent' modern Chinese girl, the idea that a dual approach to femininity is a critical aspect of the education of the body, health and physical activity, and in understanding 'difference' (see Pang & Macdonald 2015b;Pang & Soong, 2016) and promoting HPEPA to Chinese young girls in Australia. This notion of autonomy and dependence provides an alternative lens that argues against the neoliberal discourses of aspirations, individualism and personal responsibility.…”

“…Young people from Chinese and other minority ethnic communities are often described as at 'risk' in terms of health and physical activity (Pang & Macdonald, 2015b;Pang, Alfrey & Varea, 2015). Statistical data tends to narrowly report minority ethnic groups, such as 'Asians' 1 living in Western contexts as inactive (Nazroo, 2003).…”

“…India and Pakistan) (ABS 2008). physical activity is to influence ways of seeing (or ignoring), of understanding (or not understanding), or representing (or not representing), and of remembering (or forgetting) who they are, what they 'can do' and who they 'can be' (Pang & Macdonald, 2015b) in HPEPA. We argue that these statistical ways of knowing and the language of deficit in popular media and education research are committing a form of 'symbolic violence' (Bourdieu, 1999) that may sit in opposition to Chinese girls' self-identifications and aspirations.…”

“…Using the Chinese girls' data on what is thinkable, desirable and achievable in HPEPA, this paper puts forward the notion of 'autonomous' and 'dependent' modern Chinese young girls. This notion will have implications for research and pedagogy that moves beyond a Western view of exclusive opposites, and in rethinking and redefining neoliberal notions of aspirations in relation to an Anglo-Celtic centred HPEPA (Pang & Macdonald, 2015b).…”