Policy Futures in Education
ISSN 1478-2103

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Back to the Future: reoccurring issues and discourses in health education in New Zealand schools

MARGARET SINKINSON School of Critical Studies in Education (Health Education), Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.315

A key function of health education in New Zealand schools has always been to educate individuals to be responsible and accountable for their own health status. Educational, economic and political stances on what best constitutes effective health education, however, shift over time. The outcome of these shifts is that a multiplicity of disciplines and theoretical frameworks has informed pedagogical practices in this subject area, and continues to do so. Psychology, sociology, philosophy and biological sciences are all visible in school health education syllabuses. Currently a range of concepts and theories underpin the subject, ranging from critical theory and post-structuralism to cognitive behavioural theory and behaviour change models. Although various disciplines, concepts and theories have fashioned the delivery and content of past and present school health education, none have proved particularly effective in moving it away from pervasive and enduring discourses of individualism. Examined in this article are socio-political influences on curriculum directions and discourses over the last century, including the part played by external bodies in determining health education subject matter and health behaviour emphases.

Health Imperatives, Policy and the Corporeal Device: schools, subjectivity and children’s health

JOHN EVANS & LAURA DE PIAN School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
EMMA RICH Department of Education, University of Bath, United Kingdom
BRIAN DAVIES School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.328

‘Health’ has become a major concern of policy makers internationally in recent years, especially where and when it is reduced to a measurable and, therefore, comparable commodity/’quality’: weight and obesity levels. Schools in many countries have increasingly been charged with responsibility for safeguarding children’s health, ensuring that they eat the right foods, exercise sufficiently, and either lose or maintain ‘ideal weight’. The authors are concerned to highlight that the success of any educational strategy is likely to depend as much on what schools or teachers do, as on what students themselves bring to the ‘learner encounter’ in the way of cultural predispositions and levels of socio-economic, financial and political resource. Drawing on data from research examining the impact of new ‘health imperatives’ on schools within the United Kingdom, they explore connections between the corporal and corporeal, and the recontextualising processes that occur as health imperatives flow across and within multiple sites of discourse and are translated into pedagogies and school policies which may have impact upon the subjectivities of young people. Concepts drawn from Bernstein and others that have become central to the authors’ work illustrate how individual pupils’ needs, interests, abilities and desires are interrelated with, and affected by, the various cultural settings and pedagogies they experience at home, at school, in their peer groups and other social settings.

‘I’m Proud to Be Me’: health, community and schooling

LISETTE BURROWS School of Physical Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.341

Health reportage in New Zealand’s popular and professional media regularly features large, avowedly inactive, indigenous and/or ‘poor’ people failing to nurture their children properly on account of their size. While well-meaning government and school-based initiatives explicitly target these so-called ‘high-need’ communities, seldom is there any considered understanding of what the young people consigned to these groupings understand as good ‘health’ nor the variety of ways in which they take up imperatives designed for them. Drawing on ethnographic work across two New Zealand school sites I explore the ways children are making sense of and responding to new health imperatives, given the very different material conditions and interests that contour their positions within cultural and class groupings. Analysis suggests that children can and do critically interrogate the veracity of dominant discourses, reassess them, reconstruct existing knowledge and read corporeality and admonishments to move and eat in particular ways through cultural lenses that, in some cases permit them to retain some sense of themselves as ‘well’, and in other cases, do not. Some ‘youth’ (cultures and class positions) are ‘abjectified’ while others are empowered and endorsed by prevailing healthscapes and their recontextualisation though the practices of schooling and family life.

Obesity, Health and Physical Education: a Bourdieuean perspective

KATIE FITZPATRICK University of Auckland, New Zealand

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.353

Assumptions and interventions about the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ pervade health and physical education classrooms and national policy agendas in New Zealand, as they do elsewhere in the Western world. In contrast, critical scholars in these subjects advocate an active deconstruction of the tenets and presumptions underpinning public and media conceptions of obesity, related body norms and physical activity and nutrition interventions. This article employs Bourdieu’s notions of field, capital and habitus to argue that each of these approaches emanates from a different field of cultural production. Drawing on a critical ethnographic study of a low socioeconomic school in South Auckland, New Zealand, I also argue that acknowledging students’ own cultural fields might offer a way forward.

The Production, Communication, and Contestation of Physical Education Policy: the cases of Mississippi and Tennessee

BEN DYSON School of Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand
PAUL M. WRIGHT Department of Health & Sport Sciences, University of Memphis, USA
JOHN AMIS Department of Management, Fogelman College of Business & Economics, University of Memphis, USA
HUGH FERRY Department of Health & Sport Sciences, University of Memphis, USA
JAMES M. VARDAMAN College of Business, Mississippi State University, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.367

The purpose of this study was to explore the production, communication, interpretation and contestation of new physical education (PE) and physical activity (PA) policy initiatives introduced in Mississippi and Tennessee for the academic year 2006‑2007. These states provide a relevant context to study such issues, since Mississippi has the highest and Tennessee has the fifth-highest rate of childhood obesity in the United States (Trust for America’s Health, 2009). The social-ecological model was used as a theoretical framework to interpret the social, economic, temporal, and political interactions that shaped the development, interpretation, and implementation of these policies (Stokols, 1992). A multiple-level case study design (Yin, 2003) was adopted in which the policy process was analyzed and compared across eight high schools. Four high schools were purposefully selected in each state that provided a broad range of contextual differences and collected data in real-time during a one-year period. We conducted 73 interviews with key stakeholders, including policymakers, school administrators, teachers and students, and observed PE lessons and school-based activities. The researchers identified themes from the data: Policy process; Expectation of compliance; Unfunded mandate; Problematic policy enactment; Academic pressure; Marginalized status of PE; Narrow PE curriculum; and Dislike of PE. Even though new PE and PA legislation had been passed in both states, no substantive change occurred in any of the schools during our study. This work moves beyond a superficial understanding of how policy initiatives impact PA and PE provisions within schools, particularly at the secondary level. We recommend the development of support systems within the school through the creation of clear goals, strategic plans, and professional development to implement new policy initiatives.

The Body Politic: childhood obesity as a symbol of an unbalanced economy

CRYSTAL KRONER University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.381

As society’s novices, children are becoming more susceptible to advertisers who target them as a profitable demographic. This creates an alarming trend of obesity and exacts a considerable financial, physical and ethical toll on the community. To view obesity as concurrent with malnourishment seems counter-intuitive, this study uses Butler’s description of the body as the enactment of hegemony, in order to reveal a tension between our cultural and economic ideologies manifesting in children’s bodies. To come closer to this, the social context of food is examined; its production and distribution in light of today’s overabundance of mass-marketed low-quality foods, to show how this state of unbalance affects children’s bodies. Next, literature from the health-related fields regarding the negative impact of advertising directed at children is examined, to support the argument for educational policies tailored to the current political context. As the ideology of consumerism becomes increasingly connected to children’s bodies, intervention strategies must begin teaching them how to navigate this complex political landscape in order to inculcate a more balanced and alternative perspective on accountability and consumption.

Privileged Advocates: disability and education policy in the USA

COLIN ONG-DEAN Spencer Foundation, Chicago, USA
ALAN J. DALY & VICKI PARK Education Studies, University of California, San Diego, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.392

Since the establishment of educational rights for children with disabilities in the 1970s, special education in the US has included a growing share of students and has constituted an ever-growing share of education budgets. Previous research has focused on the disproportionate assignment to special education of low-income and minority students, concluding that special education mainly reproduces social disadvantages. This article argues that privileged parents – by virtue of their ability to navigate complex legal and scientific practices and discourses that are seen as guarantees of fairness and neutrality in special education – are able to secure advantageous resources for their children through special education. Through analysis of the distribution and content of ‘due process’ hearing requests in the California special education system, this article shows how advocacy in this part of the system depends on parents’ cultural and economic capital. Specifically, reimbursement claims in due process hearings show how having economic capital can be used to leverage public education resources, while parents’ testimony in hearings shows the importance of having cultural capital. In concluding, the emphasis on parental involvement in both regular and special education is discussed and alternatives to the individualized system of rights in special education are considered.

Sexuality Education Policy and the Educative Potentials of Risk and Rights

CRIS MAYO Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership; Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.406

This article argues that institutions need to take more risks to improve sexuality education. Understanding how risk structures sexuality may help make sexuality education more attuned to the needs of diverse students. Situating sexuality in the context of human rights can help to demonstrate the kinds of social and institutional risks that are created by limiting sexuality education. In addition to contributing to high rates of HIV and unwanted pregnancy, insufficient sexuality education augments conditions for expressions of gender-based violence that harm young people in general but also more specifically impede young women’s educational attainment. By limiting information and deliberation on desire, risk and culturally based gender inequities, sexuality education in its current state continues to limit health and life options for all people.

More than Bodies: protecting the health and safety of LGBTQ youth

DARLA LINVILLE Education Program, Colby College, Waterville, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.416

This article presents data from a six-month participatory action research project. Researchers included one doctoral student and eight high-school students in New York City, all of whom identified as non-heterosexual and/or gender non-conforming. The research analyzed language and behavior in school, as well as state anti-bullying and sex education policies, and found their application to be mixed, with high-school students not receiving even HIV/AIDS lessons in some cases, even though they are mandated by the state. Young people speaking in the research presented in this article ask for a consideration of safety that includes their need for accurate and comprehensive information about sex, sexuality and gender – not just for themselves but also for their peers, teachers and school authorities. They request that consideration of the health and safety of LGBTQ youth needs to include more than just anti-bullying protections and HIV/AIDS materials, and that biological arguments about sexuality and gender roles should be called into question by curricular materials in favor of a fuller history of sexual and gendered identities. These changes, they suggest, may improve their level of belonging in their schools – a key factor in their physical and mental health and safety during adolescence.

Expanding School Improvement Policy to Better Address Barriers to Learning and Integrate Public Health Concerns

HOWARD S. ADELMAN & LINDA TAYLOR Center for Mental Health in Schools, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2011.9.3.431

This article stresses that current school improvement policy in the USA marginalizes development of the type of system of student support necessary for enabling student success and well-being at school. Then we discuss how education policy can be expanded and operationalized to correct this deficiency. Finally, we explore the implications of the expanded policy for connecting overlapping public education and public health concerns.

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