BEYOND THE CLASSROOM // HEALTH AND FITNESS
Discourses of self-regulation and healthism CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY LECTURER, RACHAEL JEFFERSON-BUCHANAN, EXPLORES THE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE NEW PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT, HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION (PDHPE) K–10 SYLLABUS.
Rachael Jefferson-Buchanan is currently a lecturer in Human Movement Studies (Health and Physical Education) and Creative Arts at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. For the last 30 years she has taught and lectured in primary and secondary physical education in the UK, Switzerland and Australia. Ms Jefferson-Buchanan was also the lead physical education consultant for Cambridge Assessment International Education during this time, designing national curriculum and related professional development in Egypt and Kazakhstan.
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My current research considers physical education curriculum and associated sports policy in the UK, across a time period of nearly 120 years. I have adopted a genealogical approach, focusing on the historical discourses through which different forms of governing are constituted. In so doing, I have explored ways in which certain discourses give rise to historically specific forms of knowing and governing the body in physical education, and I have examined the power effects that underpin these. The selected methodology unsettles the ‘taken-for-granted’ in contemporary physical education, troubling rather than cultivating consensus, and thereby illuminates how this school subject’s pedagogy and practice construct the body. Although my genealogical research focuses on the UK, it has inherent connections with the new Australian PDHPE K–10 Syllabus developed by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), perhaps due to colonial ties between the two countries. It is therefore possible to examine various discourses that have emerged in the UK physical education context and apply these to the new Australian PDHPE syllabus. A particularly significant aspect to note in the latter is how the syllabus has been structured. In essence, it is shaped by five propositions, organised into three content strands, with a focus on three PDHPE skill domains. Figure 1 provides an illustrative representation of these elements and their relationship. What becomes evident from this simple visual is how extensively self-regulation, coupled with healthism, have permeated the new Australian PDHPE syllabus. Indeed, self-management skills, along with interpersonal skills, and movement skills, form the foundation of the syllabus content. They are encircled by three content strands, of which two are health-oriented. In the third strand,
education matters secondary
Movement Skill and Performance, health also rises to the fore. Herein, traces of healthism are able to be distinguished, whereby an individual’s sense of personal responsibility and their body as sites of intervention and regulation are targeted. In working under the assumption that everyone should endeavour to maximise their own health, healthism suggests that the individual has a choice when it comes to preventing their body from becoming diseased. As a result, healthism is often alluded to as an advanced liberal doctrine that unites public health objectives with individuals’ aspirations for personal health and wellbeing; this, despite the fact that socioeconomic status is strongly associated with risk of disease and mortality. Interestingly, healthism and personal responsibility are two core discourses that tend to dominate contemporary physical education in the UK. However, as explained above, the notion of ‘self-management’ is explicitly stated (and concomitantly accepted) as a core skill domain in the Australian PDHPE syllabus. In contrast, only smatterings of this are embedded in the UK syllabus through the Key Stage statements and one of the four key concepts entitled ‘healthy, active lifestyles’. In the latter it is confirmed that students need to recognise the importance of regular physical activity and its impact on physical, mental and social wellbeing. This implicitly suggests that individual conduct, attitudes and emotions are the relevant symptoms needing attention in health behaviours. In similar ways to the Australian PDHPE syllabus, discourses consequently reveal themselves to be individualistic and regulatory in nature. It is in the Australian syllabus strand ‘Healthy, Safe and Active Lifestyles’, which focuses on the interrelationship between health and physical activity concepts, that healthism and self-