Researching social justice and health (in)equality across different school Health and Physical Education contexts in Sweden, Norway and New Zealand

Abstract

The way school Health and Physical Education (HPE) is conceptualized and taught will impact on its ability to provide equitable outcomes across gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and social class. A focus on social justice in HPE is pertinent in times when these ideals are currently under threat from neoliberal globalization. This paper draws on data from the initial year of an international collaboration project called ‘Education for Equitable Health Outcomes – The Promise of School Health and Physical Education’ involving HPE and Physical Education Teacher Education researchers from Sweden, Norway and New Zealand. The data in this paper record the researchers’ presentations and discussions about issues of social justice and health as informed by school visits and interviews with HPE teachers in the three different countries. The analysis of the data is focused on what is addressed in the name of social justice in each of the three countries and how cross-cultural researchers of social justice in HPE interpret different contexts. In order to analyse the data, we draw on Michael Uljens’s concepts of non-affirmative and non-hierarchical education. The findings suggest that researching social justice and health (in)equality across different countries offers both opportunities and challenges when it comes to understanding the enactment of social justice in school and HPE practices. We conclude by drawing on Uljens to assert that the quest for social justice in HPE should focus on further problematizing affirmative and hierarchical educational practices since social justice teaching strategies are enabled and constrained by the contexts in which they are practised.