ABSTRACT
Despite a flourishing body of research and literature on critical pedagogies in health and physical education (HPE), few scholars have explored the role that high-stakes assessment plays in driving the enactment of these pedagogical approaches in school settings. In response, this chapter explores how assessment policy can strengthen or inhibit the potency and purchase of new philosophies, content and practices in school HPE programmes. Two ‘stories’ of Australian HPE curriculum reform are documented in this chapter. The first of these curriculum reforms resulted in the construction of a nationally consistent HPE curriculum framework for the first 10 years of compulsory Australian schooling. The second took place as part of a review of the Australian senior school phase which accompanied the national reform agenda, and subsequently underpinned the reform of the HPE senior (or examinable) subjects in the Australian state of Queensland. Harnessing the theoretical contributions of Basil Bernstein, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which the powerful message system of assessment shaped Australian teachers' investment in adopting innovative and sustainable approaches to critically oriented HPE. This analysis informs some concluding thoughts on how assessment plays a significant role in securing an educative, as opposed to intervention oriented, HPE.
