Physical Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice

This article examines the complex but seldom articulated relationship of primary physical education, citizenship, and social justice. We argue that to con?ate physical activity and sport with physical education in unacknowledged ways may serve to perpetuate the status quo. More significantly, the current emphasis on activity through competitive sport in the teaching of physical education in primary schools is both reductive and educationally limiting, affecting not only teachers’ professionalism but the wider educational experience of young people. The trend towards competitive sport at the expense of a broader educational experience further represents a potentially serious omission: an abrogation of responsibility on the part of schools in England and Wales to meet the statutory requirements of the Education Reform Act (1988). On the thirtieth anniversary of the Act, we adopt a novel approach, utilizing Foucauldian ideas, to examine movements in the development of policy and understand the contemporary context as a means to suggest more propitious ways forward.