ABSTRACT
Futures studies have become a serious business in a range of fields but have occupied the thinking of only a few researchers in physical education (e.g. Massengale, 1987; Penney and Chandler, 2000; Laker, 2003). This relative lack of interest is somewhat paradoxical given, on the one hand, the colourful and dramatic history of the field in schools and colleges (Fletcher, 1984; Kirk, 1992) and, on the other, rapid development in physical culture, including the commercialisation, commodification and technologisation of sport, exercise and active leisure (Kirk, 1999). This lack of curiosity about the future has not been helped by developments in the academic field of sport-related studies (in which physical education is located) where the study of history, where it exists at all at undergraduate level, is dominated by sport rather than physical education. Arguably, physical educators lack a perspective on their field; they are, effectively, trapped in the present tense. One of the symptoms of being trapped in the present tense is the tendency to be astonished by what appear to be unprecedented developments. Who could have predicted that the rapid academicisation of physical education teacher education would result in a loss of physical activity subject matter knowledge? Or that, in England, the government would spend in just over a decade around £2 billion on physical education and school sport? Or that obesity levels among children and young people would allegedly rise even though we now have degree-qualified physical education teachers in schools more or less worldwide? Or that the development of community-based sport for children under 12, supported by poorly trained volunteer coaches, would undermine the role of physical education teachers in secondary schools? Or that by 2014 four-year physical education initial teacher education (PE ITE) programmes in the UK would have been replaced completely by one-year postgraduate certificates?
