Connecting Contemporary Frameworks for Physical Education

Amongst the many models and theories that are being positioned to influence the future direction of our subject area, social ecology and complexity theory are considered important. Yet because physical education scholars... [ view full abstract ]

Amongst the many models and theories that are being positioned to influence the future direction of our subject area, social ecology and complexity theory are considered important. Yet because physical education scholars invest substantial time and effort developing a knowledge base, synthesizing thinking and enthusiastically presenting personalized frameworks, there is a real risk these ideas get lost in specialist terminology and naval gazing. Accordingly, the physical education landscape has become messy for academics and practitioners as they grapple with the multiple ideas that are presented as different, with unique language, yet appear to possess many similarities. This presentation describes what happens when we make deliberate and systematic attempts to seek synergies that build upon a shared set of common ideas albeit embedded in different contexts. To this end, we have adopted a comparative analysis approach to explore two different but similar systems-based frameworks, complexity and social ecology, that have been applied in physical education on two different sides of the globe (Scotland and Australia). We draw upon two related data sets, our own publications and a series of five online conversations. A detailed analysis of these data revealed two emergent themes for discussion: 1) our shared understandings and contradictions across systems frameworks; and 2) our views on the application of the related overarching frameworks. Our presentation will explore the method of our collaboration, the key themes that emerged from this and implications for future attempts to create physical education as a more connected and integrated subject area.