Research Objective: Health and Physical Education (HPE) has increasingly become a complex cultural ‘contact zone’ (Pratt, 1992; Tarc & Tarc, 2015). With global population shifts, schools need policies and strategies to attend to the interests and needs of diverse student populations. Two of the greatest challenges facing some countries in Europe and in Australia are enabling its increasingly ethnically diverse student populations to lead healthy and active lives, and the promotion of social cohesion in its citizens’ lifestyles amidst contestations about cultural diversity. Minority ethnic youth are amongst those groups with the lowest levels of physical activity, and are often identified as a ‘risk’ group in ‘problem-orientated’, ‘deficit’ (and Western) approaches to physical activity and health. Chinese youth in particular fall into such ‘risk’ categories, and yet have rarely been the focus of research or policy initiatives.

Research gaps and questions: There seems to be a concerted effort in research to improve teaching practices in order to meet the needs of the increasingly diverse student populations in schools. Yet we know very little about how teachers go about promoting an inclusive teaching and learning environment with ethnically diverse students in HPE. To date, there is a dearth of studies that examine Anglo-Celtic teachers’ perceptions of and experiences in teaching students from diverse racial/ ethnic backgrounds in HPE (Dagkas, 2007; Sato & Hodge, 2014). Even less research examines how Anglo-Celtic HPE teachers perceive students with Chinese ancestral backgrounds. While previous research has explored Chinese-Australian students’ resources in their everyday lives, academic studies and physicality (Pang & Macdonald, 2015), their perceptions and experiences in HPE (Pang & Macdonald,  2015), their subjectivities of health and healthy bodies (Pang, Alfrey & Varea, 2015) and the influences of Chinese families on their children’s HPE and physical activity experiences (Pang, Macdonald & Hay, 2013), this paper extends this field of research by examining the kinds of complexities that HPE teachers experience in facilitating the learning in HPE of Chinese students.

Theoretical framework: This paper recognises how complex and difficult it is to examine the relevance of diverse people’s cultures through learning without erasing the distinctiveness that coexist within a social space. In undertaking this task, the interplay of Bourdieu’s concepts (habitus, capital, field and misrecognition), Chinese “complementary difference” and postcolonialism will be useful for understanding culturally inclusive education in HPE. The results will have implications for the professional teaching and learning experiences that encourage teachers to promote diversity in HPE in westernized contexts such as countries in Europe and in Australia. 

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