The main aims of this symposium are to introduce members of the UK Physical Education (UKPE) Collaborative and to share some of the findings from their UKPE cross-border learning project.

The UKPE Collaborative consists of a group of researchers from across the four nations of the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), all with a shared interested in curriculum, or more specifically, physical education (PE) curricula and the role that curriculum plays in shaping the practices of PE teachers. Relatedly, they are also interested in exploring the mechanisms through which teachers might be encouraged to engage critically with curriculum, and how they develop capacities to re-imagine PE curriculum – what purpose it serves, who it serves and the possibilities for enactment both now and in the future. One of the ideas currently being explored by the UK PE Collaborative in this regard is cross-border curriculum learning. That is, the professional learning potential of cross-curriculum analyses, discussion and debate. The premise is that, by exploring ‘other’ curricula, it is possible to see your own curriculum from a different perspective (Gray, MacIsaac & Harvey, 2018). This then encourages different questions to be asked about curriculum, challenging previously taken-for-granted assumptions about what PE is and who it is for.

The starting point in this endeavor was to carry out a series of cross-border curriculum analyses focusing on the four PE curricula of the UK, namely those in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (Gray et al., 2021). Through these analyses, dominant discourses within each curriculum have been uncovered and the concept of health has been critically analysed (Gray et al., 2022), as have the pedagogical messages conveyed within each curriculum. Furthermore, the comparative approach adopted has enabled the identification of similarities and differences across curricula, which has stimulated ideas about what PE curricula could be in the future. Following these curriculum analyses, one-to-one interviews with PE teachers (n-11) from across the four nations of the UK were conducted to explore how they understand PE, with some focus on the role of health and well-being within the subject. In addition to this, and aligned with a future-orientated (or perhaps, change-orientated) perspective, the PE teachers were also asked to reflect on the changes they made to their curriculum and practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, a series of teacher workshops was organised, bringing together PE teachers from across the four nations of the UK to share and discuss the findings from the teacher interviews. The two main aims of the workshops were: first, to use these discussions as a form of cross-border learning; and, second, to use this learning to work together to begin to (re)imagine what PE could be.

The three papers presented within the symposium reflect each stage of this research process described above. In Paper 1, researchers will present the key findings from the critical discourse analysis of the health discourses evident within each UK PE curriculum. Paper 2 will then present the findings from the teacher interviews, highlighting teachers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and changes they made to their curriculum and practice as a result, including a renewed focus on the development of social and emotional competencies. Finally, Paper 3 will describe the teacher workshops and explore the ideas that were produced from the future-orientated co-creation activities that the teachers engaged in as part of these. The symposium will conclude by reflecting on the value of cross-border learning, considering the ways in which this approach might build the capacity of teachers to engage more critically with curriculum and have a greater say in future curriculum developments.

Gray, S., Hooper, O., Hardley, S., Sandford, R., Aldous, D., Stirrup, J., Carse, N., & Bryant, A. S. (2022). A health(y) subject? Examining discourses of health in physical education curricula across the UK. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3820 Gray, S., MacIsaac, S. & Harvey, W.J. (2018) A comparative study of Canadian and Scottish students’ perspectives on health, the body and the physical education curriculum: the challenge of ‘doing’ critical, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education, 9:1, 22-42, DOI: 10.1080/18377122.2017.1418179 Gray, S., Sandford, R., Stirrup, J., Aldous, D., Hardley, S., Carse, N., Hooper, O., & Bryant, A. (2021). A comparative analysis of discourses shaping physical education provision within and across the UK. European Physical Education Review. DOI: 10.1177/1356336X211059440