For decades, scholars internationally have explored and advocated for critical perspectives and pedagogies within the context of Physical Education (PE) (see Pringle, Larsson & Gerdin, 2020). For example, researchers have investigated the extent to which PE marginalises and/or privileges young people in relation to issues of gender (Oliver & Kirk, 2015), ethnicity (Hill & Azzarito, 2012) and ability (Wilkinson & Penney, 2022). Much of this research has focused on uncovering the social inequalities prevalent within PE, and seeks to develop alternative ways of thinking about and doing PE so that all young people feel that PE can be a space for them. However, it is important to note that these approaches remain themselves on the margins, and have had relatively limited impact on how PE is conceptualised across the UK (Gray et al., 2022, 23) and internationally (Philpot et al., 2021; Tinning, 2019). Overall, PE continues to be a rather exclusive space, primarily for those young people who have the physical capacities to engage in competitive sports.

In this presentation, and building on our previous UK PE cross-border research (e.g., Gray et al., 2022; Stirrup et al., 2023), we propose that PE teachers from across the four nations of the UK might be supported to think critically about PE curriculum through opportunities to engage in cross-border dialogue. By comparing knowledge and experiences of curriculum across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, exploring similarities and differences and all the complexities around these, teachers might begin collectively to develop new knowledge, or ‘alternative vocabularies’ (Evans, 2014, p. 555), around the purposes of PE. 

Acknowledging the complexities working critically with curriculum (Priestley et al., 2012), and considering critical thinking as a useful entry point for teachers on a journey towards change (Hickey & Mooney, 2019), we planned a series of workshops bringing PE teachers together from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to engage in activities intended to stimulate cross-curriculum discussion, critical thinking and the development of new ideas. The four countries of the UK present an interesting and somewhat unique research context in that each devolved government within the UK is responsible for setting their own educational agenda, which inevitably leads to points of divergence across each system (Gray et al., 2022; Stirrup et al., 2023). As such, this context is notable because those points of convergence can support collaboration through initiating and sustaining productive dialogue, while points of divergence can open up opportunities to disrupt and re-imagine (O’Connor & Jess, 2019).

Recognising the novelty of our approach, this project was 'tentative and exploratory' (Lupton and Leahy 2019, p. 636-637) in nature. It is one part of a larger proof of study project focused on the feasibility and possible outcomes of cross-border learning (see Gray et al., 2022a; 2023). As a result, we were guided by research questions that were intentionally ‘open’ to allow an organic and emergent research process:

1.           What discussions or themes are evident when PE teachers from across the four nations of the UK are invited to share curriculum knowledge and experiences?

2.           In what ways (if any) do discussions encourage critical perspectives to emerge?

Drawing from participatory methods, we planned a series of workshops (three series in total, with two workshops per series), bringing together PE teachers from across the four nations to discuss the UK PE curricula. In the present study, we report on the data from the first participatory workshops of each series, which took place between February 2023 and April 2023 and which focused on sharing and learning from curriculum knowledge and experiences. Seventeen participants (n=8 male and n=9 female) attended the first workshops across the three series including four from Wales, seven from Scotland, four from England and two from Northern Ireland. Participants were recruited through social media (Twitter/X), where a message was sent inviting teachers from across the four nations of the UK to express their interest in participating in the workshops. All those teachers who expressed an interest in participating (n=40) were sent an information sheet and consent form. Out of the 40 teachers who expressed an interest in taking part in the workshops, 25 teachers returned a consent form and 17 attended the first workshops. The aim of the first workshop was to explore each of the curricula across the UK. To do so, participants created word clouds and engaged in discussions that focused on the purposes and defining strengths of their respective curricula. To support these discussions, participants were also presented with a summary of our previous research that has analysed the PE curricula across the UK (Gray et al., 2022). Participants used Padlet to (anonymously) note their responses to this presentation, which were then used to guide further discussions. All of the discussions in each workshop were recorded using Microsoft Teams and transcribed for subsequent analysis. Text from the chat function on Teams was copied into a Word document and analysed along with the artefacts produced from the workshop activities (e.g., Padlet posts). To make sense of the data that was generated from the workshops, we undertook a process of thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019), engaging in a systematic, but also collaborative, flexible and iterative, process of generating codes and themes. Guided by the researchers’ discussions and notes, this involved assigning phrases to relevant units of texts to reflect/summarise meaning, and then grouping similar units of meaning (codes) together to generate themes. This process was carried out for each workshop separately, before bringing the themes from each workshop together to identify themes across groups.

Evidence from the discussions suggest that the teachers found it interesting, and at times surprising, to learn about the different UK curricula. For example, several of the teachers highlighted the curriculum in England as being notably different from the other curricula in terms of the limited detail presented within the curriculum document and the overt focus on developing pupils’ performance within this. For some teachers, this knowledge of different curricula was subsequently used as a basis to reflect on the relative strengths and weaknesses of their own curriculum. It was also through cross-border discussions that the teachers seemed to become more aware of how health was conceptualised differently in PE curricula across the UK. It is important to note that, although our analysis revealed some evidence of critical thinking, our findings also suggest the persistence of traditional PE discourses related to organising curricula in blocks of activity as well as a focus on teaching games. This suggests that, while the teachers were perhaps on the journey to becoming critical, more time was necessary for them to further interrogate and disrupt the prevailing discourses in PE in order to allow new ways of thinking and acting on the world to emerge (Priestley et al., 2012). Overall, the findings indicate that thinking critically is challenging, even for those teachers already on their journey towards criticality. Thus, time and support are required to help them become critical, to develop alternative perspectives and to bring these perspectives to their reading and enactment of curricula. We argue that ongoing cross-border dialogue and collaborative learning might be one way to support teachers on this journey towards becoming critical where, with time to explore and interact with others from different contexts, new idea might emerge - ideas driven by issues of social justice and inclusion.

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