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Internationally, patterns of participation in sport are changing, with so-called ‘informal’ participation displacing club-based and other formally structured involvement in sport. This paper reports research that is investigating changing forms of participation from an educational perspective. It directs attention to what physical education can learn from informal sport and how physical education can align pedagogically with contemporary participation trends, to help grow and sustain young people’s engagement in sport beyond schools. The paper presents findings from two sequential elements of an ongoing research project. The first is a systematic review of literature pertaining to informal participation that examined the skills, knowledge and understanding central to participation that occurs outside of traditional sport structures. Findings from this review highlight that social skills, cultural understandings, and knowledge relating to environment, alongside movement skills, are important in enabling participants to become engaged in, and maintain their involvement in, informal participation. The second element of the research involved documentary analysis to examine the alignment of contemporary curricula, and specifically, the Australian Curriculum Health and Physical Education (AC HPE), with the learning identified as important for informal participation. Findings illustrate clear opportunities for the AC HPE to bring to the fore knowledge, skills and understandings that may extend young people’s engagement with informal participation through their lives. The discussion addresses key issues for policy makers, teachers and teacher educators to consider in the light of this research, if they are to leverage the opportunities for teaching and learning that informal sport presents.

In 2011, the Swedish National Agency for Education introduced a new national curriculum. The curriculum contained a number of new terms. One in particular proved problematic for physical educators – complex movement. The confusion surrounding the term could be seen as somewhat unexpected since movement is and has been a central element of practically all physical education (PE) curricula. The specific aim of this paper is to identify how the discourse regarding complex movement is assembled, and by doing so, provide insights into the meaning(s) of complex movement within the context of PE policy in Sweden. Following Englund and Quennerstedt (2008), the study is framed within a Swedish curriculum theory tradition and six policy texts are examined using a discourse analytic methodology. The results suggest three different inferences of complex movement discourse: advanced with a wide meaning; context-dependent and related to sports for older pupils; and knowledge-dependent where different views about knowledge exist. From these results, three discussion points are raised related to: the diversity of possible meanings presented in policy; the connection between knowledge and understanding; and the probability of different audiences reading the texts in different ways. The paper is concluded with a consideration of the consequences of different inferences concerning complex movement and whether greater consensus is necessary.

This paper presents theoretical insights and empirical findings from research in Western Australia (WA) that explored the concept of ‘integrated theory and practice’ in the context of the introduction of a new examination physical education course. The lack of conceptual clarity associated with attempts to embed ‘integration’ into curriculum developments in examination physical education internationally provided a stimulus for this research. Focusing on a new Physical Education Studies course in WA, the research foregrounded the concept of policy enactment and used Arnold’s framework of learning in, through and about movement as a critical frame to investigate the specific notions of integration that were embedded in the official curriculum text and expressed in pedagogical practices in schools implementing the new course. The paper reports findings from the investigation of the pedagogic meanings that four teachers gave to ‘integrated theory and practice’. The data illustrate the varied meanings teachers gave to ‘integration’ and the differences consequently arising in their curriculum planning, teaching and assessment practices associated with the new Physical Education Studies course. Analysis of the data identified opportunistic, structured and investigative ‘integrated’ pedagogies. Data associated with each approach are presented and the expression of Arnold’s dimensions within each approach explored. Discussion pursues the conditions enabling different pedagogical practices to emerge from the new Physical Education Studies course and the learning opportunities provided to students by the different pedagogical approaches. The paper presents a case for further engagement with the pedagogical expression of Arnold’s framework by curriculum developers, researchers, teacher educators and teachers.

There has been some exploration of the conceptualisation of teachers as change agents within educational change literature. While this body of work does consider how teachers understand, harness and influence the process of curriculum change, within the policy rhetoric and educational change literature there is limited reference made to how the change agent role is translated into practice. To illustrate the complex nature of the change process this paper explores the experiences of generalist primary teachers at the ‘chalk face’ as they initiate physical education curriculum change within their school contexts. This paper reports on the findings of a study investigating how five Scottish primary teachers with a postgraduate qualification in primary physical education construed and took forward curriculum change. A qualitative and interpretivist approach to the research was taken to analyse how the knowledge and skills the teachers gained from the professional development they had undertaken contributed to their agency to initiate curriculum change within their school contexts. Drawing on the work of Fullan, the concept of change agentry is used to analyse the experiences of the individual teachers as they exercised their agency to enact curriculum change. The paper concludes by reflecting on the findings of the study to suggest factors that may support and constrain teachers acting as change agents.

Artefacts are an important part of policy work, and a means of representation, translation, re-negotiation, and resistance of policy. While research has established their integral role in policy enactment, little research has examined the production and/or dissemination of artefacts by teacher educators. This paper reports and analyses the production and re-production of a specific set of artefacts, arising from the policy work of four teacher educators seeking to influence the interpretation and enactment of the Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE). Analysis and discussion pursue: the rationale for producing a set of artefacts focusing on a particular feature of the AC HPE; the processes of artefact production; actions designed to activate and re-present the artefacts; and emerging evidence of uptake and impact. The relationship of artefacts to policy work is shown to be strategically significant for teacher educators, teachers and others invested in new curriculum developments, and is characterised as both fluid and generative. We argue that artefacts have important performative policy potential and play a key role in supporting and shaping curriculum policy enactment.