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This paper presents selected findings from a wider study on the expression of health within physical education (PE) curricula in secondary schools in England and Wales. The study revealed that the expression of health in PE broadly reflected ideologies associated with promoting ‘fitness for life’ and ‘fitness for performance’ and that representations of both discourses were present, to a lesser or greater extent, in all schools in the study. Curiously, however, rhetorical ‘fitness for life’ discourses were commonly expressed through ‘fitness for performance’ practices in the form of testing and training activities. This paper attempts to explain this mismatch between health-related policy and practice by focusing on what was revealed about the influences on the expression of health in PE. A case study approach was adopted, involving five state secondary schools, three in England and two in Wales. Data sources included health-related school documentation, interviews with PE teachers and observation of a health-related unit of work in one of the schools. The reasons that testing and training activities were the most common contexts for the delivery of health-related learning included the following: conceptual confusion and limited understanding, leading to a belief that training and testing activities are unproblematic and result in increased health, activity and fitness levels; the resolution of pragmatic issues associated with large groups, limited space and minimal equipment as well as preparation for accredited courses in PE; tradition and a desire by teachers to remain with familiar content and teaching approaches, and limited awareness of alternative ‘fitness for life’ pedagogies. This study has served to increase awareness of the influences on and tensions between health-related discourses in secondary school PE curricula in England and Wales and has provided further demonstration of and insight into the complex relationship between health-related policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Creativity is widely accepted as being an important outcome of schooling. Yet there are many different views about what it is, how best it can be cultivated in young people and whether or how it should be assessed. And in many national curricula creativity is only implicitly acknowledged and seldom precisely defined. This paper offers a five dimensional definition of creativity which has been trialed by teachers in two field trials in schools in England. The paper suggests a theoretical underpinning for defining and assessing creativity along with a number of practical suggestions as to how creativity can be developed and tracked in schools. Two clear benefits of assessing progress in the development of creativity are identified: 1) teachers are able to be more precise and confident in developing young people's creativity, and 2) learners are better able to understand what it is to be creative (and to use this understanding to record evidence of their progress). The result would seem to be a greater likelihood that learners can display the full range of their creative dispositions in a wide variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number and range of school types in England is increasing rapidly in response to a neoliberal policy agenda aiming to expand choice of provision as a mechanism for raising educational standards. In this paper, I seek to undertake a mapping of these school types in order to describe and explain what is happening. I capture this busy terrain from different perspectives: legal status; curricular specialism; pupil selection; types of academy; and school groupings. The mapping highlights the intersections between the current reform agenda and the historical diversity within the English school system to show the dialogue between past and present. Borrowing the geological metaphors of faulting and folding, I argue that long-established school types are not buried under sedimentary layers of reform, but are thrust into the present where they are discursively re-imagined through neoliberalism. Finally, I conceptualise the landscape holistically through the lenses of locus of legitimacy and branding, where I argue that current structural diversification policies enable the enactment of interests other than educational through transferring responsibility for education and related assets away from public and towards corporatised or religious actors and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, co-authored by two research-active teachers with the support of their academic partner, reports on the resistance of an urban primary school in a northern city of England to the label 'disadvantaged school' and various judgements that refuse to take into account its holistic work with students and families from different and diverse minority ethnic backgrounds. The article will argue that there are flaws in the ways the school's story is officially told where it does not acknowledge what is being done to address students' experiences of immigration, poverty and deprivation, and the cultural barriers they often negotiate in coming to school. As a driver for change, practitioner research foregrounds the authenticity of school and classroom contexts and puts them under scrutiny as a means of informing strategic decisions. Utilising a case study design, this paper pulls together a range of data evidence to construct its narrative and tell the school's story, working in collaboration with its university academic partner. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of practitioner research within challenging urban school settings, under pressure from centralised conceptualisations of achievement gaps and school performance. It puts many of these ideas under scrutiny and asks fundamental questions about curriculum, pedagogy and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]