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Young people's knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity: issues, divides and dilemmas

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posted on 2016-10-27, 12:15 authored by Jo Harris, Lorraine CaleLorraine Cale, Rebecca Duncombe, Hayley MussonHayley Musson
Critical discourse analysis was used to explore and discuss data on young people’s knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity, selected from a wider study which focused on the role of secondary schools in effectively promoting physical activity. A mixed methods approach was utilised, involving an online survey to teachers in all state secondary schools in the UK (n  = 603 responding schools) and case studies centred on eight randomly selected state secondary schools from nine Government regions across England. Within each case study school, teacher interviews and pupil focus groups were conducted involving 17 teachers and 132 children aged 12–15 years, respectively. The healthism discourse was evident in the way young people talked about health, fitness and physical activity and two key themes emerged, these being: (i) issues with young people’s knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity in the form of reductive, limited and limiting conceptions; conceptual confusion; a preoccupation with appearance, weight, fat, shape and size; limited progression in learning; and complexities in understandings; and (ii) divides between young people’s health knowledge and health behaviour, and dilemmas underpinning these divides. Improved understanding of issues with young people’s knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity and of divides and dilemmas regarding associated behaviours should assist in developing critical pedagogies which challenge the dominance and stability of the healthism discourse and more effectively promote healthy, active lifestyles amongst young people.

Funding

British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Sport, Education and Society

Pages

1 - 14

Citation

HARRIS, J. ... et al, 2016. Young people's knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity: issues, divides and dilemmas. Sport, Education and Society, 23(5), pp. 407-420.

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-08-21

Publication date

2016

Notes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Sport, Education and Society on 3 September 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13573322.2016.1228047.

ISSN

1357-3322

eISSN

1470-1243

Language

  • en

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