Grade A health: an exploration of the social construction of health and ability within secondary school physical education

In the United Kingdom (UK), Physical Education (PE) is influenced by various policy texts seeking to position and define the subject within schools. Schools have also increasingly been posited as potential sites for the promotion of health and physical activity (Cale, Harris and Chen, 2014; Cale, Harris and Duncombe, 2016), with learning about health featuring as a statutory component of the PE curriculum. However, within the National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) in England learning and teaching about health is required to negotiate its space amongst a range of competing priorities and political agendas (Houlihan and Green, 2006; Stirrup, 2018). Within this complex terrain not only is health shaped as part of a wider curriculum, but the concept of ability is suggested to be socially configured (Evans and Penney, 2008). In view of this, the purpose of this research was to explore the enactment of the health-related aspects of the NCPE and constructions of health and ability within and between policy, teachers and pupils in a secondary school context. [Continues.]