Conference Agenda

Despite decades of scholarship urging educators to foreground social justice, translating these ideals into everyday teaching remains a complex and uneven challenge. Health and Physical Education (HPE), with its focus on embodied, emotional, and relational learning, holds powerful potential to foster inclusion, affirm identity, promote cultural recognition, and support democratic participation (Gerdin et al. 2021; Kirk 2020).

While policy and curriculum developments in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden have increasingly emphasised equity and inclusion, a significant disconnect remains between these aspirational goals and actual classroom practice. Many teachers report uncertainty about how to translate such ideals into everyday pedagogical decisions. Our own research in Aotearoa New Zealand (Philpot, 2025; Gerdin et al., 2021) suggests that despite believing in the importance of equitable education and despite recognising that social justice is an espoused focus within HPE curricula (Ministry of Education 2007), HPE teachers are uncertain how to teach for and about equity, diversity, and social justice in their own teaching contexts.

This study responds to the call for grounded, empirical accounts of socially just teaching practices (Burrows, et al. 2020; Wrench & Garrett 2021) by examining how HPE teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand collaboratively developed and enacted pedagogies that focus on inclusion, equity and social justice. In order to try and make a difference to practice, we embarked on a practitioner research project designed to support practitioners to create solutions for their own local contexts. In this presentation we report on a three-year practitioner inquiry project involving ten secondary school HPE teachers. The project was structured around a collaborative, practitioner inquiry model in which teachers worked alongside university-based researchers to create a professional learning community (Darling-Hammond & Richardson, 2009) to critically examine and develop their teaching practices. Together, participants explored how pedagogies oriented toward social justice might be implemented, adapted, and sustained in real-world educational settings.

We conceptualise pedagogies for social justice as those that intentionally seek to empower rather than marginalise learners by recognising and addressing the structural and relational dynamics that shape educational experience (Evans and Davies 2017). Rather than advocating for a fixed set of best practices, we aim to provide a nuanced portrait of teachers grappling with the lived complexities of socially just teaching. Through collaborative inquiry, these educators enacted pedagogical innovations that reflected their commitments to equity, inclusion, and cultural responsiveness.

In this presentation we draw on Complexity Thinking as a framework through which to explore the collaborative inquiry process. Complexity thinking is used to understand how phenomena emerge from the interactions within highly connected dynamical systems that adapt and change in response to the environments they are situated in (Ovens, 2017). The purpose of this presentation is to draw on Complexity Thinking to report on the challenges experienced by both the practitioners and researchers during the project.

The study identified several constraints that shaped the collaboration. Organisational constraints included gaining access from research-weary school leaders, coordinating the availability of the practitioner-partners, and administration of funding (eg paying schools, booking food, vouchers). Research constraints included that challenge of collecting meaningful data and the individual understandings of social justice. Logistical constraints for the practitioner-partners centred on weather related disruptions to teaching programmes, student attendance variations and completing priorities within their jobs. Collectively these constraints served to create tensions between research and professional learning and highlighted the importance of adaptive expertise when focused on equity, inclusion and social justice in HPE classrooms.

There is a growing recognition for physical education (PE) teachers to engage with and enact trauma-aware practices. Yet despite some progress, how trauma-aware practices ‘play out’ in school physical education contexts is not well understood. Thus, perspectives on becoming trauma-aware is a relatively unexplored area of teacher learning and practice in the field. In this paper we make a novel contribution to this area of scholarship by providing a socio-material reading of trauma-aware practices in physical education. Informed by new materialism, we examine the material-discursive conditions of schools and how teacher-becomings are produced (or not) by the intra-actions between a broad range of human and non-human actors in the school-PE-assemblage. In doing so we delineate a series of insights relating to the conceptualisation and enactment of trauma-aware practices in physical education, and develop an understanding of becoming trauma-aware as a situated, non-linear process, characterised by experimentation and change. In thinking with theory, we then reflect on what new materialism can do to/for trauma-related teacher learning and practice in the field, and the pedagogical possibilities that arise when we de-centre human agency. We conclude by suggesting that to affectively respond to the socio-material complexity of childhood trauma, required are multiple, heterogenous teacher-becomings that emerge at different speeds, intensities, and directions.

The discussion unfolds in the context of the burgeoning ‘poly crisis’, where ‘many vital problems’ (Morin and Kern, 1999, p. 74) coalesce to (re)produce single incident, complex, and intergenerational trauma(s) (Clarke, 2024). For instance, incidences of childhood stress and trauma have been linked to austerity and rising childhood poverty, a global pandemic, international political unrest, climate crisis, and experiences of systemic racism (Assari, 2020; Seitz, Bertsch and Herpertz, 2021). Consequently, childhood trauma has been recognised as a global public health emergency (UNESCO, 2019). Trauma – broadly defined as an event or series of events that overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope (van der Kolk, 2014) – can have deleterious effects on wellbeing and school-related outcomes for children (Perfect et al., 2016). Childhood trauma can also trigger a series of psychosocial, emotional, political, and economic consequences later in life, highlighting a growing need for educators and schools to address trauma from an early age (Dye, 2018).

In PE contexts, calls for a separate discussion about trauma and trauma aware practices are justified given the unique demands of the subject (Quarmby et al., 2022). Yet despite promising rhetoric the need for pedagogical alternatives remains, given the socio-material complexity of childhood trauma and the variability with which young people experience and express it (van der Kolk, 2014; Gündoğan İbrişim, 2020). Drawing on new materialist theory we extend these alternatives by broadening our understanding of what can affect and be affected (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) in schools, looking beyond the mind/matter divide to explore human and non-human ‘actors’ in the production of trauma aware practices (Fox and Alldred, 2017). Taking cues from Jackson and Mazzei (2023), this involved ‘plugging’ new materialist theory into each of Quarmby et al.’s (2022) principles for trauma aware pedagogies to see what this might do to/for our understanding of becoming trauma aware and the field.

The practice of alternative education is developing in various countries, however, regardless of location there seems to be a lack of consensus in terms of definition and quality. While there is a clear need for alternative education options to be available for excluded and marginalised young people worldwide, these facilities can be viewed as a ‘dumping ground’ for pupils who were unwanted and unwelcomed at a mainstream school (Kim and Taylor, 2008). Alternative education is broadly established to cater to the needs of children and young people who have dropped out or been removed from mainstream school (Mills and McGregor, 2017). In the United Kingdom (UK) alternative provision is the term used whereby schools/settings provide education, that is arranged by local authorities for pupils who, because of (temporary or permanent) school exclusion, illness or other reasons would not otherwise receive a suitable education (Department for Education, 2013).

In England, a key ambition for alternative provision settings is for every child to make a successful transition out of alternative provision and reintegrate back into mainstream schooling (Department for Education, 2018). Reintegration refers to the efforts made by schools, local authorities, and other agencies to return pupils who are absent, excluded or otherwise missing from mainstream education back to this context (Thomas, 2015). However, Pennacchia and Thomson (2016) suggest there is/has been a ‘repair and return’ discourse associated with alternative provision, whereby alternative provision seeks to ‘fix’ children and young people before their return to mainstream school. This approach is problematic and positions children and young people as the problem rather than considering the responsibility of the receiving mainstream school to make adequate provisions, reflect on school policies, or accommodate the needs of the children and young people (Pennacchia and Thomson, 2016). As a result, it has been argued that for a successful reintegration, greater emphasis should be placed on the challenging cultures of mainstream schools to adapt to meet the needs of young people (Levinson and Thompson, 2016).

Positive reintegration experiences are often characterised by social inclusion within the mainstream education setting, developing strong peer support systems and relationships (Owen et al., 2021). It is here that physical education (PE) and sport within alternative provision schools could play a key role. For instance, PE is thought to promote social inclusion through activities that foster working cooperatively, support following directions, taking turns, dealing with a range of emotions, and using appropriate forms of communication (Block, 2016). However, there is currently no empirical research that explores the role and value of PE and sport in alternative provision and the impact it has on the transition of pupils back into mainstream school.

While a small amount of research has been carried out surrounding PE in alternative provision, this has focused on how and why PE is being delivered (see Maher et al., 2025; Quarmby et al., 2025). As such, this research offers a unique perspective, explicitly exploring what role PE, in a range of alternative provision settings, plays in supporting the transition of young people back into mainstream schools. In doing so, this presentation first seeks to explore the role of the PE teacher and their knowledge, skills, understanding and how they work to foster a sense of belonging and second, how pupils attending alternative provision experience PE and the influence it could have on the transition process.

The focus on social, emotional and other non-academic skills and competences for academic achievement has given a broader perspective on educational research (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012; OECD, 2015). In Norway, this is clearly reflected in the 2020 renewal of the national curriculum, but when it comes to assessment the guidelines say that non-academic skills or competences are not suitable as assessment criteria. This is interesting because effort has been part of the recommended assessment practice in physical education (PE) in Norway since 1987 (Grunnskolerådet, 1987:65).

Internationally, OECD (2015:99) found that PE had ambitions to promote social and emotional dimensions, but when it came to assessment, they also stated that: “Assessment of students’ social and emotional skills is generally not designed for student promotion or certification”.

Effort, as part of a formal dimension in student assessment is unique for PE in the Norwegian school and can be considered a rare phenomenon in PE, and maybe schools, internationally.

But the fact that physical education teachers (PET) consider effort to determine grades is found over time in numerous international studies (Borghouts et al., 2017; Hensley et al., 1987; Svennberg, 2017; Young, 2011). All studies report that the PET emphasize effort in assessment, even though effort is not an official assessment criterion. Since effort is not part of the assessment basis, this represents a validity problem and continue to raise concerns around instructional alignment, transparency and comparability (AIESEP, 2020; Hay & Penney, 2013; López-Pastor et al., 2013). In Norway, the evaluation after implementation of the 2020 curriculum indicate that Norwegian PE teachers struggle to understand the curriculum guidelines on effort-based assessment (Borgen et al., 2026).

Based on two surveys and qualitative interviews with four PE teachers, this paper examines whether the high stakes effort-based assessment in Norwegian PE can be considered a sound practice to bring into the PE future, or if we should leave it as a problem with instructional alignment and validity.

Results from the surveys show that many teachers emphasize dimensions that are not part of the understanding of effort in the guidelines. Similar misconceptions are found among students. Close to a quarter of the PETs have not used effort as an assessment criterion and only one third of the students say that their PETs have clarified for them such a criterion. Further, half of the teachers report that effort counts for between 21-40% of the PE grade, which is somewhat lower then what the guidelines call for. Moreover, with around one fifth of the teacher either below 20 or above 60%, the interpretations of the PETs are too diverse. Students on average report that they believe effort counts for close to 60%, but the standard deviation is as high as 1,99.

The findings from the qualitative study show that the way four teachers interpret and operationalise the concept of effort is complex and a result of several factors. Teachers' backgrounds, underlying values, and education influence how the teaching is structured and subsequently how students are assessed in relation to it. Continuous observations of students in class is the most used way to assess effort, which is what Røset et al.’s (2023) (34) claimed that could lead to anxiety and feelings of being surveilled. However, an overwhelming majority of the teachers, 95,1%, and students, 85,3%, are positive to effort as a part of the PE grade. Students report that their motivation for PE increases due to the effort-based assessment. A medium to strong correlation has been found between the level of joy the students experience in PE and how much the students believe effort counts in their teachers’ grading.