Conference Agenda

Panel Focus

This proposed Panel Discussion will explore how primary Physical Education (PE) can be re-envisioned as a complex, educationally meaningful, and sustainable curriculum area, attentive to children’s diverse physical development journeys (Coulter & Ní Chróinín, 2022). Bringing together speakers from several European contexts (e.g. North Macedonia, Ireland, Scotland, and England), the panel will examine how different national policy contexts, professional cultures, and local practices shape distinctive positionings of primary PE. In doing so, we seek to foreground the varied ways in which primary PE is understood and enacted across Europe, and to consider how cross-national collaboration might support more coherent and inclusive futures for the subject.

Topic, aims and research questions

The panel is anchored in the theme “Envisioning the Future of Primary Physical Education” and has three interlinked aims.​

• To illuminate how primary PE is currently positioned within national curriculum and policy in different European contexts, including issues of subject status, resources, and expectations.
• To analyse how diverse stakeholders (teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, community partners, professional associations) negotiate tensions between physical skill development, health agendas and broader educational purposes in primary PE.
• To stimulate a cross-national dialogue on what is required to support more educationally oriented, inclusive and sustainable primary PE across Europe.

Guiding questions for the panel include: How is primary PE currently being valued and resourced in different European countries? How are stakeholders working across boundaries to respond to policy, local needs and children’s varied movement experiences? What forms of collective action (e.g. networks, cross-country projects) appear promising for re-centring the wider educational value of primary PE?​

Conceptual and theoretical framework

The panel will draw on complexity thinking and the notion of boundary crossing to conceptualise primary PE as a complex, self-organising system shaped by interactions between human environmental, curricular and pedagogical factors (O’Connor & Jess, 2019; Jess et al., 2024). Boundary crossing highlights how teachers, teacher educators, policymakers and community actors work across institutional, cultural and disciplinary boundaries, and how shared educational visions, productive interactions and mutual trust can create more coherent and responsive primary PE practices (Carse et al., 2018).​

Panel structure and European contributions

The 90-minute session will consist of four short country specific contributions (10 minutes each) followed by a response from the chair leading into an extended dialogue with the audience. Each speaker will offer a vignette that illustrates both promising developments (such as investment in teacher professional learning or recognition of children’s diverse physical activity trajectories) and persistent challenges (such as low subject status, fragmented visions and resource constraints). Reflecting on these contributions the ensuing discussion will explore how complexity commonalities (e.g. self-organisation, boundaries, lived time and becoming) and boundary-crossing perspectives help to understand the dynamics across contexts and to imagine alternative futures for primary PE.​

Anticipated contributions and outcomes

Through the country vignettes and accompanying dialogue, it is hoped that the panel will generate a comparative, European perspective on how primary PE can move beyond narrow performance and health discourses towards more educationally grounded, inclusive and sustainable visions. By connecting national examples and collaborative initiatives (such as the AIESEP Primary PE SIG), the session aims to identify potential avenues for cross-national networking, research and professional learning projects that can support system-wide change. The dialogue emerging from the panel will invite participants to consider how they might engage in or initiate boundary-crossing collaborations within and across their own countries, thereby contributing to the possible development of a European community of practice focused on reimagining the purposes and possibilities for primary PE.