Conference Agenda

In recent years, an increasing number of countries, including the USA, UK, Australia, and Canada, have placed greater emphasis on adults listening purposefully and respectfully to students within schools (Robinson & Taylor, 2013). Despite this growing attention, student voice remains a challenging expectation for schools and is at risk of being both peripheral and superficial within practice (Jones & Hall, 2021). The limited implementation of student voice in schools may be due to, as Mitra (2018, p. 475) argued, “adults not knowing how to partner with young people effectively or a lack of shared discussion of the purpose of such activities”. Recent studies (e.g., Iannucci et al., 2024; Cardiff et al., 2024) have offered valuable insights into how primary physical education (PE) teachers perceive and incorporate student voice into their practices, including the challenges that might be faced in this respect. For example, Iannucci et al. (2024) reported that teachers often believe students, especially in the early primary years, cannot participate in co-constructing or collaborating on PE lesson design and delivery due to their limited skills and knowledge. In secondary PE contexts, a recent study by Li et al. (2025) examined different pedagogical approaches (e.g., negotiated curricula) for facilitating student voice, though this also highlighted ongoing challenges such as dominant voices and inauthentic student voice within PE classes. However, beyond this, how student voice is facilitated in everyday secondary PE classrooms remains largely unexplored in the existing literature.

Although teachers play a crucial role in facilitating student voice, a frequently cited concern is that embracing student voice may undermine teachers’ authority and fundamentally alter existing power dynamics within schools. As Rudduck and Flutter (2003, p. 75) noted, “teachers’ caution toward student voice is understandable because teachers are anxious that inviting students to express their views may lead to harsh criticism of themselves and their teaching”. That said, by engaging with student voice, teachers can enrich their practice, ensuring that this aligns with students’ interests, needs and aspirations (Mitra, 2008; Ní Chróinín et al., 2024). It may also enhance teachers’ awareness of previously overlooked issues such as hegemonic masculinity (Guadalupe & Curtner-Smith, 2019) and contribute to improving teacher–student relationships (Howley & Tannehill, 2014). These tensions highlight the importance of understanding the extent to which teachers genuinely value and act upon students’ contributions, as students may remain passive even when opportunities for participation are formally provided (Quinn & Owen, 2016). Nevertheless, there remains a significant gap in the literature regarding how PE teachers, particularly in secondary settings, perceive student voice and incorporate it into their everyday teaching practices.

The UK provides an especially relevant context for exploring this issue, since it was one of the first countries to focus more substantively on student voice practice (Rudduck & Fielding, 2006). Nevertheless, despite having more examples of student voice initiatives than in many other countries, it has been claimed that student participation in the UK often remains symbolic rather than genuinely collaborative (Mitra, 2018). This discrepancy between extensive efforts and the limited, often symbolic nature of student participation, highlights the need for further exploration of what and how student voice is facilitated in practice. Accordingly, this study focuses specifically on the UK context, and three main research questions guided the study:

1. What are PE teachers’ perspectives on integrating students' voices into the PE curriculum?
2. How do PE teachers integrate students' voices into PE curriculum design, delivery and evaluation?
3. What challenges do PE teachers face when facilitating and incorporating student voice in the subject?

Physical education (PE) is broadly understood as contributing to students’ holistic education, encompassing physical, cognitive, social, and affective dimensions (Bailey et al., 2009). Within this broad mandate, sport pedagogy research highlights student reflection as a key pedagogical means for connecting embodied movement experiences with more theoretical forms of knowledge (Bjørke & Quennerstedt, 2023), such as gender-related norms in sport (Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2018) or health-related knowledge (e.g., Volk et al., 2021). Reflection is thus regarded as central for enabling students to make sense of their experiences and to participate meaningfully and responsibly in sport and movement cultures.

Recent conceptual work has framed student reflection around the questions of the why(s), what(s), and how(s) of reflection: Why is reflection important? What should students reflect on and in relation to what? How do teachers teach reflection? (Bjørke & Quennerstedt, 2023). While the educational value of reflection (why) has a long tradition and the objects of reflection (what) are increasingly well elaborated (e.g., Dewey, 1983; Ehni, 1977), the question of how reflection is initiated and supported in everyday PE teaching remains underexplored. However, on a conceptual level of the “how”-question, students’ experiences of uncertainty have been described as key conditions for reflection. Uncertainty is understood as moments in which established routines are disrupted, habitual interpretations slowed down, and unresolved, incomplete, or contradictory aspects are brought to the fore, thereby opening spaces for inquiry and educational development in the sense of Bildung (e.g., Bähr et al. 2024).

Building on this line of reasoning, we consider teaching as a communicative practice and propose educational conversation as a central didactic mode for creating a reflective distance that enables students to make habitual practices of sport intelligible, to question their meanings, and to recognize their broader social and cultural embeddedness. In this way, educational conversation can be understood as a pedagogical means through which PE teachers deliberately initiate uncertainty and support students’ reflective engagement with it (e.g., Proske, 2017).

Despite its conceptual prominence, empirical research on student reflection has been described as an “area of neglect” (Bjørke & Quennerstedt, 2023, p. 4). It remains largely unclear which instructional strategies PE teachers employ to render uncertainty educationally productive in everyday practice. Research from German-speaking sport pedagogy offers valuable, yet internationally underrepresented, contributions in this regard. Empirical studies have identified substantial challenges PE teachers face when implementing student reflection, not only in terms of time constraints, but also in relation to spatial conditions (e.g., gym environments that hinder conversation) and media-related tensions (a perceived imposition of communicative and written tasks in PE) (e.g., Serwe-Pandrick et al., 2023).

To empirically address the largely unexplored how of student reflection in PE and to contribute to international debates, the present study is situated within the context of a professional learning community. This framework brings together researchers, PE teachers and school authorities to collaboratively co-create, implement and reflect on pedagogical knowledge regarding student reflection (Parker et al., 2022).

We therefore examine the following research question: Which strategies does a PE teacher use to encourage student reflection through educational communication within the context of a professional learning community?

With this study, we want to “move beyond making educated guesses” (Bjørke & Quennerstedt, 2024, p. 1) by providing empirically grounded insights into how student reflection is initiated and supported in everyday PE practice. Specifically, we seek to highlight educational conversation as a pedagogical means for working productively with uncertainty and for fostering student reflection in PE, thereby contributing to European and international discussions on reflective learning, uncertainty, and embodied education.

Fitness testing is one of the most commonly implemented but contested practices to teach in, through and about health within secondary school physical education (PE) in many countries, including in Australia (Alfrey, 2024), the United States (Johnson et al., 2023) and England (Harte et al., 2023). However, many scholars have raised concerns over the educational worth and appropriateness of traditional fitness testing practices (Harris & Cale, 2019; Safron & Landi, 2022). Indeed, recent studies which have explored students’ experiences of fitness testing, conducted in Australia, and England, have revealed that the majority of students could not identify the purpose (Alfrey, 2024) or meaning behind fitness testing (Harte et al., 2025).

For some time, recommendations have been made to try and improve students’ experiences of fitness testing (e.g. Mercier & Silverman, 2016) however the extent to which these recommendations are reaching teachers and influencing fitness testing practice is unclear (Harte et al., 2023). Increasingly, there are calls for greater emphasis on ‘pedagogies for voice’, specifically as they relate to health-related learning within PE (Hooper, 2018). More broadly, there are calls around establishing mechanisms for facilitating pupil voice (Li et al., 2025). While efforts have been made in this respect within the context of Australia, where Alfrey (2024) invited students to share their hopes for future fitness testing, there remains much scope for further exploration of how students’ voices might be engaged to reimagine fitness testing. Indeed, whilst there is research to support positive outcomes of facilitating student voice in PE more broadly, such as increased engagement and participation (Li et al., 2025), we do not know the educational impact of students sharing their wishes surrounding fitness testing for students and their teachers.

For Dewey, an educational experience is one which provides the conditions to lead to further growth (Dewey, 1916). When considering an educational experience, Dewey prompts us to consider the principles of continuity and interaction. Continuity refers to the ability to make connections between previous and future experiences, in terms of learning and attitudes. Interaction refers to the meaningfulness of the experience for the learner. Dewey’s notion of ‘education as growth’ and his principles of continuity and interaction provide a conceptual framework through which to analyse the quality of an educational experience (Carver & Enfield, 2006).

Thus, using Dewey’s notion of ‘education as growth’, this paper will consider the potential of growth in fitness testing in and through students’ voices. Indeed, this study sought to answer the following question: what educational impact can the student voice process have on students and teachers, within and beyond a fitness testing context? This study contributes to the literature on fitness testing, by moving beyond exploring students’ experiences, to exploring their wishes, within the English context. It also contributes to the field of PE and education more broadly, by examining the potential of educational growth, for teachers and students, in facilitating student voice.

Schools across the world are being called upon to attend to the needs of young people within increasingly complex, diverse multicultural societies. Recent reports in Australia note climate change, rising obesity, war, violence, the digital landscape and mental health as just some of the complexities young people are attempting to navigate (Baird et al., 2025; CYPEP, 2024; Quach & O’Brien, 2024). Uncertainty about the future and social fragmentation frame these times. Social cohesion is therefore fundamental to working together in these uncertain times.

Physical Education (PE), and moreover, physical culture, have long reflected societal and cultural shifts. With contemporary imperatives beyond the mere biological and mechanical PE offerings of the past, there are few better mediums for developing social cohesion in young people than PE. Schools, and more specifically to this presentation, school Physical Education (PE), can make meaningful contributions to strengthening young people's values in alignment with their schools and communities to promote social cohesion.

Creative PE is one such approach that aids the development of students' personal and social skills, whilst embedding positive human, school and community values, lending itself to social cohesion at a class and school level and the development of skills and values that can be taken beyond (Quay & Peters, 2008; 2012). An emerging pedagogical model, Creative PE is more than a curriculum response - it is "concerned with the will of those involved" (Quay et al., 2025, p.12), and embraces the experiences of the peer group in relation to their knowing, doing and being. It is a long-term engagement with the notions of ‘team’ and ‘game’, forming the backdrop for creative student involvement. Creative PA provides an integrated approach to teaching various PE curriculum outcomes, including personal and social responsibility, which leans upon Hellison’s Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) framework (Hellison, 2003). Using this structure, Creative PE is layered with the teaching of positive social values.