This is a book about boys’ bodies, masculinities, and the ways in which boys navigate their lives from early childhood through to the beginning of adolescence. Drummond focuses on sport, health and physical activity, and adds context to the history of male bodies, the social construction of masculinity and the role of sport as a potential rite of passage for young males. Using rich descriptive interview data with 33 boys from the ages of 5 to 13, collected over an 8- year period, Boys’ Bodies identifies important issues including the significance of muscularity and strength as signifiers of masculinity and the need for boys to be involved in “blood sports” as well as “beat girls” in sporting competitions. The meaning of health and the perception of boys’ changing bodies over time are central to the discussion. The book will appeal to researchers, teachers, practitioners, policy makers and parents.
"Kehler and Atkinson's edited collection, Boys' Bodies, is a book that should be read by teachers, teacher educators, education policy makers and health professionals, given its impressive theoretical and empirical focus on how the embodiment of competing masculinities plays out in schools, with implications for all boys and their well-being, and for all those wishing to understand and address issues of physical inactivity and obesity in and through schooling."---Professor Bob Lingard, School of Education, University of Queensland --Book Jacket.
Physical inactivity is a key determinant of health across the lifespan. A lack of activity increases the risk of heart disease, colon and breast cancer, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, osteoporosis, anxiety and depression and others diseases. Emerging literature has suggested that in terms of mortality, the global population health burden of physical inactivity approaches that of cigarette smoking. The prevalence and substantial disease risk associated with physical inactivity has been described as a pandemic. The prevalence, health impact, and evidence of changeability all have resulted in calls for action to increase physical activity across the lifespan. In response to the need to find ways to make physical activity a health priority for youth, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment was formed. Its purpose was to review the current status of physical activity and physical education in the school environment, including before, during, and after school, and examine the influences of physical activity and physical education on the short and long term physical, cognitive and brain, and psychosocial health and development of children and adolescents. Educating the Student Body makes recommendations about approaches for strengthening and improving programs and policies for physical activity and physical education in the school environment. This report lays out a set of guiding principles to guide its work on these tasks. These included: recognizing the benefits of instilling life-long physical activity habits in children; the value of using systems thinking in improving physical activity and physical education in the school environment; the recognition of current disparities in opportunities and the need to achieve equity in physical activity and physical education; the importance of considering all types of school environments; the need to take into consideration the diversity of students as recommendations are developed. This report will be of interest to local and national policymakers, school officials, teachers, and the education community, researchers, professional organizations, and parents interested in physical activity, physical education, and health for school-aged children and adolescents.
A celebration of the amazing human machine and a life on the move! Your amazing body can jump, sprint, twist, and twirl. Your body is built to move. Lizzy Rockwell explains how your bones and muscles, heart and lungs, nerves and brain all work together to keep you on the go. Kids walk and skate and tumble through these pages with such exuberance that even sprouting couch potatoes will want to get up and bounce around—and that’s the ultimate goal. Studies show that American kids are becoming more sedentary and more overweight and that they carry these tendencies with them into adolescence and adulthood. Experts agree that we need to help kids make physical activity a life-long habit. Through education, information, and encouragement, this book aims to inspire a new generation of busy bodies!
Using visual ethnography, this book explores the many forms of pleasures that boys derive in and through the spaces and their bodies in physical education. Employing the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Gerdin examines how pleasure is connected to identity, schooling, and power relations, and demonstrates how discourses of sport, fitness, health and masculinity work together to produce a variety of pleasurable experiences. At the same time, the book provides a critique of such pleasurable experiences within physical education by illustrating how these pleasures can still, for some boys, quickly turn into displeasures and can be associated with exclusion, humiliation, bullying and homophobia. Boys, Bodies, and Physical Education argues that pleasure can both be seen as an educational and productive practice in physical education but also a constraint that both engenders and privileges some boys over others as well as (re)producing narrow and limited conceptions of masculinity and pleasures for all boys. This book works to problematize these pleasures and their articulations with gender, bodies, and spaces.
During the twentieth century, opportunities for exercise and sports grew significantly for girls and women in the United States. Among the key figures who influenced this revolution were female physical educators. Drawing on extensive archival research, Active Bodies examines the ideas, experiences, and instructional programs of white and black female physical educators who taught in public schools and diverse colleges and universities, including coed and single-sex, public and private, and predominantly white and historically black institutions. Working primarily with female students, women physical educators had to consider what an active female could and should do in comparison to boys and men. Applying concepts of sex differences, they debated the implications of female anatomy, physiology, reproductive functions, and psychosocial traits for achieving gender parity in the gym. Teachers' interpretations were conditioned by the places where they worked, as well as developments in education, feminism, and the law, society's changing attitudes about gender, race, and sexuality, and scientific controversies over the nature and significance of sex differences. While deliberating fairness for their students, women physical educators also pursued equity for themselves, as their workplaces and nascent profession often marginalized female and minority personnel. Questions of difference and equity divided the field throughout the century; while some teachers favored moderate views and incremental change, others promoted justice for their students and themselves by exerting authority at their schools, critiquing traditional concepts of "difference," and devising innovative curricula. Exploring physical education within and beyond the gym, Active Bodies sheds new light on the enduring complexities of difference and equity in American culture.
The book provides a critical examination of discrimination based on sexuality, gender, and body size in Canadian physical education. It illustrates how students with queer bodies--whether lesbian, gay, trans-gendered, or overweight or fat--cope with homophobia, transphobia, and fat phobia in physical education. Drawing from qualitative interviews, the book reveals how students are marginalized because they do not conform to taken-for-granted ideas about healthy or athletic bodies.
The family is an important site for the transmission of knowledge and cultural values. Amidst claims that young people are failing to follow health advice, dropping out of sport and at risk of an ever-expanding list of lifestyle diseases, families have become the target of government interventions. This book is the first to offer critical sociological perspectives on how families do and do not function as a pedagogical site for health education, sport and physical activity practices. This book focuses on the importance of families as sites of pedagogical work across a range of cultural and geographical contexts. It explores the relationships between families, education, health, physical activity and sport, and also offers reflections on the methodological and ethical issues arising from this research. Its chapters discuss key questions such as: how active living messages are taken up in families; how parents perceive the role of education, physical activity and sport; how culture, gender, religion and social class shape engagement in sport; how family pedagogies may influence health education, sport and physical activity now and in the future. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in health, physical education, health education, family studies, sport pedagogy or the sociology of sport and exercise.
A book that has long been a standard for developmental physical education returns in a new, thoroughly updated edition with a sharpened focus on preparing tomorrow’s physical educators to deliver developmentally appropriate lessons and activities for children in pre-K through grade 5. Developmental Physical Education for All Children, now in its fifth edition and available in both print and e-book versions, takes a student-focused, comprehensive approach in preparing future teachers to create programs that enable children to gain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions vital to leading a physically active lifestyle. This new edition is the first in more than a decade, with revisions and updates that make it like a brand-new book—one that maintains its solid foundations and instruction while equipping teachers for success in the 21st century. How This Text Prepares Teachers Developmental Physical Education for All Children, Fifth Edition, features the following benefits: • Shows teachers how to translate child development theory and research from the psychomotor, cognitive, affective, and fitness domains into practice • Offers teachers the understanding they need to create developmentally appropriate lessons that align with the new SHAPE America National Standards for Physical Education with grade-level outcomes, assessments, and instructions on implementing learning goals for students in pre-K through grade 5 • Provides multiple standards-based movement experiences for pre-K through grade 5 learners that include movement tasks and extensions, scaled learning environments, skill cues, practice strategies, teaching style choices, and formative assessments aligned with goals • Supplies learning goal blueprints that integrate specialized skills, movement concepts, and tactics for developmental games, dance, and gymnastics Content Overview Future and current teachers will learn the research and theory behind this developmentally sound approach, which emphasizes movement skills and increased physical competence based on the developmental levels of pre-K through fifth-grade students. The first half of the book covers the learner, the movement content, the learning environment, and the instructional design; the second half provides detailed standards-based learning experiences, which are now organized by developmental level. The concluding section offers two chapters on professionalism in the 21st century, giving teachers a conceptual framework to prepare and implement a developmental, standards-based scope and sequence for pre-K through grade 5 physical education and offering advice on staying current, being professionally involved, and advocating for comprehensive school physical activity. Practical Ancillaries Developmental Physical Education for All Children also provides a robust lineup of online ancillaries: • A student web resource with reproducible forms that can be printed along with learning aids from the book and additional learning activities, some of which are enhanced by more than 20 video clips that demonstrate concepts in action • An instructor guide that features in-class activities, answers to chapter review questions, chapter overviews, and the “Big Ideas” from each chapter • A test package featuring more than 445 questions from which teachers can create their own quizzes • A presentation package offering more than 246 PowerPoint slides that highlight the key points while offering essential visual elements to augment understanding Equipped to Provide High-Quality Education The result of this comprehensive overhaul of a standard classic is that both future and current teachers will be prepared and equipped to provide high-quality developmental physical education that can help children be physically active now and throughout their lives.
