ABSTRACT
The language and actions of sport are enduring historical features of primary physical education (Jess, McEvilly & Carse, 2016). Although this chapter will draw primarily from examples of primary physical education in the UK, research which reports from other parts of the world suggest that the issues I will raise here are global in nature (Hardman & Marshall, 2006). In England, for example, discourses concerning national sporting success, combating sedentary lifestyles and reducing obesity are now prominent within primary physical education (Griggs, 2015; Petrie, 2016). Indeed, promoting health and long-term adult participation through competence in sport has become an increasing preoccupation within the subject (cf. DfEE/QCA, 1999; DfE, 2013; Larsson & Redelius, 2008; Svendsen & Svendsen, 2016). For primary-aged pupils this involves very distant, long-term goals and overlooks their immediate and ongoing understandings of different sports and physical activities (Ward, 2016). These experiences and concerns are not limited to physical education lessons and continue well beyond the school gates. Increasingly, research is drawing attention to the limitations of practices which attempt to reproduce those associated with sport and health within primary physical education (Ward & Quennerstedt, 2014, 2015). Despite claims of equality of opportunity and supporting those willing to make an effort, these practices have been argued to reproduce divisions between those who enjoy and benefit from their physical education experiences and those who lose out (Kirk, 2010).
