ABSTRACT
Drawing on our own experiences as physical education (PE) and physical education teacher education (PETE) teachers and researchers, we recognise the potential of PE to lay a foundation for a healthy and active lifestyle, yet we are also cognisant that the way PE is taught does not always provide equitable or positive outcomes for all students. In this chapter, we examine the influence of critical research on the social justice agenda in PETE and PE practice. The chapter begins by mapping, discussing and critiquing the breadth of the scholarship that addresses social justice in PE and PETE before attending to our perception of the contribution this scholarship has made to social change in PE and PETE policy and pedagogical practice. We highlight the growing number of accounts of actual context bound socially critical practice that simultaneously provide examples of the promise of socially critical perspectives, while also being instructive of the challenge of enacting such perspectives. We conclude by calling for further research that sheds light on ‘good examples’ of how social justice issues are addressed and acted upon across different PE teaching contexts.
