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Outdoor education was first included in the formal (written) curriculum for New Zealand schools in 1999. This article explores New Zealand outdoor education as a product of a particular coincidence of social and economic conditions and the contested domais of pedagogy and curriculum during the period 1935‐1965. Popkewitz, among others, views school curricula and associated practices as emerging from ‘systems of ideas that inscribe styles of reasoning, standards and conceptual distinctions’ which ‘shape and fashion interpretation and action’. It is these ‘systems of ideas’, or ‘traditions’ in Goodson and Marsh’s terms, that provide a framework for understanding outdoor education in New Zealand schools. Since the 1930s, outdoor education in New Zealand appears to have consolidated from, and been shaped by, competing educational ideologies and changing social and economic influences. The way in which outdoor education accommodated competing traditions is the focus of this, necessarily broad, analysis

This paper seeks to describe the design, implementation, and lessons learned from an obesity prevention pilot program delivered in a low resource school in the USA.

A planned program evaluation was conducted to: document explicitly the process of designing and implementing the program; and assess the feasibility and acceptability of the program to inform future planning. Evaluation data were gathered using document review (i.e. minutes from meetings with research staff and school personnel), key informant interviews, and focus groups. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Quantitative data were summarized using descriptive statistics.

A total of 113 African‐American students (47 per cent female) participated in the program. Over half were overweight or obese and mean nutrition and physical activity behaviors were below recommended guidelines. A participatory process involving school administrators, teachers, parents, and students resulted in the design of a program salient to the target population and responsive to the school's limited financial and human resources. The program was positively viewed by student and school staff alike. Challenges for implementing the program included: maintaining classroom management with very large class sizes and limited school staff, and difficulty in actively engaging parents in program implementation.

As a pilot program at a single school during one school year, the results may have limited generalizability. However, the paper supports the feasibility and acceptability of obesity prevention interventions in schools with limited resources.

School‐based programs can support nutrition education and increased physical activity opportunities, which may promote lifelong health behaviors. Future programs can increase the likelihood of behavior change and program sustainability by limiting class sizes, increasing parent involvement, integrating intrapersonal level changes with institutional factors, and developing community partnerships.

The research described provides insights into effective strategies and lessons learned for developing school‐based obesity‐prevention programs in schools with limited resources.

Explores the relationships between the perceived quality of physical education lessons, the perceived quality of opportunities for physical activity in a residential area, and the physical fitness and health of pupils attending Grades 5 and 9 in Germany. The data were collected from 300 pupils in a community in Saxony, using a standardized questionnaire and a standard test of sporting ability. Results indicated that girls evaluated the opportunities for physical activity in the residential area more critically than boys. Multivariate analysis showed that the subjective health status of pupils was associated with good physical fitness and a good perception of opportunities for physical activity in the residential area, but not with the perceived quality of physical education lessons. These results provide evidence that a relationship between the urban environment and physical activity exists, and that the promotion of physical activity for pupils can benefit from intersectoral approaches.

The aim of this literature review is to summarise and synthesise the research base concerning childhood obesity and physical activity, particularly in relation to teachers and schools and within a policy context of the UK. The review investigates childhood obesity, physical activity, physical education, the role of teachers, the role of schools and physical activity in the classroom.

A literature review was undertaken involving selection of primary research and other systematic reviews. A computer search was performed using a combination of keywords including: obesity, prevention, intervention, preventive, teachers, schools, healthy schools, role models, physical activity, physical education, active school, active classroom. The review also includes samples of media coverage of the issue.

This review highlights the complex and ambiguous nature of the evidence in relation to this important contemporary issue.

A limited understanding of childhood obesity is evident from the review and this precludes definitive conclusions in relation to almost all aspects of the agenda. More quality research is needed in almost all areas of the topic, including areas such as the engagement of schools and teachers.

Presents the findings from semi‐structured interviews with 35 physical education (PE) teachers in secondary schools in the Northwest of England. A principal aim of the study was to examine the extent to which health promotion had become a central feature of PE teachers’ ‘’philosophies” and practices. The findings indicated that the views of many teachers were heavily tinted with health‐related ideological justifications for PE. Teachers not only viewed sport as a central aspect of the subject but also as the main vehicle for health promotion. The paper concludes that an ideology of sport has penetrated deeply into the core assumptions of both PE teachers and government in relation to the promotion of health through PE. Gaps between “policy” and “practice” in relation to health promotion in PE remain and these appear likely to become hardened rather than diminished by recent government policy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore issues of race and culture in health education in the secondary school health and physical education (HPE) curriculum in Ontario, Canada.

Using Ontario’s secondary school curriculum as a point of analysis, this paper draws from critical race theory and a whiteness lens to identify how cultural and race identities are positioned in contemporary health education documents. The curriculum document and its newest strategies for teaching are the focus of analysis in this conceptual paper.

Within the curriculum new teaching strategies offer entry points for engaging students in learning more about culture and race. In particular, First Nation, Métis and Inuit identities are noted in the curriculum. Specifically, three areas of the curriculum point to topics of race and culture in health: eating; substance use, abuse and additions; and, movement activities. Within these three educational areas, the curriculum offers information about cultural practices to teach about what it means to understand health from a cultural lens.

The HPE curriculum offers examples of how Ontario, Canada, is expanding its cultural approaches to knowing about and understanding health practices. The acknowledgment of First Nations, Métis and Inuit health and cultural ways of approaching health is significant when compared to other recently revised HPE curriculum from around the globe. The teaching strategies offered in the curriculum document provide one avenue to think about how identity, culture and race are being taught in health education classrooms.

First, with limited analysis of health education policy within schools, the use of critical theory provides opportunities for thinking about what comes next when broadening definitions of health to be more inclusive of cultural and race identity. Second, curriculum structures how teachers respond to the topics they are delivering, thus how HPE as a subject area promotes healthy practices is highly relevant to the field of health education. This paper provides an important acknowledgment of the educative work being undertaken in the revision of HPE curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution and use of the school desk in unified Italy as a multifunctional and highly efficient tool, which was required not only to efficiently support in-class activities, to facilitate the classroom management and finally to maintain a correct body posture in order to preserve pupils’ health, but also to accomplish the additional task of working as real “gymnastic equipment”, i.e. suitable for performing various gymnastic exercises inside the classroom.

The assumption upon which this paper rests is that school desks have always been signifiers charged with multiple meanings related to the evolution of curriculum, pedagogic ideas and daily school practices, which have often been forgotten, abandoned or, for some reasons, underrepresented in the official history of education as well as in the collective memory of school. In order to rebuild this forgotten history, and retrace the possible theoretical-pedagogical basis underlying such practice, the authors have systematically reviewed the Italian manuals on gymnastics between desks from the 1870s to the 1970s, retraced sources documenting this practice in the daily school life (government rules, school programmes, school hygiene prescriptions, iconographic sources, teachers and school managers’ testimonies) and finally, compared with other foreign practices (such as “calisthenics”).

The convergence between many differentiated sources has demonstrated the longevity of this school practice, which was not only the fruit of educational theories of gymnastic teachers but was also determined by the backwardness and logistic inadequacies of many Italian schools. The paper reveals how this gymnastic practice, after establishing itself in the post-Unification Italian schools, continued almost uninterrupted until the Second World War and even until the 1970s, evidencing how gymnastic teachers, hygienists, educationalists and lawmakers continued, over almost a century, to scientifically legitimise (from the top downwards) an educational practice that was actually driven from the bottom upwards, i.e. determined by an endemic lack of adequate spaces and tools for physical education in Italian schools.

For the very first time, the special source of Italian manuals and booklets on gymnastics between desks has been located, analysed and systematically reviewed for the period 1870s-1970s, and then cross-checked against differentiated sources. This study actually represents the first step of a research which must be still further developed. Undoubtedly, the “new” source represented by the manuals of “gymnastics between school desks” offered a first original perspective from which to explore the use of this furniture in the school of the past, thereby enabling historians of education to shed the first light on a school practice that has been overlooked or forgotten, and still hidden within the “black box of schooling”.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Czech traditions of outdoor games and sports, turistika activities and education in nature programmes, which have continued to develop during periods of oppression and provided opportunities to preserve the Czech culture.

A review of the historical, cultural and political context of education in nature traditions in Czech was proposed.

Late 19th century organisations such as the Turistický klub and Sokol were instrumental in developing a range of indigenous turistika activities involving active movement. The early 20th century influences were the Czech scouting movement, summer camps and Woodcraft. Charles University provided the first tertiary outdoor educational programmes in Prague in the 1950s. Their foundation course “Turistika and Outdoor Sports” is still compulsory for all students studying physical education and sport. Turistika activities and outdoor sports and games continued to be developed throughout the liberalization of the socialist regime in the 1960s.

Following the Prague Spring in 1968, and under the guise of the Socialist Youth Union organization, new experimental forms of outdoor education emerged.

Since the Velvet Revolution in 1989 organisations have reconnected with Czech outdoor traditions that flourished before 1948 and other organisations have developed education in nature programs. The commercial sphere, which did not exist before 1989, has now been established in the outdoor area. However, traditional participation in turistika activities has been impacted by other external motivations as a broader range of opportunities have become available and accepted, and tourism outside of Czech and Europe has become increasingly popular and accessible.

The originality of this paper is to provide an overview of Czech political and cultural history and how it has shaped people's relationship, particularly children and youth, with the outdoors.

The use of modern technology has many challenges and risks. However, by collaborating with schoolchildren, ideas to effectively promote health and learning in school can be identified. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a participatory approach can deepen the understanding of how schoolchildren relate to and use gamification as a tool to promote physical activity and learning.

Inspired by the concept and process of empowerment and child participation, the methodological focus of this study was on consulting schoolchildren. During a two-month period, 18 schoolchildren (10-12 years old) participated in workshops to create game ideas that would motivate them to be physically active and learn in school.

The phenomenological analysis resulted in one main theme, “Playing games for fun to be the best I can be.” This consisted of four themes with two sub-themes each. The findings offer insights on how to increase physical activity and health education opportunities using serious games in school.

The knowledge gained provides gamification concepts and combinations of different technological applications to increase health and learning, as well as motivational aspects suggested by the schoolchildren. The findings are discussed with health promotion and health education in mind.

A five‐month, exploratory, in‐depth study was conducted in six sites across England with young people aged 11‐15 and the parents of secondary school aged children to identify drivers and barriers to involvement in physical activity. Over 100 young people were interviewed in both secondary school and out‐of‐school settings. Two group interviews were also conducted with parents. Findings highlight that both young people and parents consider physical activity important for physical, mental and social wellbeing. Clear gender differences were found in relation to regular involvement in physical activity. Young women were less likely to engage in active pursuits in and out of school, and were more critical of physical education. The research suggests that the determinants of physical activity in young people are complex. A flexible and differentiated approach to the provision and promotion of physical activity seems needed to meet the changing motivational needs and preferences of this age group.