PHE/HPE: Exploring the relationship between Health Education and Physical Education

Originally posted 24/03/2019

Updated 03/07/26

In the mid-1990s there was an attempt to standardise school curricula in Australia. This involved a shift from subjects to learning areas, drawing on a collection of subjects to form a syllabus (Brooker et al., 1998). In the process, Physical Education (PE) was initially marginalised and a draft curriculum document was developed for a ‘key learning area’ entitled ‘Health’. Following strong feedback, particularly from the field of sport (Pill, 2012; Swabey, 2006), the redrafted curriculum document came to be named as ‘Health and Physical Education’ (HPE). Skills and concepts were included in a statement and profile of the HPE learning area (Curriculum Corporation, 1994; Dinan-Thompson, 2006; Pill, 2012; Swabey, 2006). This marked the beginning of a blurring of the boundaries between Health Education (HEd) and PE as academic disciplines, or subject areas, with their previously distinctive content and pedagogical traditions (Dinan-Thompson, 2006; Pill, 2012).

The HPE Statement and Profile (Curriculum Corporation, 1994) influenced the curriculum
work of Australian state education departments over the ensuing decade. However, some Australian universities continued for a long time to offer academic majors and minors in HEd and PE that could be taken together or in combination with another academic  discipline, for example, English and Science. This was because employers continued to recruit specialist PE teachers into secondary teaching with the required need to teach two or more subjects, but not necessarily HEd and PE. Indeed, it was not uncommon for HE to be taught by teachers with or without any HEd tertiary training. And when HEd was taught in secondary schools by PE teachers, it often more closely resembled ‘PE theory’ than HEd due to PE teachers’ lack of HEd pedagogical and  content knowledge (Barwood, 2015; Barwood et al., 2016; Lewis, 2012).

The development of the Australian Curriculum: HPE (AC: HPE) cemented the subject association between HEd and PE. The Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education document proposed that the relationship between the two subjects move beyond the association earlier established in the statement and profile of the HPE learning area (Curriculum Corporation, 1994). The direction to more obviously link HEd and PE, evident in the drafting and consultation of  the AC: HPE, has subsequently influenced the combining of these academic disciplines in Australian schools and in some Australian university education degrees. This shift has precipitated HEd and PE staffing changes in  some secondary schools, requiring the presence of teachers who can teach this combined learning area. Consequently, in some states many secondary school PE teachers are now required to teach the ‘health education content strand’, as they are often employed as HPE/PDHPE teachers (Lewis, 2012). To do so effectively requires specialised knowledge of personal, social and community health areas. 

In my travels on teaching rounds and in discussion with in-service teachers at PD events, the key teacher of PE in primary schools does not appear to be a key teacher of HPE in most settings, with the classroom teacher still in most cases responsible for the health education curriculum in schools where a 'key teacher' of PE is employed for the Movement and Participation Strand content delivery. In some secondary schools, HEd has been seperated from Physical Education, with HEd now 'housed' in a school Wellbeing program.

In one of our studies (see here), we explored how much HEd content knowledge had 'stuck' with PE teacher education students who were studing a HEd topic. In broad terms, we found they had poor and naive understandings of health promotion and education. Their own experience of school HEd appeared to have little impact on the development of retained understanding of key personal, family and social health promotion concepts.

As a result of our study, I believe research into the 'what' and 'how' pre-service primary and secondary education teacher education students remember of health education immediately post school (i.e. first year teacher education) is needed to inform health education teacher education preparation; because, if our study is anything to go by they come into the study with somewhat under-formed, or distorted, niave, mythical and false, understandings.

Maybe the lack of 'stickiness' of the key ideas and therefore the formation of the habit of mind of the health literate person from school HEd is a result of key ideas not being spiraled and layered in development through the student curriculum experience in sites where teachers seek to bring in external programs and presenters in leiu of delivering a HEd curriculum. In another of our studies (see here) we found HEd in primary schools to be more marginalsied than physical education, the later which is commonly described in literature as marginalised in the curriculum. We called this “double marginalisation” as Health Education often had less curriculum time than other subjects taught by the class teacher and it was less likely to be taught with confidence; and due to that combination less likely to be taught with adequacy of student learning retention.

We have recently begun to look at integrating HEd and Physical Education through sport. Working with Adelaide United FC, we designed a program where Health Education lessons were the 'clubhouse' lessons and the content in this project was social-emotional learning competencies, and the Physical Education lessons were the 'for the (footy) field' lessons. The TPSR strategy of awareness talks, occuring at the start and end of the physical education lesson, were the pedagogical tool used to create the 'bridge' between the 'clubhouse' and 'field' learning. The evaluation has been very positive. This structure, which we borrowed from the sport for development - life skills work of Steven Danish and colleagues (for example, see here), might be able to be used in other ways to integrate or provide an interdisciplinary approach for health education and physical education. As I get around to schools, I see few examples of truly integrated or interdisciplinary HEd and Physical Education. There do exist curriculum models like Health Orientated Physical Education (HOPE) but they seem to me a unitised not interdisciplinary or integrated approach to HPE (e.g., see here). This HOPE model is not to be confused with Health Optimising Physical Education (also HOPE) and its variants (like - health enhancing physical education, health promoting physical education, etc) which appear to be more focussed at enhancing the liklihood of lifelong participation in physical activity (see here).

Thanks for stopping by and reading this blog. If you would like to connect on a project about the ideas here or any of the ideas I have blogged about, you can contact via my email here