Conceptualising social justice – what constitutes pedagogies for social justice in HPE across different contexts? Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rasp21 Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education ISSN: 2574-2981 (Print) 2574-299X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasp21 Conceptualising social justice – what constitutes pedagogies for social justice in HPE across different contexts? Katarina Schenker, Susanne Linnér, Wayne Smith, Göran Gerdin, Kjersti Mordal Moen, Rod Philpot, Lena Larsson, Maureen Legge & Knut Westlie To cite this article: Katarina Schenker, Susanne Linnér, Wayne Smith, Göran Gerdin, Kjersti Mordal Moen, Rod Philpot, Lena Larsson, Maureen Legge & Knut Westlie (2019) Conceptualising social justice – what constitutes pedagogies for social justice in HPE across different contexts?, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education, 10:2, 126-140, DOI: 10.1080/25742981.2019.1609369 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/25742981.2019.1609369 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 23 Apr 2019. 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Katarina Schenkera, Susanne Linnéra, Wayne Smithb, Göran Gerdin a, Kjersti Mordal Moenc, Rod Philpotb, Lena Larssona, Maureen Leggeb and Knut Westliec aDepartment of Sport Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden; bSchool of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; cDepartment of Public Health and Sport Sciences, Faculty of Social and Health Sciences, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Norway ABSTRACT The paper explores the concept of social justice in Health and Physical Education (HPE) as constituted and addressed across three different countries – Sweden, Norway and New Zealand – and how HPE teaching practices for social justice may be understood from regulative, normative and cultural/cognitive perspectives. Although much has been written about social justice in the field of HPE over the last three decades, there is little research that has examined how teachers operationalise teaching for social justice. Drawing on the experiences and insights gained from an international collaboration project, that sought to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines what constitutes pedagogies for social justice in HPE across different contexts. The aim of this paper is to discuss: (i) our conceptualisation of social justice; and (ii) how this can be understood in relation to HPE practice across different contexts. We conclude that what is regarded as important content for the teaching of social justice varies from one context to another although there are also similar approaches. Additionally, there is much to learn by seeing ‘it’, that is, the nature of social justice and how this is played out in school HPE – from the ‘others’ perspectives’. KEYWORDS Social justice; pedagogy; education; health; physical education Introduction Although much has been written about social justice in the field of Health and Physical Edu- cation (HPE) over the last three decades (e.g. Azzarito, Macdonald, Dagkas, & Fisette, 2017; Fernández-Balboa, 1997; Kirk & Tinning, 1990; Tinning, 2012), little research has examined how HPE teachers operationalise teaching for social justice. As recently pointed out by Hill et al. (2018, p. 470), ‘what is currently done in [HPE] classrooms in the name of education for social justice and the tangible outcomes of social justice-oriented education are often unclear’. ‘Education for Equitable Health Outcomes – The Promise of School Health and © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. CONTACT Göran Gerdin goran.gerdin@lnu.se Department of Sport Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Linnaeus University, 351 95 Växjö, Sweden CURRICULUM STUDIES IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 2019, VOL. 10, NO. 2, 126–140 https://doi.org/10.1080/25742981.2019.1609369 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/25742981.2019.1609369&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-04-26 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2922-1993 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ mailto:goran.gerdin@lnu.se http://www.tandfonline.com Physical Education’ (EDUHEALTH) is a collaborative research project between three uni- versities in Sweden, Norway and New Zealand that seeks to address this knowledge gap by examining HPE teachers’ operationalisation of teaching for social justice. Central to the project is an understanding of what constitutes as pedagogies for social justice in HPE. However, within the research project, this question has proven to be particularly chal- lenging. Indeed, as Zollers, Albert, and Cochran-Smith (2000) point out, researchers working together on a project focusing on social justice often have different definitions and interpretations of the meaning of this concept. Similarly, others argue (e.g. Bialystok, 2014; Randall & Robinson, 2016) that the definitions and practices of social justice are varied and that there is a lack of concensus about the meaning, but in general, social justice concerns democracy and social and political participation. Social justice can be viewed as both a process and a goal. Bell (2016) suggests that ‘the process of social justice should involve democracy and dialogue, enabled by opportunities to critically examine insti- tutional, cultural and individual oppression. Goals for social justice include empowerment, equal distribution of resources, and social responsibility’ (cited in Hill et al., 2018, p. 471). In the context of HPE, we draw on Tinning (2016) to point out that a process or pedagogy for social justice should embrace the ethics of the social justice agenda as inspired by the ‘big tent’ (Lather, 1998) of critical theories and approaches which can encompass and employ a range of interrelated teaching practices. For the purpose of examining HPE practice in the EDUHEALTH project, we therefore propose that pedagogies for social justice are those in which HPE teachers seek to recognise and act on social inequities rather than further marginalise groups of students due to e.g. gender, sexuality, ethnicity or socio-econ- omic standing, with the goal of more equitable health outcomes. Education and schooling is regulated by education acts, national school curricula and other policy documents. These documents are part of the educational context, but this same educational context is also significantly shaped by cultural traditions, values, and norms that constitute beliefs of what is regarded as relevant and useful knowledge. Unlike the official curriculum documents, these cultural traditions, values, and norms are seldom explicitly verbalised and therefore form part of the ‘hidden’ curriculum (Bain, 1985; Giroux & Penna, 1979). As Fernández-Balboa (1993) asserts, the hidden curriculum shapes and mediates not only values, but also experiences and practices. This hidden curri- culum is produced and reproduced by everyday practices and influences of what is possible in the name of education (Kvalbein, 1998). This means that issues of social justice may be expressed in official curricula and other policy documents but not in teaching practice, alter- natively they may be present in teaching practice but not explicitly mentioned in the curri- culum documents. Ultimately, what the students in school HPE learn about in the name of social justice ‘is a product of both the explicit and implicit messages relating to knowledge, values, norms, and professional dispositions’ (Ovens et al., 2018, p. 485). The different conceptualisations of social justice and the very nature of social justice issues in both the official and hidden HPE curriculum in each country became central to discussions when the EDUHEALTH research group met to focus on, analyse, and come to understand each participating country’s context – Sweden, Norway and New Zealand (for a full discussion of this, see Gerdin et al., 2019). The different conceptualis- ations have been the catalyst for this paper. The paper examines the concept of social justice in HPE as constituted and addressed across the three different countries by present- ing different aspects and understandings of social justice that have emerged during the first CURRICULUM STUDIES IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 127 one and a half years of the project. The paper explores how HPE teaching practices may be understood from regulative, normative and cultural/cognitive perspectives of social justice. The aim of the paper is thus to discuss: (i) our conceptualisations of social justice; and (ii) how these conceptualisations can be understood in relation to school HPE practice across different contexts. In order to inform our discussion we draw on insights gained so far in the EDUHEALTH project generated through studying policy documents, visiting different countries, school visits, observations and teacher interviews. We conclude that what is regarded as important content for the teaching of social justice varies from one context to another although there are also similar approaches. Additionally, there is much to learn by seeing ‘it’, that is, the nature of social justice and how this is played out in school HPE – from the ‘others’ perspectives’. Social justice and HPE in neoliberal times Like many other countries around the world in recent decades, to varying degrees, Sweden, Norway and New Zealand have been influenced by and have embraced neoliberalism. Neoliberal policies have enforced a movement towards individualism and a competitive market (Apple, 2001). Öhman, Almqvist, Meckbach, and Quennerstedt (2014) argue that HPE is often influenced by the neoliberal concept of individualism, in which students are seen to be responsible for their own health and non-achieving students are blamed for their ‘failure’ to achieve health. The collective social health of societies is often thought to be merely the sum of the parts, that is, if individuals look after themselves then society will look after itself. That is, neoliberal thinking positions individuals to take responsibility rather than society taking social responsibility as a means of equity and social justice. However, neoliberal approaches to health tend to negatively impact most on marginalised and/or minority groups in society (France & Roberts, 2017; Rashbrooke, 2013). Azzarito et al. (2017) further caution that school curricula based on the principles of global neoli- beralism give priority to competitive rather than equity-based goals, and this in turn leads to the marginalisation of the social justice project. Indeed, Bialystok (2014) claims that if social justice is not well defined from a critical perspective, neoliberalism may try to assim- ilate it as part of its own agenda. In the following sections we turn our attention to explicating and discussing our con- ceptualisation of social justice pedagogies. Social justice pedagogies Fernández-Balboa (2017) argues that a teacher who seeks a social justice agenda, begins by recognising and reflecting on social justice issues and examining their own identity while seeking to understand how they operate within normative, hegemonic structures. In their teaching they aim to challenge normative rationalising and notions of difference, and instead attempt to focus on similarities and shared understandings, the teacher treats knowledge as situated and selects curriculum content that reflects students’ personal and cultural identities. The perspectives and values of ‘otherness’ are integrated through- out the curriculum. A further review of social justice research shows that social justice ped- agogies may be enacted in various ways. 128 K. SCHENKER ET AL. One way of enacting social justice pedagogies involves the teacher explicitly teaching about social justice with an aim to increase student consciousness of and capacity for addressing social justice issues (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2007; Sturman, 1997). In practice, the teacher connects education and social action through (a) the teachers’ sense of them- selves as social activists; (b) the teachers’ intent to raise students’ awareness of inequity and injustice; and (c) the teachers’ intent to promote students’ social action (Dover, 2013, p. 93), impelling the students to take actions on or for injustice. Within this perspective, the teacher may include explicit instruction about oppression, prejudice, and inequity, specifically addressing issues of gender, social class, ethnicity, cultural inequity, ability/dis- ability, and democracy (Dover, 2013). Within the context of HPE, this may also include addressing issues relating to motor elitism and understanding bodies (Tinning, 2010). The lessons may challenge knowledge of ‘the other’ (e.g. representation of queers) and the processes that form the ‘other’ such as normalising behaviour as well as the use of language to discriminate by reinforcing dominant understandings. The teacher may use tools to critically analyse social change, emphasising critical thinking and inquiry, and expect students to be aware of and reflect on multicultural group dynamics (Hackman, 2005). The teacher may also promote social cohesion and students’ academic, civic, and personal growth while making connections between curriculum standards and social justice topics. Social justice pedagogies may also involve teaching for social justice through the actions and embodiments of the teacher (see Fitzpatrick & Russell, 2015). It is probable that such socially justice pedagogies will be evident in the actions, words, images, and language of the teacher or the learning environment. Doing social justice in education means that the teacher acknowledges the realities of day-to-day life that can impact on learning, and in response aims to create a supportive classroom climate that embraces multiple per- spectives. The teacher will reflect on assumptions about marginalised students, recognise harmful ways certain students are treated in class and aim to be responsive to all students’ needs, while discouraging discriminatory behaviours and language that serve to margin- alise some and privilege others. To reduce the otherness and strengthen the group, the teacher may provide support where others can receive advocacy and affirmation, and tailor teaching to the specific needs of the student population (Schenker, 2019). Within a HPE context, socially just pedagogies may include non-dominant forms of activity and knowledge that challenges dominant discourses, such as those of the traditional bio- physical scientific knowledge of the body (Tinning, 2010). They may also, for example, include teaching and learning about other cultural perspectives of health and ways of framing the body (Garrett & Wrench, 2011; Legge, 2010). One of the questions we as researchers in the EDUHEALTH project have addressed, is, are these above forms of social justice evident in the schools and classrooms of the teachers we have observed in the three countries? A reflection gained from examinations of each country’s national curriculum indicate that they might be but, our early interpretation is that the different national contexts have different social justice priorities, which, not sur- prisingly, are to some extent reflected in the teachers’ pedagogies. For the Norwegian and Swedish teachers, democracy, gender and ability issues seem to greatly influence the think- ing, and for the New Zealand teachers, post-colonial economic and social differentiation, indigenous rights and ethnic and cultural differences come to the fore. CURRICULUM STUDIES IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 129 Through implementing the EDUHEALTH project, it has become clear that one cannot tell with absolute certainty if education in general promotes social justice. Rather, what we have found, is that what may be regarded as important social justice pedagogy in one context might not be regarded as so in another. To better understand teaching for social justice in HPE, a nuanced, context specific analytical approach is required. In order to do so even the concept of social justice itself requires some consideration. Indeed, any quest for social justice requires the consideration of what social justice is, and for whom social justice is sought, before attempts can be made in its name (Hackman, 2005). Social justice – is it one concept or two? The concept of social justice is constituted by two interpretable words, ‘social’ and ‘justice’. In the following section we analyse the nature of these two words. We do this because we see the need to present a collective understanding of the concept of social justice so that it can be meaningfully used across the different settings we have investigated. To make the concept operationalisable in the different countries’ socio-political contexts, we need a more permissible definition. Being social and just are subjective terms, which is why, as we have found, they can have different interpretations in different settings. This is due to differences in understandings of the concept and the relevance of context to any conceptual understanding (Blackmore, 2013). That is, differences in societal rules, norms, cultures and cognitive understandings affect the meaning of social justice (Zollers et al., 2000). For instance, social justice may be inherently institutionalised in school and HPE practices and explicitly operationalised via the curriculum regulations and expectations in one context but not another and, equally, it may be bounded by the hidden practices of teachers within a particular school context but not another. It may manifest in different and sometimes contrasting outcomes when left unexamined. If social justice is used as part of a neoliberal agenda it can help support indi- vidualism by reaffirming the view of ‘individual responsibility rather than social respon- sibility as a means of equity and justice’ (Hill et al., 2018, p. 472). In the next two sections, we will discuss what we mean by ‘social’ and ‘justice’, to make our meaning of these two terms more explicit. The ‘social’ ‘Social’ refers to something that involves collective or group cohesion. It necessarily involves people interacting. To promote the ‘social’, one may act on social problems that address social cohesion issues, do something that has social impact or work for social change, towards a greater collective good (Alvord, Brown, & Letts, 2004; Light, 2008). However, there are philosophical and political values embedded in the concept (cf. Mair & Marti, 2006; Payton & Moody, 2008). The social acts are based on ethical motives and moral responsibility (Mair & Marti, 2006), which have politicial connota- tions. But, social acts can also be based on the need for personal fulfilment, which does not necessarily become part of a broader political agenda. A prescribed HPE curriculum may be understood as something that is socially good if its content is believed to strengthen the public social health of all citizens. A social focus in HPE may also 130 K. SCHENKER ET AL. concern problems associated with inequitable social health outcomes, that is, inequitable lifestyle or life chance outcomes for different individuals or groups who live together within a given community or society (Schenker, 2019). It is the view of the EDUHEALTH project researchers that HPE should have a social justice mission and when it does, it can impact and enhance the public social health as well as the physical health of our societies, even if these social ambitions are not explicitly expressed in national HPE curricula. Strengthening the public social health of all citizens is part of an agenda promoting democracy where the citizens, in different ways, can act on, and influence the social outcomes of a society (Fernández-Balboa, 1995). This rationale is an underlying belief for the EDUHEALTH project’s goal of identifying the nature of tea- chers’ pedagogies that address social justice issues. The rationale is supported by Dover (2013) who argues that social justice should be central to a HPE teacher’s pedagogy. Dover argues that raising students’ awareness of inequity and injustice and promoting positive social action are central tenets of teaching for social justice. Earlier, Wright (2004) argued that such emancipatory teaching practices have the goal of helping students identify, challenge, and transform existing unequal power relationships relating to physical activity and health. We add that school HPE is a forum to provide young people, regardless of e.g. their ability, sex, gender, age, culture, ethnicity or social background, with the knowledge and understanding of social health issues that may impact on them and others. Unfortunately, despite its potential, the way HPE is currently taught and conceptualised in schools in Sweden, Norway and New Zealand, it sometimes falls short of achieving such goals (e.g. Aasland, Walseth, & Engelsrud, 2016; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Öhman et al., 2014). Change may be possible with greater awareness and knowledge of pedagogical practices that provide students with the opportunity to exert influence in line with their own values and ambitions. Justice (and equity) ‘Justice’ is concerned with equity and the achievement of equitable outcomes (Deutsch, 1975). When referring to the social, justice takes account of social constructs such as gender, sexuality, socio-economics, and ethnicity, and often in the context of HPE physical culture, including one’s physicality and conception of the body (Tinning, 2010). Equity of access to any form of physical activity is a social justice issue close to the heart of HPE. Fraser (2001) sees parity of participation, that is, the provision to participate on equal terms as a central goal of HPE meaning, a fair teaching context is one where students are provided with equal opportunities to learn and participate. In this way justice is linked to the notion of fairness and equal opportunity. In schools this means that every child or adolescent should have the right to an equivalent education and receive the necessary support to enable them to participate and achieve the goals of education. In this sense, equivalent education may mean teaching some students differently based on their specific needs. This is justice as expressed within the principles of equity and fairness. Participating on equal terms in education addresses equal opportunities as well as equi- table outcomes. This may mean that the teacher has to compensate or renegotiate the school subject to account for e.g. gender, social background or ethnicity differences for the development of students. It may also mean that society or the school has to redistribute resources to reduce social inequities among student groups. CURRICULUM STUDIES IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 131 Through the EDUHEALTH project, we have become acutely aware that the different countries face to some extent different challenges in their bid to address fairness and equity in their own society. We have found it necessary also, to reflect on social justice issues across three layers of analysis, the macro, meso and micro, the macro being national socio-political factors, the meso being institutional (school) policies and practices, and micro being individual, teacher and/or subject specific pedagogies or curriculum factors. This has been necessary to gain a more informed understanding of the influence of context in this cross-nation project. The project has allowed us to cast foreign eyes on the practices of each country and in this way look ‘as outsiders’ through different lenses at the nature of social justice practice in each context, as well as this we have grasped the ‘insider perspectives’ on own context. The relevance and challenges of ‘insider-outsider perspectives’ in qualitative research, has been debated for decades (see, for example, Bishop, 2005). The benefit is the ability to connect the two, more precisely; while some in the research team are the insiders and others the outsiders, these roles change when we alternate between contexts (e.g. countries). The need for context specific examination of social justice practices To be able to discuss our conceptalisation of social justice there is a need for context specific examination of social justice practices. Through our collective examination of each country’s curriculum, school legislation, discussions within the project group and school visits in each country, we have been able to see how the two Scandinavian countries differ from New Zealand, how each frame ‘social justice’ differently at the macro level and how this influences HPE practice and leads to different implications at the micro level. In Norway and Sweden, there is a tension between the social-democratic popular movement agenda built up during the 20th century by voluntary work and it newly arrived competi- tor, neoliberalism. In New Zealand, although the greatest tension is also generated by neo- liberal public policies that give rise to inequitable outcomes, there is an added dimension focused on the emancipation of marginalised groups, particularly indigenous Māori due to neocolonialism in New Zealand society. While the social policies aim to promote equal treatment for all in Norway and Sweden, the bicultural social issues in New Zealand demand special treatment. This means that despite the shared neoliberal context, social justice is expressed differently in the different national contexts. Our experience of social justice HPE pedagogies across the three contexts tells us that we firstly need to be informed about social policies and practices at the other two under- pinning more encompassing levels of society, that is those of the school and nation itself, and therefore our analysis takes account of these different levels of influence. Figure 1 demonstrates these three different analytical levels: country, school and HPE lesson. In the following we will present a way to analytically conceptalise social justice in relation to HPE practice in different countries. We have drawn on Scott (2007), who describes institutions as social structures made up of symbolic elements, social activities and material resources. These social structures are composed of ‘regulative’, ‘normative’ and ‘cultural/cognitive’ elements. The regulative elements are predominantly rules that require enforcement. The normative elements consist of the norms and values that under- pin how things should be done and legitimise the means of accomplishing them. The cul- tural/cognitive elements are informed by the shared conceptions and social construction 132 K. SCHENKER ET AL. of meaning. These three elements are expressed in varying ways in different contexts. Different societies may be more or less dominated by different elements, and they may vary over time in terms of which elements are dominant. Social justice in schools and HPE is enabled and enacted in accordance with all three elements, that is, its laws, norms, and cultural/cognitive contexts. Using the Swedish model as an example, Swedish society is governed by national regulatory acts based on the rules of democracy. In Sweden, the national school system is underpinned by these same democratic values. According to the Swedish national curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2011), all pupils have equal rights to a free education despite their geographical place of residence or socio-economic conditions. Swedish schools are framed by a national curriculum that contains three parts; (1) the fundamental values and tasks of the school, (2) the overall goals and guidelines for education and (3) the syllabuses which are supplemented by knowledge requirements. The fundamental values of the school can be understood as part of the normative elements, e.g. all who work in the school should ‘contribute to developing the pupils’ sense of togetherness and solidarity, as well as a sense of responsibility for people outside the immediate group’, ‘be permeated by the spirit of solidarity between people’, actively resist discrimination and degrading treatment of individuals or groups’, ‘show respect for individual pupils, and carry out the daily work in democratic ways’ (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2011). Correspondingly, within the HPE context, these principles of democracy are enacted in the lived experiences of the teachers and students. Each pupil is encouraged to discover their own uniqueness as an individual and thereby be able to participate in society by giving of their best. In HPE, teachers are expected to create the conditions for all pupils to regularly take part in phys- ical activities and contribute to the development of good physical awareness and a belief in their own physical capacity. In their bid to provide equal opportunity for all pupils, tea- chers are not allowed to demand that the students bring their own equipment, such as Figure 1. The three different contextual levels of where social justice pedagogies are enabled and enacted. CURRICULUM STUDIES IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 133 skates, skis, bicycles or rainwear, because it would require additional expenses for the students. Typically, when expressed as the cultural/cognitive element, social democracy centres on the teacher’s actions, choice of content, and ways of being a teacher (cf. Schenker, 2019). For example, it may be exemplified by teachers’ decisions to negotiate the power distribution within a class in a way that gives all pupils the opportunity to participate and succeed equally in HPE. Social justice may be foregrounded by encouraging students to help others and build a sense of community. The lived pedagogy may be enacted by strengthening the group, strengthening individuals and distributing power ‘equally’. It might concern how the logics of various games promote different pupils or how the teacher arranges and groups the class (Schenker, 2019). Our multi-level (societal, institutional and individual) lenses, as well as the regulative, the normative and the cultural/cognitive elements have assisted us to better understand the complexities of examining social justice across different contexts. The ‘regulative’ and the ‘normative’ elements are naturally anchored in societal and political settings and are influencing the school as well as the school subject, while the cultural/cognitive elements are more obviously expressed within the school and the school subject. However, it is also natural that these school and teacher practices are grounded in national cultures and values. Because there are more similarities than differences between Norway and Sweden, we have chosen to group them as the Scandinavian countries to compare them with the New Zealand context. Since we have experienced that these two socio-pol- itically different contexts to some extent have different issues at the societal level, which play a key role in shaping social justice pedagogies in HPE practice, we will now highlight and discuss different aspects of the Scandinavian and New Zealand contexts. Social justice in a Scandinavian context In a Scandinavian context, social justice is related to social welfare policies involving public health, democracy, and solidarity (cf. Norberg 2011). In Sweden, the discussion about equity and fairness can be traced back to the 1940s, in connection to the reforms of the Swedish school system into a school for all. Equality was a guiding principle in promoting the development of the country and strengthening solidarity while transforming the State into a welfare society (Axelsson & Qvarsebo, 2011). Every child was equally entitled to an education, regardless of where they lived, the state of their parents socio-economical status, gender and ethnicity. This implied that the students’ backgrounds were irrelevant because everyone was given the same chance to succeed and to get further education. The education system became centralised to make this happen. But in the 1970s, the critique of the system started to grow. Decentralising reforms followed and equality became equity, assisted by compensatory strategies, where ‘pedagogies of the same’ became ‘pedagogies of difference’ (cf. Wahlström, 2014). The meaning of equality and equity were differentiated so that equity concerned children’s equal opportunities in education, regardless of factors of gender, ethnicity or social background. In the 1980s and 1990s, with reforms of ‘freedom of choice’, every child was then to be provided with equal opportunities to achieve the goals of the education. (see von Greiff, 2009). The Education acts of both Norway and Sweden emphasise the importance of the school system resting on fundamental democratic values and equitable access for all. 134 K. SCHENKER ET AL. From a regulative perspective, in the two Scandinavian countries education is free and schools are not allowed to have activities that are subject to supplementary fees. Without access for all, the democratic development and potential social incorporation into society may not occur. A similar argument can be applied to pedagogies for social justice in HPE. It is important to provide access for all students to enable the lived democ- racy and a socially inclusive HPE context that is anchored in social justice (cf. Fraser, 2001). To enact democracy, it is necessary to include all students in decision-making in HPE. Our experiences and insights from the EDUHEALTH project so far support this stance. We have seen how the social justice pedagogies of the HPE teachers in Sweden and Norway are often based on strong social democratic principles. For example, HPE teachers in both of these contexts prioritise learning activities that endeavour to ensure that HPE provides appropriate learning opportunities for all ability groups and remove structural constraints that can potentially limit student participation. In contrast, individual cogni- tive-cultural beliefs of the importance and valuing of competitive sport that privilege some and marginalise others are also evident. Swedish HPE has for a long time reproduced values and knowledge that appeals to students who have experience and enjoyment of competitive sport (Säfvenbom, Haugen, & Bulie, 2015). Students with the greatest need to experience and learn about health and physical activity are therefore not always attracted to the school subject as much as others and as a result come away with negative learning experiences (Säfvenbom et al., 2015). Social justice in a New Zealand context Education in New Zealand from the 1930s to the 1970s was also based on socially demo- cratic principles, primarily that of equal educational opportunity. This was largely due to educational reforms that were introduced during the late 1930s by the Labour Govern- ment, under the guidance of the Director of Education, Clarence Beeby who introduced a national policy that stated: every person, whatever his [sic] level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the fullest extent of his powers (McDonald, 2002, p. 26). However, the social-democratic nature of society and education changed during the reforms of the mid to late 1980s and 1990s when ‘Tomorrows schools’ based on the free market policies of neoliberalism, were introduced. Today, the free market policies of competitive schools endure and in part serve to strengthen the social inequalities of today, including neo colonialism. The outcome is that Māori as well as other minority ethnic groups such as Pasifika students continue to be marginalised in the school system and suffer poorer educational outcomes than their Pākēha counterparts. The colonial history of New Zealand and an increasingly diverse multi-ethnic, multi- cultural, and multi-lingual society have further impacted on the nature of schooling and how the regulative, normative and cognitive-cultural elements impact on social justice pedagogies in New Zealand education (cf. Scott, 2007). New Zealand’s colonial history and the ongoing political dominance of European New Zealanders, with a corre- sponding marginalisation of indigenous Māori people, are primary considerations that CURRICULUM STUDIES IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION 135 surface to dominate social justice practices in New Zealand society and schools, today. New Zealand continues, long after the physical act of colonisation, to try to redress ongoing colonising practices, such as language, culture, and land rights discrimination. A current renaissance of Māori values and culture has given rise to greater recognition of ‘Māori and Pākehā (European colonisers) as Treaty partners1, where both supposedly have equal rights, including the right to equitable social, socioeconomic, and political out- comes. Despite the neoliberal school governing structures, the New Zealand public school curriculum, aims to promote a social state where all cultures are valued for the contri- butions they bring. One approach to address social justice in New Zealand schools, is to publish the school curriculum in both English and Māori languages. According to the vision, ‘the two docu- ments will help schools give effect to the partnership that is at the core’ of the nation’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi’. At a normative level, the New Zealand HPE curriculum explicitly mentions the need to develop a sense of social justice among the values and attitudes that are at the heart of the school subject (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2007). Within this, the Māori health philos- ophy of Hauora, which includes spiritual, mental, social, and physical well-being, is emphasised. In the curriculum, social justice is a subset of a socio-ecological perspective, where students are encouraged to look ‘beyond themselves and work towards a future that encourages people to question, to challenge and, where appropriate, to take action’ (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2007) and to influence and support others. In the New Zealand context, we have observed teachers focused on addressing neoco- lonising disparities, ethnic and cultural marginalisation and privilege. These issues have underpinned much of the HPE teachers’ social justice pedagogies, while the two Scandi- navian countries have observed an opposite approach. For example, New Zealand HPE teachers may use indigenous language and traditional games, and purposefully structure practical activities and units of work to make them more inclusive for culturally margin- alised students. In Norway and Sweden, however, the teachers would rather try not to focus on aspects of gender and ethnicity, they are interested in how to motivate each and every student regardless of gender, or ethnicity etc, in the belief that everyone should be treated as a person in its own right. In summary, the differences in pedagogies for social justice are evident both in the official curriculum documents and in HPE practice. These differences reinforce suggestions that pedagogies for social justice are partly enabled and constrained by the contexts in which they are practised (Gerdin et al., 2019) and cannot solely be conceptualised as a single pedagogy that can be enacted without regard for the learning context (Tinning, 2010). Conclusion This paper has examined what constitutes pedagogies for social justice in HPE by present- ing several factors relating to social justice that have given cause for the research team to reflect during the initial stages of the EDUHEALTH project. The first issue was the need for us to come to a shared understanding of what we mean by teaching for social justice, and this in turn required an analysis of the terms social and justice. A discussion of social justice and early insights gained from the project showed contex- tual differences about how social justice in HPE may be understood. This created a need to 136 K. SCHENKER ET AL. introduce an analytic lens to examine societal policies and practices as they relate to our understanding of social justice, and this is why we have come to draw on Scott’s (2007) three forms of social structures, the regulative, normative and cultural/cognitive. Social justice is context normative, meaning it might not mean the same thing for those who sit outside that context. As we have found in some contexts, in New Zealand for example, social justice pedagogies start by recognising students as raced, gendered and classed individuals while in Sweden and Norway, such pedagogy is problematic at the reg- ulative as well as the normative level. In Sweden and Norway it is believed that to address an individual based on their eth- nicity could create conflict among the people instead of unifying them. The Scandinavian approach is rather to provide equal opportunities in education, regardless of the students backgrounds. However, in New Zealand social justice and democracy are enacted when we come to accept and embrace ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences among those who call themselves New Zealanders. As such, New Zealanders are encouraged to value their own ethnicity, embrace their cultural heritage and live in the multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilinguistic society that is New Zealand today. Several analytical layers can be noted. Social justice pedagogies are about ways of recog- nising social inequities and marginalised groups and at the same time act on these social inequities in ways that do not further marginalise the groups. In different contexts the marginalised groups may differ as well as the strategies for acting on the inequities (cf. Tinning, 2010; 2016). Social justice might be enacted more or less by the regulative, the normative and the cultural/cognitive institutional elements. For example, in one country, social justice in HPE may be scaffolded by strong regulative and normative elements, while in another country it may be upheld by strong cultural/cognitive elements at the meso and micro levels. Similarily, social justice may be differently expressed in the regulative, the normative and the cultural/cognitive institutional elements of the school subject HPE, as well as in the school as a national institution.Perhaps it is the historical differences between the countries that leads to different ways of addressing equity and what it means to be socially just in an educational setting. Clearly, there is much to learn from one another about the nature of social justice, and how this is played out in our schools, including HPE lessons. The starting point for an informed understanding is seeing it (the nature of social justice) from the ‘others’ perspective. It is our belief that an understanding of what constitutes pedagogies for social justice needs to go beyond a focus on pedagogy and include a recognition of the regulative, normative and cultural per- spectives that both explicitly and implicitly enable and/or constrain social justice pedagogies. Note 1. Referring to Treaty of Waitangi that was signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and Māori chiefs in New Zealand. Disclosure statement The authors declared potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The results presented in this article only reflects the authors’ views and the European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. 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