ERIC Number: EJ964183
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1357-3322
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
"Thrash Yourself Thursday": The Production of the "Healthy" Child through a Fitness-Based PE Practice
McDermott, Lisa
Sport, Education and Society, v17 n3 p405-429 2012
Saturating the Canadian landscape are media and health industry discourses representing childhood physical "(in)activity" and "obesity" as being at "epidemic" proportion. Increasingly identified as a focus of concern within such representations is the school setting, simultaneously positioned both as a cause of "and" a key institutional site for redressing these "pathologies". Drawing on qualitative research carried out at a Canadian elementary school, this discussion offers a Foucaultian governmental analysis of one school's navigation of this gauntlet of accountability to improve children's health. Specifically, the school-wide fitness-based initiative known as "Thrash yourself Thursdays", whose objective is the production of "healthy" students, is examined to understand the power relations enacted through it, and how the target of this practice (i.e. the children) negotiated such efforts to shape their bodily conduct. This in turn, offers a unique contribution to the governmental literature, which is more characterised by attending to discourses and strategies of government rather than how the subjects of such strategies respond to such efforts. (Contains 28 notes.)
Descriptors: Qualitative Research, Obesity, Child Health, Physical Education, Foreign Countries, Accountability, Health Related Fitness, Physical Activity Level, Exercise, Elementary School Students, Health Programs, Curriculum, Student Attitudes, Government Role, Postmodernism, Social Theories, Semi Structured Interviews, Power Structure, Program Descriptions, Educational Environment, Health Promotion
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada (Edmonton)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A