Set within the context of a longitudinal project that seeks to engage physical education teachers from the four countries of the UK in cross-border curriculum analysis, dialogue and learning, the current study lays the foundation by mapping and comparing curriculum discourses that currently shape how physical education is conceptualised in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As a team of researchers with affiliations to each of the four nations of the UK, we identified those curriculum documents from each context that were written to directly inform physical education teachers’ curriculum planning and enactment. We firstly identified those discourses evident in each document to understand how physical education is conceptualised within each curriculum, before engaging in a dialogical process that converged around how physical education is constructed similarly or differently within and across curricula. We found some variation in relation to how the concept of health is articulated. With the exception of the curriculum in Wales, we also found that performance discourses related to developing motor competencies for sports continue to dominate as the main purpose of physical education. Finally, there are several points of divergence in relation to how much agency or guidance teachers are afforded within each curriculum. The intention of this research is to initiate dialogue across each of the four nations, creating opportunities for learning so that, collectively, teachers can build capacity to contribute to future curricula and pedagogies in physical education.

Background: More and more children are experiencing what have been termed adverse childhood experiences. An individual's response to these stressful events determines whether or not they are considered traumatic – whereby the experience is so overwhelming that it engulfs their coping mechanisms leading to lasting negative effects on wellbeing. Notably, childhood trauma is now recognised as a global health epidemic. Physical education (PE) is a unique context whereby participation is public, and the body plays a central role. Our work with care-experienced young people (who are likely to have experienced trauma) tells us that the depth of vulnerability felt by students who have been exposed to trauma is unlikely to be fully be recognised by PE teachers. Purpose: This paper therefore seeks to enhance practitioners’ understanding of how trauma manifests and the impact it can have on children and young people's engagements in PE. It is driven by two key questions. First, why is it important for physical educators to have an awareness and understanding of trauma? Second, what principles might underpin trauma-aware pedagogies for PE? Discussion: We note how childhood trauma has been found to consistently impact neurological, physiological and psychological development. Understanding the impact of trauma, and the responses it might evoke, is beneficial for those working with/for children and young people so as to help them comprehend the underlying reasons why some children and young people have difficulties with learning, building relationships and managing behaviour. In an effort to help mitigate the impact of trauma and prevent re-traumatisation, drawing on our collective experiences of working with care-experienced youth and practitioners in PE, physical activity and sport-related contexts, we suggest that the following five evidence-informed principles might be helpful when seeking to enact trauma-aware practice: (1) ensuring safety and wellbeing, (2) establishing routines and structures, (3) developing and sustaining positive relationships that foster a sense of belonging, (4) facilitating and responding to youth voice and, (5) promoting strengths and self-belief. Conclusion: The principles we identify all point to the need for creating safe environments, shaped by consistency, positive connections and opportunities for interaction and engagement. It is not our intention, however, to suggest that there is only one way to enact a trauma-aware pedagogy, rather that an understanding of trauma may enable physical educators to ask when, and for whom, it might be best to draw on particular models in the teaching of PE, through which these principles can be applied.

In this paper, we present the findings from our critical analysis of the health discourses evident with physical education (PE) curricula in each UK home nation—England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We carried out a critical discourse analysis of those curriculum documents that talk directly to PE teachers about how to organise, enact and assess PE curricula in schools. The results from our analysis uncovered that, with the exception of the curriculum in England, all PE curricula conceptualise health and wellbeing holistically. However, our analysis also uncovered complex health landscapes within curricula, where discourses move from notions of supporting and enabling pupil health and wellbeing towards a more concrete (and measurable) concept of health‐related learning, often associated with public health goals of promoting physical activity. Furthermore, although the public health discourses are presented in a way that suggests that young people will develop knowledge and skills to support their health, closer scrutiny reveals that they may be more associated with discourses of risk, promoting ‘healthy’ behaviours to avoid ‘ill health’. We conclude by suggesting that PE teachers need to develop a critical understanding of the health discourses within their PE curriculum. This will help them to navigate, interpret and enact curricula in an informed way, enabling them to challenge discourses that are deficit in nature, where pupils are taught how to be healthy, rather than having the freedom to learn about themselves and their health.

As a group of researchers representing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, we previously carried out a comparative analysis of the health discourses evident within the physical education (PE) curriculum of each UK nation (Gray et al., Citation2022b ). We uncovered complex ‘health’ landscapes, represented through different discourses of health across contexts and shifting discourses within contexts. The purpose of the present proof of concept study is to extend this cross-border work by exploring how UK PE teachers conceptualise health and wellbeing (HWB), and to identify the ways in which their conceptualisations align (or not) with their respective curricula. We found some alignment between the teachers’ understanding of HWB and their respective curricular documentation, which was highlighted in the similarities and differences across contexts. Furthermore, all of the PE teachers had some understanding of HWB as a holistic and broad concept. We argue that understanding the various conceptualisations of HWB within and across contexts can serve as a useful foundation for cross-border dialogue, which may support the development of PE teachers’ critical reading of curriculum and their capacity and authority to contribute to future curriculum developments.

Existing research has so far failed to provide opportunities for the stories of care-experienced young people to be heard, especially regarding their perspectives on sport and physical activity. As such, a key aim of this paper was to showcase the stories of three care-experienced individuals; stories that focus specifically on the role of sport and physical activity in their lives and highlight the complexities of being in care and the challenges they can encounter in this respect. In drawing on the creative analytic practice of creative non-fiction, and adopting the position of the storyteller, we seek to present three stories from individuals who each experienced care in their youth but have now left the care system. We argue that these stories can act as valuable pedagogical resources through which the reader can enter into the lived realities of care-experienced young people and better understand how they experience and manage challenging conditions and events. Moreover, in presenting the articulate reflections of these three care-leavers, they serve to offer a counter narrative to the dominant discourse of care-experienced young people as troublesome and uneducated, showcasing instead the nuanced lives they each have to navigate.

Internationally, there has been growing interest in the experiences of care experienced youth and their engagements with activities that can support positive development. Despite the acknowledged potential of sport/physical activity (PA) to act as a vehicle for positive development, there remain concerns about the piecemeal nature of sport/PA opportunities for care experienced youth at a local level and their capacity to access these. To date, relatively few studies have considered the role of sport/PA within the day-to-day lives of care experienced young people and, furthermore, these have often drawn more on the voices of adults than care experienced youth themselves. In response, the ‘Right to be Active’ (R2BA) project was developed to examine care experienced youth’s perspectives on/experiences of sport/PA. This paper seeks to provide a broad overview of the study and discusses key empirical findings. Adopting a predominantly qualitative, participatory approach, R2BA comprised four interconnected phases: (1) a rapid review of policy documents; (2) the distribution of adult and young people surveys; (3) focus group interviews with 63 care experienced youth; and (4) repeat focus groups with 40 care experienced youth. Informed by Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts and his perspectives regarding the multi-dimensional nature of social life, the analysis of data highlights the complex social landscapes that care experienced youth navigate on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, it demonstrates how the configuration of key factors (activities, places and people) can be influential in shaping care experienced youths’ attitudes towards, participation in and experiences of sport/PA within the broader field of the care context. It is argued that the study points to the need for a more holistic understanding of care experienced young people’s lives and for more thought to be given as to how different stakeholder groups can work in partnership to facilitate this population’s access to/engagements in sport/PA.