"It's Groundhog Day": Foucault's Governmentality and Crisis Discourses in Physical Education

Dominant discourses in physical education research center on subject-wide crisis. This is despite repeated calls to address enduring concerns about how physical education is taught. In short, the subject seems caught in Groundhog Day (defined by Oxford Dictionaries (n.d.) as "a situation in whi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inQuest (National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education) Vol. 70; no. 4; pp. 438 - 455
Main Authors Casey, Ashley, Larsson, Håkan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 02.10.2018
Subjects
Action Research
Authors
Correlation
crisis discourse
Dialogs (Language)
Educational Philosophy
Educational Research
Foucault
governmentality
Intervention
Knowledge Level
Physical Education
Physical education research
Power Structure
Samhällsvetenskap/Humaniora
Social Sciences/Humanities
Specialists
Teaching Methods
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Summary:Dominant discourses in physical education research center on subject-wide crisis. This is despite repeated calls to address enduring concerns about how physical education is taught. In short, the subject seems caught in Groundhog Day (defined by Oxford Dictionaries (n.d.) as "a situation in which a series of unwelcome or tedious events appear to be recurring in exactly the same way"). This article scrutinizes this position through Foucault's lens of governmentality, which focuses particularly on power/knowledge relations and their relationship to subjectivity. Through this lens, research functions as a shaper of contemporary understanding and becomes a means for intervention by "experts." The article is structured as a conversation between authors about dominant discourses in physical education research and issues of governmentality. It argues that research approaches such as action research are framed within other power/knowledge relations and may provide a way to wake up on a new day.
ISSN:0033-6297
1543-2750
1543-2750
DOI:10.1080/00336297.2018.1451347