Literacy issues and HPE

Over the last thirty years, there has been a significant 'social turn' away from individualistic behaviour and cognition, towards a greater focus on social and cultural interaction (Gee, 2000). Gee points to the multiple movements within this social turn, significant among them are postmodernism, poststructuralism (see Fairclough, 2000; Fowler, 1997; Lather, 1995; Lyotard, 1984) and the New Literacies Studies, all of which are centred around the notion of discourses. Health and Physical Education (HPE) are not immune to this social turn, and are implicated by the competing discourses of personal health, public health, fitness, body image, skill and technique learning, games concept learning, scientific rationale and competition, to name but a few, which allegedly underpin the pedagogical work of HPE, and draw upon multiple modes of meaning. Consequently, educators have had to embrace the idea of HPE as part of a multiliteracies agenda – a term that has emerged from the New Literacy Studies (Gee, 2000). This chapter explores the ways in which a mulitliteracies framework can be used to frame the pedagogies of Health and physical Education.