Collaborative inquiry for change: enacting social justice in health and physical education

Background: Despite decades of scholarship urging physical educators to foreground principles of equity and social justice in their teaching, translating these ideals into everyday teaching remains a complex and uneven challenge. This study responds to the call for grounded, empirical accounts of socially just teaching practices in Health and Physical Education. Purpose: To explore how nine secondary school HPE teachers working in collaborative, practitioner inquiry model with two university-based researchers implemented, adapted, and sustained teaching practices for equity and social justice in real-world educational settings. The study was grounded in a belief that teachers’ professional knowledge, when supported through collaborative reflection and inquiry, offers a powerful resource for pedagogical transformation. Research design: This study employed a practitioner inquiry methodology. Participants were nine secondary Health and Physical Education teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. The study involved four phases across a school year that focussed on relationship building, exploring social justice, planning, implementing and evaluating practices. Multiple data sources included observations, post observation interviews, classroom artefacts, focus groups and digital diaries. A six step thematical analysis drew on (Gerdin, G., W. Smith, R. Philpot, K. Schenker, K. M. Moen, S. Linnér, K. Westlie, and L. Larsson. 2021. Social Justice Pedagogies in Health and Physical Education. Abingdon: Routledge) typology of nine pedagogies for social justice as an analytical tool. Findings: The three themes: (1) Teaching for inclusion, (2) Increasing student engagement through student voice, and (3) Drawing on knowledge from other cultures, reflect the foci of the practitioner partners and collectively represent attempts to foster engagement and more equitable outcomes for all students. Conclusion: The findings reaffirm the central role teachers play in creating equitable and meaningful learning environments. When supported by a community of inquiry, evidence, critical dialogue, and professional autonomy, teachers can enact pedagogies that are both contextually responsive and socially transformative. This study underscores the power of everyday pedagogical decisions to drive change and highlights the critical need to empower educators as agents of equity and innovation. As such, this study advances the field by providing empirically grounded insights into how Health and Physical Education teachers implement, adapt, and sustain pedagogies for social justice through collaborative practitioner inquiry.