Browsing by Author "Kitching, Ansie"

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    Despite good intentions: The elusiveness of social justice in health and physical education curricula across different contexts
    (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2024) Gerdin, Göran; Kitching, Ansie; Lundin, Katarina
    This paper draws on critical discourse analysis to examine how health and physical education (HPE) curricula from Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand may influence possibilities for the enactment of social justice in schools. The findings highlight the presence of social justice intentions across the five curricula as related to embodied movement experiences, social cohesion, and activism. That said, the findings simultaneously suggest that the language used to orient teaching towards social justice objectives is often elusive. In this paper, we contend that despite the presence of social justice intentions in these five HPE curricula, the articulation and function of the language within the curriculum documents do not necessarily support the enactment of this in practice. To conclude, we therefore suggest that more work is needed to ensure that curricula and other supporting artefacts and resources can better support both teachers’ practice and students’ learning in raising awareness of, and addressing, social justice outcomes in HPE.
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    Developing a strategy to support parents of children who experienced trauma in primary school contexts in the Eastern Cape
    (University of the Western Cape, 2022) Nomhle, Mlonyeni; Kitching, Ansie
    Trauma is identified as “the state of severe fright or shock that a person experiences when confronted with a sudden, unexpected, potentially life-threatening event over which the person does not have control and to which the persons are unable to respond effectively” (Dye, 2015, p.158). In South Africa, many children are exposed to traumatic events. Chil-dren therefore need support to deal with trauma. Past studies have shown that traumatised children in some contexts might get support from psychologists, psychiatrists and other health professional specialists. In other contexts, the child might only have the support of a parent. In view of the fact that schools are well positioned to refer children who have expe-rienced trauma, the role of schools in assisting parents to support their children seems im-perative.