The draftAustralian Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2012c) takes a strengths-based approach that emphasizes questions such as ‘What keeps me healthy and active?’ rather than ‘What risks, diseases and behaviours should I learn to avoid?’. This paper explores a salutogenic approach to the strengthsbased orientation that has been identified as one of the five key propositions in the new Australian HPE curriculum. A salutogenic approach to a health literacy unit rovides some initial insight into the possibilities and challenges posed by the implementation of a strengths-based orientation to HPE. Questions of relative emphases and potential weaknesses are subsequently raised as means of identifying the influence of curriculum interpretation, design and pedagogical practice in securing the implementation of a strengths-based oriented Australian HPE.
The maintenance and reproduction of prevailing hegemonic norms have been well explored in physical education teacher education (PETE). A related problem has been the exclusion of Indigenous knowledges around health and physical education (HPE) in students’ experiences of HPE and PETE. The danger is that certain ways of being and becoming a PE teacher, other than the sporty, fit, healthy (and white) teacher, are excluded, positioning other preservice teachers’ experiences, knowledges and ways to teach as deficient. In this paper, we discuss findings from an investigation (Australian Office for Learning and Teaching CG10-1718) into the HPE practicum experiences of Indigenous Australian preservice teachers, illustrating the resources they bring to Australian HPE and PETE through the lens of John’s Dewey’s notion of growth and Todd’s [(2014). Between body and spirit: The liminality of pedagogical relationships. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48(2), 231–245] ideas of liminality of pedagogical relations. This enables us to discuss Indigenous preservice teachers’ capacity in disrupting norms in HPE and fostering the liminality of the pedagogical relations in PETE.