The Idea of the Idea of Physical Education: Between essentialism and relativism in studying the social construction of physical education

Cultural and historical judgement cannot be left to ‘the past’ alone, since the particular picture of the past which is invoked is the one selected by these very judgements.Chanan and Gilchrist, 1974, p. 62 In a book which will be published by Routledge in July, I make extensive use of the notion of ‘the idea of the idea’ of physical education to consider the significance of the past and the present for physical education futures (Kirk, 2009). For the sake of brevity, I shortened this concept...