External provision of the school curriculum: Local needs to global networks in Health and Physical Education

Ironically, at a time when teachers’ work, the curriculum and students’ performances are being more tightly monitored in most developed countries, the responsibility for the curriculum-in-practice is leaking outside the education system (Ball, 2007). Researchers on this project argued that Health and Physical Education (HPE) seems to be ripe for outsourcing practices (such as curriculum packages and visiting experts) given the ways that schools are positioned as sites for health promotion and that teachers are seeking the authority of expertise to fulfils content and assessment imperatives. This project is exploring the local, national and international health issue networks that produce and reproduce health work, including HPE curricula, in schools. Moreover we seek to understand the discourses that connect, sustain and proliferate the networks related to specific health issues that, in turn, seek to become significant stakeholders/agents in school health and wellbeing practices and curricula.