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While there have been frequent calls for reform in secondary physical education, little research has focused on the implementation and assessment of curriculum from the perspective of students. Drawing upon the theoretical frame of student resistance, the purpose of this study was to describe how high school students demonstrated support for and resistance to implementation of a 20- day curricular initiative termed a Cultural Studies unit. This approach consists of an integrated practical and theoretical study of sport and physical activity. Data were collected through student focus group interviews, student journals, nonparticipant observations, and informal conversations. Students responded favorably to the principles of Sport Education and the opportunities to critique issues of social justice. Such content was considered appropriate for physical education. Resistance to some aspects of the unit was both overt and covert. Meticulous and careful planning of content and choice of pedagogy to facilitate delivery is crucial to positioning a Cultural Studies unit in a high school program.

The development of feelings of identity, the sense of belonging to a team, and the growth of social skills are experiences that sport, if properly conducted, is well placed to offer (Siedentop, 1994). Evidence suggests that some characteristics of traditional, multiactivity forms of physical education work against realizing these goals (Locke, 1992). Siedentop’s Sport Education (SE) model is one attempt to overcome this shortcoming by recasting units as seasons and maintaining persisting groups as teams throughout the season. Extended units intended to foster team affiliation while promoting affective and social development are common objectives in physical education. We report on a 16-week SE unit that includes over 70 Year-5 students (9- to 10-year-olds) from one UK school. Our findings show that the opportunity to become affiliated with a team was an attractive feature of the pupils’ physical education experience and that, under the framework of SE, there was an obvious investment made by the Year-5 Forest Gate students in relation to their sense of identity and involvement as members of a persisting group.

Purposes: (a) To describe how more experienced and expert teachers interpreted and delivered sport education (SE) during their careers and (b) to discover and describe factors within their occupational socialization that sustained the teachers’ enthusiasm for and ability to deliver SE. Method: Participants were nine teachers. Primary data sources were formal interviews. Secondary supporting sources were documents and film. They were analyzed by employing standard interpretive methods. Credibility and trustworthiness were established through a search for discrepant and negative cases and member checking. Findings: At different times in their careers, the teachers delivered SE in one of four ways: watered down, through a cafeteria approach, the full version, and the full+ version. A number of factors from their acculturation, professional socialization, and organizational socialization enabled the teachers to deliver the full+ version or led to them delivering other versions of the model. Conclusions: The findings allow us to make practical suggestions for preservice and inservice teacher education that may help university faculty facilitate the teaching of SE.