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This paper explores the use of collaboration theory and the consensus building framework to develop institutional strategic alliances at two North American postsecondary institutions. Collaboration between institutional and/or external partners offers rich opportunities to develop creative programming that provides students with opportunities for service learning situated in a well-planned curriculum. The collaboration development capitalizes on mutually beneficial outcomes for all partners and affords more informed decision making and impact than if partners were working individually. This paper highlights two successful partnerships and outlines the future direction of those collaborative alliances.

To address persistent health and physical activity issues, listening to the opinions and needs of a diverse population should be at the forefront of a social justice agenda. This article examines how a participant-centered photo exhibition, as the culmination of a two-year-long visual participatory research project, provided a site of public pedagogy for the audience to be acculturated around issues of ethnically diverse young people’s physical activity. Drawing from constructivist theory, I first present ethnically diverse young people as “experts of their own lives” and as active agents in their self-expression of their embodiments. I then demonstrate how young people’s visual narratives created alternative visions to media-driven body ideals, and to current schooling practices of body control and regulation. Last, I consider the benefits and limitations of organizing a photo exhibition as a pedagogical means to disseminate research findings to a larger audience, beyond the “academic monopoly,” for social change.

In this paper we argue that a version of situated learning theory, as one component of a broader constructivist theory of learning in physical education, can be integrated with other forms of social constructionist research to provide some new ways of thinking about a range of challenges currently facing physical educators, such as the alienation of many young people from physical education. The paper begins with a brief comment on some uses of the term “constructivism” in the physical activity pedagogy literature, then provides a more detailed outline of some of the key tenets of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of situated learning. We then go on to show how this theory of situated learning can be applied to thinking about the social construction of school physical education, using the example of sport education.

Davis and Sumara (2003) argue that differences between commonsense assumptions about learning and those upon which constructivism rests present a significant challenge for the fostering of constructivist approaches to teaching in schools. Indeed, as Rink (2001) suggests, initiating any change process for teaching method needs to involve some understanding of the theories supporting it. Although there has been considerable discussion about constructivism in the physical education literature over the past decade, there has been less attention paid to the assumptions about learning and knowledge that underpin it. This article makes a contribution toward redressing this oversight in the literature by examining the epistemology and assumptions about learning that constructivist theories of learning rest upon. Drawing on the work of Davis and Sumara (2003), I suggest that the term “complex” learning theories may offer a more useful description of the sometimes confusing range of constructivist approaches. I provide examples of, and suggestions for, the application of constructivism in practice and within which the body forms a prominent theme.