This study aims to examine the factors influencing pre-service Physical Education (PE) teachers' perception of a specific constructivist approach — Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) in Hong Kong. By adopting a qualitative approach, 20 pre-service PE teachers were recruited for individual semi-structured interviews. Deductive data analysis was utilised to identify unique themes with broad aspects of influencing factors. Using Piaget's cognitive constructivism and Vygotsky's social constructivism as the theoretical frameworks, individual factors such as game knowledge, teacher beliefs, learning and teaching experience and social factors including government policy, teacher support and professional culture were identified as key influences in pre-service teachers' perception of TGfU. Furthermore, individual and social factors interplay with each other. In conclusion, cognitive and social constructivism was identified as a useful theoretical framework for illustrating and analysing the factors influencing pre-service teachers' perception of TGfU.
[Copyright of Sport, Education and Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2011.607954]

This paper explores the role of digital media and creativity in the processes of learning that occur in groups of urban skateboarders. In particular, it examines how the production and consumption of amateur videos contribute to both skaters' mastery of the techniques of the sport and their integration into the culture of the sport. The data come from an ethnographic study of skateboarders in Hong Kong, which included in-depth interviews, participant observation and the collection of texts and artifacts like magazines, blog entries and amateur skating videos. Skateboarders use video in a number of ways that significantly impact their learning and integration into their communities. They use it to analyze tricks and techniques, to document the stages of their learning and socialization into the group, to set community standards, to build a sense of belonging with their 'crews' and to imagine 'idealized futures' for themselves and their communities. Understanding the value and function of such 'semiotic mediation' in learning and socialization into sport cultures, I suggest, can contribute to helping physical educators design tasks that integrate training in physical skills with opportunities for students to make meaning around their experiences of sport and physical education.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2011.601139]

To understand the physical activity culture in the lives of Hong Kong Chinese children and their parents, 48 young people between the ages 9 and 16 and their parents, with different socio-economic backgrounds and geographical locations, were interviewed for this study. By applying Confucianism and postcolonialism, this study aimed to investigate the meaning of physical activity in the lives of Hong Kong children and their parents. The results showed that parents value physical activity as a factor which contributes to their children's well-being and provides balance to their life. There were differences though, in this attitude, for different age groups. Junior students (aged 9-12) expressed their interest in physical activities. However, older students (12 or above) in secondary school, think or are told that academic study is the most important aspect of their life and that physical activities are not a priority. When examining parents' and children's involvement in physical activity, the barriers to the parents' involvement in their children's physical activities included lack of time and a habitual sedentary lifestyle at home.
[Copyright of Sport, Education and Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2010.493313]

The purpose of this study was to evaluate, the effectiveness of an in-service training program and understand teachers' receptivity to curriculum change in physical education. A total of 183 primary school teachers were recruited as participants on a voluntary basis. They were asked to respond to a questionnaire about their receptivity to changes in the current physical education curriculum as well as their views on, the effectiveness of a teacher development program that was organized by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The results showed that the participant fell that in-service training was needed to equip them to implement a physical education program in line with the curriculum reform. The in-service training program was deemed to be practical and effective, bringing about good communication among school teachers, educational experts, and government curriculum officers. In terms of their receptivity to curriculum change, the participants generally had positive attitudes to the innovation and showed further support for the change after attending the program. The role of the principal and the need for school support for the reform are discussed in the concluding section.
[Copyright of Sport, Education and Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573320412331302467]

Dance education has not played a significant role in Hong Kong schools. Teacher education may be at a crossroads in determining its future directions in relation to dance as art rather than physical activity. Taking Marcel Mauss's characterizations of the techniques of the body as the ways in which, from society to society, people learn how to use their bodies, this paper looks back at the context in which forms of dance education were introduced into the physical education curriculum of Hong Kong schools and examines social, cultural and political constraints upon their directions and development in a colonial and post-colonial society. Viewing dance education as forms of socially mediated practices, we show how bodies that are subjected to formal and informal programmes of dance education can be both inscribed and inscribing. Developments in dance education inevitably involve statements about the body, attempts to capture it, impose disciplines upon it, or mitigate their force. To reflect upon Hong Kong's changing destiny is to ask how the history of colonialism's disciplining of the body can be shaken loose from the domination of categories and ideas it produced and incorporated into the educational system, and what potency might dance education practices have in the future for troubling and negotiating meanings around identity and "Chinese-ness".
[Copyright of Sport, Education and Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573320601081575 ]