Original Articles
A Critical Contribution to the Construction of Citizenship Education in Physical Education: Proceeding from Gert Biestaʼs Critique of Citizenship Education
2023 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 111-126
Details
2023 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 111-126
The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibility of establishing citizenship education in Physical Education（PE）through the perspective of Biestaʼs criticism of citizenship education, and specifically from the viewpoint of political subjectification . Interest in citizenship education has been increasing in recent years, and its importance has also been pointed out in the study of PE. However, little study has been done about incorporating citizenship education into PE, with the only previous studies being Takahashi (2021) and Kurata and Tamaki (2021). Takahashi attempts to show the possibility of citizenship education in PE by arguing that the values that citizenship education aims for can be found in previous studies and practices of PE. But through the Biesta’s discussion, the problem of this study seems to lie in the fact that the citizenship education theory that Takahashi uses as a premise is problematic, as well as the fact that he considers ‘citizenship’ a concept that can be easily understood by PE scholars and practitioners. We can see his effort to make citizenship education comprehensible, especially for practitioners. On the other hand, in doing so, it has undermined the very opportunity for them to encounter their fellow citizens as “Others” . Therefore, this paper re-constructs citizenship education in PE through Biesta’s argument, which brings the horizon of questioning to the notion of “Otherness” itself, and attempts to reread the discussion of PE in these studies from this perspective. Some studies claim that “Other-ness” can be seen as “the impossible”. In these studies, we can find arguments that enable us to ask important questions in order to think about citizens as political subjects, that is, where, how, and who appears as a subject. Thus, this paper insists that these studies have the potential to establish a form of citizenship education in PE.
