A Curriculum of Wellness

seeks to encourage a deeper discussion about teaching our children how to be healthy and live well. It makes a significant contribution to the field of education as it features influential curriculum concepts nuanced with action research principles in a unified, intimate, and deeply relational inquiry into physical education teacher practice.

Michelle Kilborn is an assistant professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She received her PhD from the University of Alberta and has received several awards for her work in curriculum studies and teacher education. Prior to her university career, Dr. Kilborn spent 12 years teaching physical and health education.

«In an era of increasing educational infatuation with technological advancements and sloganeering on the virtues of twenty-first-century learning competencies, curricular considerations of wellness can seem both quaint and new-age. However, through a delicate and innovative interweaving of currere, action research, and wisdom insights, Michelle demonstrates that being ‘well’ is central to wisdom-informed understandings of what it means to be a human being. If we understand colonial logics as perpetuating an extended process of denying relationships – and thus undermining the possibility of holistic wellness within the human being – then the most urgent work in the field of curriculum studies has to be the reparation of those relationships. This book exemplifies such work through the careful articulation of a curricular and pedagogical vision that is inspired by an embodied understanding of the healing power of holistic balance.» (Dwayne Donald, Associate Professor, University of Alberta, Canada) «Michelle Kilborn’s inspiring book builds on a rich and diverse range of reconceptualist curricular traditions and concepts to co-construct with her teacher-colleague, Kim, a curriculum for wellness that is rooted in the practice of teaching as a way of being, and in the interconnectnedness of body, spirit, mind, and heart. The book is essential reading for all physical educators who aspire to assist the young people they work with to live in wellness.» (David Kirk, Professor, Head of the School of Education, University of Strathclyde, Scotland)

«In an era of increasing educational infatuation with technological advancements and sloganeering on the virtues of twenty-first-century learning competencies, curricular considerations of wellness can seem both quaint and new-age. However, through a delicate and innovative interweaving of currere, action research, and wisdom insights, Michelle demonstrates that being ‘well’ is central to wisdom-informed understandings of what it means to be a human being. If we understand colonial logics as perpetuating an extended process of denying relationships – and thus undermining the possibility of holistic wellness within the human being – then the most urgent work in the field of curriculum studies has to be the reparation of those relationships. This book exemplifies such work through the careful articulation of a curricular and pedagogical vision that is inspired by an embodied understanding of the healing power of holistic balance.» (Dwayne Donald, Associate Professor, University of Alberta, Canada) «Michelle Kilborn’s inspiring book builds on a rich and diverse range of reconceptualist curricular traditions and concepts to co-construct with her teacher-colleague, Kim, a curriculum for wellness that is rooted in the practice of teaching as a way of being, and in the interconnectnedness of body, spirit, mind, and heart. The book is essential reading for all physical educators who aspire to assist the young people they work with to live in wellness.» (David Kirk, Professor, Head of the School of Education, University of Strathclyde, Scotland)

Contents: Setting the Stage for Wellness – Connecting Theoretical Perspectives to a Curriculum of Wellness – Locating Ourselves in Curriculum Inquiry – Wisdom-Guided Inquiry: A Mindful Journey – Teaching a Curriculum of Wellness in Physical Education – Pedagogical Moments Synthesized – A Curriculum of Wellness: (Re)turning to the Tree(s).