Critical pedagogical strategies to disrupt weight bias in schools

Abstract

Despite the scientific uncertainties concerning diet, body composition and health, many teachers believe that the world is in the grips of an “obesity epidemic” and it is their duty to promote the virtues of physical activity and the problems of fat. Although many of these teachers are well intended, concern has been raised that the simplistic messages promoted in schools can act to position fat people as unhealthy and even, at times, as moral failures. In this chapter, we begin by providing the results from an examination of two elementary schools that illustrate how children are taught about fatness and fitness and how they subsequently make simplistic and problematic understandings about bodies and health. Given our concerns about weight bias and the body composition/health messages circulating in schools, we reveal strategies employed in the education of teachers at a tertiary institute that aim to disrupt mainstream understandings of the relationships between fatness and health. We do so with the intent to promote a more respectful and nuanced way of teaching about bodies, fitness, physical activity, health, and fatness within schools.