Experts, expertise and health and physical education teaching: A scoping review of conceptualisations

Abstract

Concerns about the supply of, and demand for, experts and expertise are prominent in research on outsourcing in health and physical education (HPE), and the state of the subject more broadly. Yet, precisely what is meant by ‘expert’ and ‘expertise’ in this scholarship is not always clear or uncontested. In this research, we used a scoping review framework to examine how scholarly research has conceptualised experts and expertise in the context of HPE teaching. We enhanced this framework by analysing the ways these conceptualisations have, and have not, attended to the relationality, materiality and performativity of either concept. Following searching and screening processes, 72 articles were included in the review. Eighteen articles provided definitions or detailed descriptions of what an expert or expertise was taken to be in the context of HPE teaching, four of which were commonly cited across the sample. Three ontologies of experts and/or expertise were evident within these definitions/descriptions: psychological, social and network. These ontologies and the conceptualisations based upon them exhibited varying sensitivity to relationality, materiality and performativity. To better register the complexities of HPE teaching in contemporary contexts, we encourage researchers to become more attuned to these dimensions of experts and expertise, and advocate a material-semiotic approach to doing so.