Rate My Professor Alison Wrench

Dr Alison Wrench is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education in the College of Education, Behavioural and Social Sciences at Adelaide University, where she serves as the Program Director for the Doctor of Education Program. She holds a PhD from the University of South Australia, completed between 2005 and 2011. With over two decades of experience as a health and physical education teacher in schools, Dr Wrench advocates for pedagogical practices that interweave social, emotional, intellectual, and physical dimensions. Her research focuses on critical and relational pedagogies, teachers' work, and the inclusion and justice effects of schooling. She is a full member of the Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion and participates actively in the Pedagogies for Justice group within Research in Education Inclusion. Additionally, she contributes to a network of Australian and UK researchers examining schooling in complex and vulnerable communities.

Dr Wrench's scholarly work centers on socially-critical and culturally responsive pedagogies in health and physical education, practitioner inquiry for in-service and pre-service teachers, and student-led explorations of local health and physical activity concerns. Her emerging research examines pedagogical engagements with media portrayals of female athletes and the use of young people's cultural resources to advance sport, physical activity, and health. She has been awarded the Hawke Research Fellowship in 2017 and the Australian Association for Research in Education Strategic Initiatives Grant in 2016 for the project 'Researching and resisting educational inequality: Reframing policy and practice'. Notable publications include 'Publicness of education: framing possibilities for decolonising practices in Health and Physical Education' (2024, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education), 'Decolonising possibilities: health and physical education in initial teacher education' (2023), 'Navigating culturally responsive pedagogy through an Indigenous games unit' (2021, Sport, Education and Society), 'Framing citizenship: from assumptions to possibilities in health and physical education' (2019), and 'Constructions of Australia's sportswomen: race, whiteness and contemporary media' (2018). Dr Wrench has authored 32 peer-reviewed journal articles and five book chapters, advancing sociological insights into sport, physical activity, health, and corporeal representations.