Social pedagogy and social justice promotion in and through physical education

In this chapter, we focus on using social pedagogy to position youth's needs at the centre-stage of Physical Education and sport programming and, subsequently, moving beyond normative pedagogical approaches. This will be achieved by presenting the concept of social justice life skills and its potential connections to social pedagogy. To help youth develop social justice life skills, we present strategies for Physical Education teachers, parents and Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) facilitators. By doing so, we advance the proposal of Camiré et al. (2022), which advocates for teaching youth life skills in ways beyond normative pedagogical approaches. Thus, a transformative teaching approach that involves a social justice life skill focus may include strategies with the explicit objective of ensuring inclusion, challenging social inequities, as well as providing opportunities for all to have a choice and to express their voices through antiracism practices, LGBTQ+ allyship, healthy masculinity and mental health literacy. Fostering social justice life skills requires Physical Education teachers and PETE facilitators to pose broader questions than ""What should I teach and how?"" As such, multiple strategies are presented that can yield meaningful insights across the physical education and youth sport arenas.