Girls, Gender and Physical Education

An Activist Approach

Kimberly L. Oliver, David Kirk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317749912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

In this powerfully argued and progressive study, Kimberly Oliver and David Kirk call for a radical reconstruction of the teaching of physical education for girls. Despite forty years of theorization and practical intervention, girls are still disengaging from physical education, dropping out of physical activity, and suffering negative consequences in terms of their health and well-being as a result. This book challenges the conventional narrative that girls are somehow to blame for this disengagement, and instead identifies important new ways of working with girls, developing a new pedagogical model for 'girl-friendly' physical education.

The book locates our understanding of the experiences of girls in physical education in the broader context of young people's multifaceted engagements with popular physical culture. Adopting an activist perspective, it outlines a programme of action informed by principled pragmatism and based on four critical elements: student-centred pedagogy; critical study of embodiment; inquiry-based physical education centred-in-action, and listening and responding to girls over time. It explores the implications of this new thinking for teaching, research, PETE and policy, and outlines a future agenda for work in this area.

Offering a profound theoretical critique of contemporary research and practice, as well as a new programme of action, Girls, Gender and Physical Education is essential reading for all researchers, advanced students and practitioners with an interest in the issues of gender, equity and inclusion in physical education.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315796239-1

An activist approach

“The boys told me I couldn’t play with them because I was a girl and I was Black… Some boys don’t want the girls to play because they are girls and I think that’s a real problem because we should all be able to do what we want to do. We should all be able to play.” Maggie Mae, age 10

“The boys also say that we are dumb, stupid and wouldn’t last five seconds [in sports] … and that you’re a woman and you need to stay in your place.” Maggie Mae, age 10

“We can bring all the fifth-grade girls in and interview them and ask them how they feel when the boys say different things to them. I believe it will help, because it’s not very fair for us girls and it doesn’t feel very nice at all, because I know for myself that I do not appreciate it at all, and it’s just a whole lot of chaos going around every day and you see different things happen to girls.” Maggie Mae, age 10

Oliver and Hamzeh, 2010, p. 43–44

We begin with the words of a 10-year-old African American girl who has articulated the “problem” as she sees it with girls playing, and has simultaneously outlined “what should be done” to address this problem. We have chosen to start here for two reasons: first, Maggie Mae shows us clearly how forms of race and gender inequity operate in her particular school to prevent girls from being physically active; second, and more important than merely showing the inequity, she shows us that identifying the problem is insufficient. We must do something, act in some way, to change this “problem” so that girls at this school can engage in physical activity without abuse from boys. In her 10-year-old fashion, she asked us as researchers to help her and other girls change their school so that all girls could play. Herein lies the power of activist research. When we work in collaboration and in action with participants we don’t just, as Enright and O’Sullivan (2012) claim, produce different knowledge, we also produce knowledge differently. The difference is in the action: action directed towards challenging and changing barriers, identified by our participants, so that they might have better opportunities to play and to be active.

This book is intended to be a basis for action. In it, we seek to bring together, in one accessible volume, lines of research and scholarly advocacy in education and physical education stretching back to the 1980s, on work with girls, and with feminist and critical pedagogies. Although the book is intended to provide an accessible account of this research and advocacy, we see it not as any kind of definitive statement of an activist approach to physical education, but on the contrary, as a starting point for further research-based pedagogical action.

We start our introduction by briefly outlining the key aspects of activist research that have informed the body of physical education scholarship from which this book draws. First, activist scholars work from the belief that knowledge is produced in collaboration and in action. Second, they work from the belief that merely documenting “what is” is no longer sufficient with respect to understanding how to better engage girls in physical activity and physical education. As such, they move towards an intentional focus on studying “what might be” by collaborating with their participants to find spaces for change. Finally, activist scholars work from the belief that social transformation starts at the micro level in localized contexts. It is through this type of understanding that we can start to see where and how change is possible.

A first key aspect of activist research is that it is an “epistemology that assumes knowledge is rooted in social relations and most powerful when produced collaboratively through action” (Fine et al., 2001, p. 173). Activist scholars start from the belief that those with whom they work carry particular forms of knowledge, critique, and vision that is not obvious or automatically accessible to outsiders such as researchers (Fine et al., 2004). The activist researchers whose work informs the basis of this book have all worked from the position that girls themselves have insights into what does and does not work for them with respect to physical activity enjoyment and engagement. Activists work from the belief that valid knowledge is produced only in action: action with, not on or for, but action with participants. This is what sets activist work apart from traditional interventions that are designed and implemented by researchers without any collaboration with those who are the targets of such interventions (for example, McKenzie et al., 2004). This work is also set apart from those who do research “on” girls in order to “better understand” their perceptions (for example, Azzarito and Katzew, 2010; Azzarito and Solmon, 2009).

A second key aspect of activist research is the belief that merely documenting “what is” is no longer sufficient with respect to understanding how to better engage girls in physical activity and physical education. Much of the activist research in physical education draws heavily on feminist and critical pedagogies with a strong commitment towards social justice and social transformation (Fine, 1994; Freire, 1974; Giroux, 1997; hooks, 1995). Giroux (1997) writes:

A critical pedagogy has to begin with a dialectical celebration of the languages of critique and possibility—an approach which finds its noblest expression in a discourse integrating critical analysis with social transformation … [around] problems rooted in the concrete experiences of everyday life (p. 132).

Merging the language of critique and possibility, activists work from the perspective that understanding “what is”, although necessary, is not sufficient and thus they are intentional in their collaboration with girls towards creating that “which might be”. Part of moving from “what is” to “what might be” requires a shift in how we work with our participants. “By making girls’ everyday experiences central to the research we are able to see the circulating discourses that shape their subjectivities, search for places to explore their agency, and work collaboratively with them to practice change” (Oliver, Hamzeh and McCaughtry, 2009 p. 93).

Finally, activists work from the belief that social transformation starts at the micro level in localized contexts. It is through this type of understanding that we can start to see where and how change is possible and as such we begin to write in ways that reflect what Weis and Fine (2004) note as critical to activist research:

Our commitment to revealing sites for possibility derives not only from a theoretical desire to re-view “what is” and “what could be,” but also from an ethical belief that critical researchers have an obligation not simply to dislodge the dominant discourse, but to help readers and audiences imagine where the spaces for resistance, agency, and possibility lie.

Weis and Fine, 2004, p. xxi

Part of what the collective body of activist research in physical education illuminates is particular ways of working with girls that do seem to facilitate their interest, learning, enjoyment and engagement in physical education and physical activity. It is on this knowledge that our book focuses its attention.

The task for activist pedagogy: valuing the physically active life

Activists start at the local level. This is not only vitally important to the success of their work, but it is also possible to share an overarching goal for physical education with other activists working in other locales. This goal has to have a clear focus, it needs to reflect the unique contribution physical education makes in the school curriculum, and it needs to have the potential to make a difference for the better that everyone can embrace. This goal for physical education is for all young people to learn to value the physically active life. We believe this is the task for activist pedagogues in physical education.

Physical educators in many countries have a long history of commitment to the idea that the main purpose of school physical education is to facilitate the lifelong participation of young people in physical activity, typically in the form of sport, exercise or active leisure, dance, meditative and martial arts and outdoor adventure activities. Central to this purpose is the transfer of learning, from the school to life beyond the school, contemporaneously and into adulthood. This aspiration has often informed the standard “broad and balanced” programme of individual and team games, aquatics, gymnastics, dance, health-related exercise and adventure activities that is common to many countries across the world (Puhse and Gerber, 2005).

If we are to trust the many surveys of adult physical activity, it is an aspiration that physical education has rarely managed to achieve (Kirk, 2010). With some exceptions, for example, in the Scandinavian countries, few adults who do engage in regular and lifelong physical activity do so despite, rather than because of, their school physical education experiences (for example, Flintoff and Scraton, 2001). Fewer still continue to participate in the games and sports that dominated their school programmes.

Despite our poor track record in realizing this common hope for physical education, we want to argue along with Siedentop (1996) that valuing the physically active life should be a main purpose of school physical education. If we could improve on the situation that currently exists, in small increments, this would be a truly radical aspiration that could provide significant benefits to individuals and society. Siedentop explains this notion of valuing the physically active life as follows:

Valuing physical activity is most clearly revealed not in what we say or write about it, but in the decisions we make to arrange a daily or weekly schedule so that activity participation is possible even though there are other important or attractive alternatives. Although participation may be the key component in valuing physical activity, we must attend to a second component of valuing: willingness to participate in the sport, fitness, and leisure activity cultures in ways that are literate and critical.

By literate, I mean that persons are knowledgeable and activist cyclists, volleyball players, hikers, and the like. People should be knowledgeable about sport, fitness, and leisure, and be willing to use that knowledge as activist participants in helping to preserve, protect, and improve the practice of their activity.

By critical, I mean that persons should understand the structural inequities in their local, regional, and national activity cultures that may limit access to activity based on irrelevant attributes such as race, gender, age, handicapping conditions, or socioeconomic status. Individuals should value fair access to participation so much that they are willing to work at local, regional, and national levels to make that activity more available to more people.

Siedentop, 1996, p. 266

This definition focuses on valuing, a verb that implies something deeper, more committed and longer lasting that mere knowing or doing. Valuing the physically active life, according to Siedentop, is dispositional. Part of what it means to value the physically active life is to habitually and routinely make time to be active, even in the face of attractive alternatives, and his notions of literacy and criticality are also important. Literacy points up the fact that there are things to know as part of the act of valuing. Moreover, criticality suggests valuing is not an individualistic act, focused solely on the self, but recognizes social and physical cultural conditions, locally and more universally, and the need for a collective understanding of barriers and opportunities to be active.

As physical educators, we believe that a major aspiration for working with girls is that they develop a disposition to be physically active on a regular, sustained and sustainable basis. Without an experiential base in physical activity, we can have only a limited impact on girls’ understanding of the barriers they face to valuing the physically active life. This physical activity must be purposeful and it must be meaningful to girls in the moments of their engagement or else learning to value the physically active life is less likely. The experience of purposeful physical activity also provides an essential basis for cultural critique, through which girls can learn to name, critique, negotiate and overcome barriers to their physical activity engagement or enjoyment. It is through this process that they can come to move beyond what is and to embrace what might be.

Pragmatism and the politics of possibility

In assisting girls to see what might be as a matter of concern in their everyday lives, activist scholars work within a politics of possibility that is at root a pragmatic process. Rorty (1999) has described humanity’s pursuit of moral progress not as a mega, once-and-forever event, but “more like sewing together a very large, elaborate, polychrome quilt”, which involves using “a thousand little stitches” (p. 86–87). Progress with aspects o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Front Other
• Seriespage
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• DEdication Page
• Table Of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The same old story: the reproduction and recycling of a dominant narrative in research on physical education for girls
• 3 Student-centred pedagogy
• 4 Pedagogies of embodiment
• 5 Inquiry-based education centred in action
• 6 Listening and responding over time
• 7 Possibilities for research and physical education from an activist perspective
• Index