Boys, Bodies, and Physical Education

Problematizing Identity, Schooling, and Power Relations through a Pleasure Lens

Göran Gerdin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317232407
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Using visual ethnography, this book explores the many forms of pleasures that boys derive in and through the spaces and their bodies in physical education. Employing the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Gerdin examines how pleasure is connected to identity, schooling, and power relations, and demonstrates how discourses of sport, fitness, health and masculinity work together to produce a variety of pleasurable experiences. At the same time, the book provides a critique of such pleasurable experiences within physical education by illustrating how these pleasures can still, for some boys, quickly turn into displeasures and can be associated with exclusion, humiliation, bullying and homophobia.

Boys, Bodies, and Physical Education argues that pleasure can both be seen as an educational and productive practice in physical education but also a constraint that both engenders and privileges some boys over others as well as (re)producing narrow and limited conceptions of masculinity and pleasures for all boys. This book works to problematize these pleasures and their articulations with gender, bodies, and spaces.

Part I
Background

1 Boys Will Be Boys?

I walk across the sports fields, which I must have done over a hundred times by now. The fields are still muddy from all the winter rain. The mud keeps splashing up on my bag, and my shoes make a funny squeaking sound when walking through the mud. There is a sign saying ‘Fields closed’, but some of the boys are still out playing a game of touch rugby during the break. In the distance, I see the top rugby field, which is being prepared for the next First XV rugby game on the weekend. I approach one of the school gyms. The PE class I am following today has inside PE on the schedule. Boys start pouring in from all directions. There comes the teacher, Mr Whyte. “Oh, what a day. Just heard that Tyler (one of the Year 10 students) has been in a fight and is going to get suspended. If he could only stay out of trouble for another couple of months, he will have finished school and can go out and try and find a job. But doesn’t look very likely now does it? Boys will be boys!” The boys keep pouring into the gym, and a group of them say to me, “Good morning, sir, we will make you proud today”. The gym we are in is very basic, four walls and a roof, and is getting pretty run down and old. You can hear some birds flying in and out of the roof, and some birds’ nests are scattered across the sides of the roof. The colours inside the gym are grey and dull, except for the lines on the floor, which have been painted recently. The boys are now getting changed into their PE gear. Once all the boys are ready, they all get into this warm-up/fitness regime that lasts for about 10–15 minutes. The boys then get into teams as picked by two team captains and start playing a game of ‘dodgeball’. As the game goes on, the screams and the cheering grow louder and louder, to the point where it is eventually difficult to make out any individual words or comments. The game continues for the rest of the lesson. At the end of the lesson, the boys get changed back into their school uniforms, and the air in the gym is by now filled with sweat and odour. Just as the combination of this with the musky and mouldy smell of the worn-down gym starts getting unbearable, the first boy opens the gym door and walks outside, bringing some welcomed fresh air into the gym again.

Logbook entry 21/08/2010

The excerpt above comes from my personal logbook written while conducting a visual ethnography of PE at an all-boys¹ school I have chosen to call Kea College². This chapter provides the reader with the necessary background information to put the study reported on in this book in context. In particular, it addresses the why question; that is, why do we need to study boys, bodies and PE, both in relation to existing literature and my own interest in this topic?

My research focuses on the processes by which boys³ come to understand gendered aspects of their identities. I am particularly interested in examining the power/knowledge relations that operate alongside binary descriptors, such as boy/girl and masculine/feminine, which in turn enable or limit the possibilities of gendered identities. My interest is specifically related to how the boys’ (i.e., the subjects of this study) performances of gender in PE enable or limit them to be physically active and how they perform gendered identities in and through PE; that is, their physically educated identities.

My ongoing goal is to encourage more teachers to recognise boys’ diverse ways of performing gender and to further challenge the image of boys as a homogeneous group, aligned with stereotypical perceptions of activities and behaviours of which they are capable and in which they should be engaging. However, as pointed out by Richard Pringle (2010), that is not to say that the role of PE is to “create universal happiness [or] solve significant social issues” (p. 130) but that we, as physical educators, need to recognise the workings of gendered power relations so that more students experience movement and being physically active as something meaningful, enjoyable and pleasurable. Indeed, one of the primary aims throughout this research project was to try to gain some understanding of the ways that boys who participate in PE derive pleasures in and through their performances of gender.

As a PE teacher, I recognise the ever-increasing importance of health and physical activity as a core of well-being in our society. I am committed to enabling all people, regardless of age, gender, class or ethnicity, to experience the excitement of participating in a range of health and movement related contexts. By providing opportunities for young people to learn in, through and about movement, I believe that PE is uniquely located to foster a population of active and critical consumers of physical culture in our society (Macdonald & Tinning, 2003). Examining the processes through which boys come to understand themselves as ‘physically educated’ may give us the tools to intervene and construct a PE culture in which young people are less constrained by gender stereotypes and help them in their pursuit of pleasurable movement experiences.

Although generalisations cannot be made based on this study, it can still lead to a better understanding of boys, gender, pleasure and the workings of discourse and power/knowledge relations in my research setting, which may have important pedagogical implications for the teaching practices of PE that apply beyond this context. By drawing on Guba and Lincolns’ (2005) notion of ‘reader resonance’, my book aims to ‘persuade’ the reader that although the findings presented are based on a particular time and place, they are important and worth paying attention to. This increased awareness may encourage physical educators across the globe to produce new ideas about how to (re)assure that (more) boys (and girls) experience PE as something both enjoyable and meaningful.

Certainly, some of the findings from my study presented in this book rehearse earlier studies, but I also believe that my visual and pleasure lens provides different insights into issues about gendered identities and bodies in PE. For instance, the use of participatory visual research methods enabled the boys to ‘speak for themselves’ and, thus, provided a more intimate representation of the boys’ contextually embedded everyday experiences compared to previous studies. By engaging the boys in both the representation and interpretation of the visual material, I attempted to encourage meaning-making grounded in the boys’ own specific context. My book will contribute to the existing body of literature through findings that are very much located in boys’ lived experiences of PE and the meanings they make of it. When it comes to pleasure, for example, I highlight how dominant understandings of the social and peer group status attained by sporty boys, along with the added fitness/health benefits, represented experiences/outcomes that were desirable for many boys in my study. The fact that some boys perform dominant forms of masculinity in PE can in this way be related to their desire of (re)asserting privileged masculine identities, which involves having power or superiority over other boys who are not able or willing to live up to these masculine ideals. This exercise and experience of power can thus be seen as both productive and pleasurable. The Butlerian and Foucauldian perspective used in my book add to our understanding of how boys’ pleasures constitute and are constituted by their performances of gender at the intersection of bodies and spaces. The pleasure and visual lens adds a different perspective and new insights to be gained.

Furthermore, based on the findings presented in this book, I will argue that it might be helpful to (re)conceptualise boys’ performances of gender in PE by interpreting discursive practices related to fitness, health and sport not only as constrained and disciplined but also as engendering boys’ agency/freedom and pleasure. My book adds to existing knowledge by demonstrating how both conforming to and disrupting discourses of PE can be both productive and pleasurable. I will also suggest that less pleasure (or even lack of pleasure) can be productive both in terms of learning outcomes and in the construction of alternative/more diverse masculinities in PE. In this sense, the enabling and restricting of certain (sporting) pleasures in boys’ PE can be seen as a productive educational practice.

In my research, I take the position that PE as a subject area is a site of educational practice that constitutes, and is constituted by, multiple and competing discourses, including discourses of gender. That is, in PE, boys (and girls) can be seen to be under pressure to perform in particular gendered ways (Butler, 1990) as shaped by discourses (Foucault, 1972). As alluded to in the title of this chapter, is it that boys will not be boys unless they are made to be by their surrounding discourses and practices? Thus, in examining boys’ performances of gender, it is also imperative to go beyond the interpersonal level to a more comprehensive theoretical framework that can be used to explore the effects of, and responses to, the institutionalisation of gender. For this purpose, I have particularly found Michel Foucault’s theorising of the workings of discourse a useful way of analysing how historically and culturally located systems of power/knowledge relations construct subjects and their worlds. In my research, I employ Foucault’s (1978, 1985, 1988, 1995, 2000) thinking around the workings of discourse and relations of power to both examine and challenge our understanding of gendered performances and pleasures in PE. I will return to discussing this theoretical lens later in the next chapter. First, I want to address the why question; that is, why do we need to study boys, gender, pleasures and PE?

Why Study Boys, Gender, Pleasures and Physical Education?

This research was generated by my own interest in boys’ PE based on both personal and teaching experiences of the subject. As a student and more recently a teacher and teacher educator of PE, I have always been interested in why some boys seem to be more engaged in and to better enjoy their PE classes than others. For example, I have observed how one group of boys (in particular those often labelled as ‘non-sporty’) often show little or no engagement/enjoyment and at times even resistance/resentment towards the subject. In contrast, the majority of boys are seemingly both engaged in and enjoying their PE classes. In the twenty-first century, concerns about young people’s diminishing physical activity levels and lifelong physical activity habits and health (e.g., Engström, 2008; Green, 2004; MacNamara et al., 2011) are becoming more prevalent and raise important questions for professionals working in PE and sport. Lack of, or limited participation in, PE and sporting activities at a young age may have consequences for boys’ and girls’ levels of physical activity across their lifespan (Kirk, 2002). However, debates about physical activity and health also raise important gender issues. Indeed, the normalisation of gender, which simultaneously includes and excludes performances of gender by privileging certain performances over others, continues to be a dominant process in PE (Gutierrez & García-López, 2012; Hay & MacDonald, 2010; Larsson, Fagrell, & Redelius, 2009), which is why it deserves further focused theoretical attention.

At every level, education is fundamentally concerned with the formation of human subjects. Central to the enterprise of PE, then, must be a concern with its ethical dimension; that is, the question of what kind of people we want our students to become and how our practices are contributing to this formation. In New Zealand (along with other countries such as Australia and Sweden), PE teachers are under obligations as stated by the curriculum documents to teach from a socially critical perspective (MacDonald & Kirk, 1999). Despite clear messages from current PE curricula about the importance of adopting a socially critical perspective, dominant discourses of gender relating to physical activity, bodies and health are being (re)produced both within PETE programmes (e.g., Dowling, 2008) and the school subject itself (e.g., Larsson et al., 2009). These gendered discourses, for instance, include: the prevalence of (hyper)masculinised sports in PE (Kirk, 2010); notions of archetypal male bodies (Drummond, 2003); and the impact of the obesity epidemic on what are considered healthy or health hazardous masculinities and masculine bodies (Gard & Wright, 2005). These ‘traditional’ forms of PE, constituted by dominant discourses of gender, can also be seen to (re)produce existing unequal (gendered) power relations.

The privileging of certain performances of gender as related to physical activity, bodies and health in PE might lead to the alienation and exclusion of those students who are not able, or not willing, to adhere to these notions. In contrast to early research on gender and PE, which mainly highlighted girls’ alienation and exclusion in PE (e.g., Bain, 1985; Ennis, 1999; Griffin, 1984, 1985, 1993; Hastie, 1998; Nilges, 1998; Satina, Solmon, Cothran, Loftus, & Stockin-Davidson, 1998), research over the last two to three decades has demonstrated that more boys than is commonly supposed experience PE negatively (Kirk, 2003; Pringle, 2007). These negative experiences, for instance, involve: the competitive, aggressive and sometimes violent nature of boys’ PE (Hickey, 2008; Parker, 1996a, 1996b) and feeling embarrassed about having their bodies on display before/during/after class (Atkinson & Kehler, 2010; Drummond, 2003). Although many boys experience this, PE is also commonly quoted as a ‘fun’ or even the ‘best’ school subject (Pringle, 2010). In my view, this calls for further research that focuses on the normalisation of gender in boys’ PE and how boys’ performances of gender enable and limit boys’ engagement and enjoyment of this subject.

Moreover, and partly related to the works of Raewyn Connell, Michael Kehler and others, my book will engage in discussions about ongoing concerns about boys’ so-called ‘failure’ in education and some boys’ turning away from physical education. In current debate, shaped by the obesity epidemic discourse and concerns about young people’s lifelong physical activity habits, many scholars and people from the public seem to tap into a moral panic about some boys’ failure in education and lack of participation in and enjoyment of physical education while simultaneously not acknowledging how the spaces of schooling and PE continue to act as significant sites for endorsing, confirming and enhancing dominant forms of masculinity for boys. So while my book focuses on the pleasures of participation in physical education, it is also concerned with understanding why some boys are not actually participating in and finding enjoyment from PE. For instance, are these boys’ displeasures of PE related to the occurrence of bullying in the locker room or fear/anxieties about their bodies?

In relation to Connell’s (e.g., Connell, 2005), Kehler’s (e.g., Kehler & Atkinson, 2010) and others’ (e.g., Martino, 1999, 2000; Martino & Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2003; O’Donoghue, 2007; Rawlings & Russell, 2012; Renold, 1997, 2004; Ringrose & Renold, 2010) studies on masculinity and bullying, my book will also address the issue of gendered bullying. However, the way bullying is often framed as consisting of a ‘bully’ and a ‘victim’—each with specific attributes and performances—simplifies and reduces the complexity of such practices rather than attempting to deconstruct the gender/sexuality regulation framework involved (Rawlings & Russell, 2012). Indeed, bullying research and policy has been largely ‘gender blind’ (Ringrose & Renold, 2010), failing to note the socio-cultural context of bullying and ways in which exclusion and violence are often rooted in reinforcing ‘rules’ for heteronormative gender (Payne & Smith, 2013).

In this sense, my book importantly addresses the whole question of pleasure and ongoing investment in PE while also addressing the question of marginalisation a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Background
• Part II A Visual Ethnography of Kea College
• Afterword
• Index