Fiona Dowling

Poetic representations in sport and physical education: insider perspectives 1.

As part of the emergence of new writing practices in the social sciences, qualitative researchers have begun to harness the potential of poetic representations as a means of analysing social worlds and communicating their findings to others. To date, this genre has been little used within the domains of sport and physical education. Accordingly, in this article, we provide examples of poetic representations and seek to generate insights into the process of their construction by exploring the perspectives of their authors. A rationale for choosing this genre is outlined and the potential benefits and risks of making this choice for both the researcher and the audience are considered. It is concluded that poetic representations are a worthy addition to the analytical repertoire in qualitative research.

‘Are PE teacher identities fit for postmodern schools or are they clinging to modernist notions of professionalism?’ A case study of Norwegian PE teacher students’ emerging professional identities

The concept of the ‘professional teacher’ is highly contestable, and the array of definitions that circulate in teacher education draw on competing theoretical and ideological positions. This paper explores what discourses about professionalism are currently available within Norwegian physical education teacher education (PETE) and, in particular, asks whether they reflect the needs of postmodern teachers in a ‘knowledge society’? It acknowledges that there are currently two dominant discourses about the ‘professional’ teacher, so-called ‘activist’ or ‘managerial’ professionalism, and asks whether, and in what ways, PE student teachers engage with and/or reject the discourses’ competing ideas about what counts as ‘good’ practice. By analysing the student teachers’ emerging professional identities, the paper aims to reveal not only the students’ subjective meanings about professionalism, but also illuminate the current power structures that operate in PETE about relevant ‘professional’ knowledge. It draws on data from group interviews with 12 Norwegian PE students in their final year of study for a bachelor degree in PETE, and a critical content analysis of PETE curricula at two institutions of higher education. The paper highlights the way in which views about professionalism in PETE tend to be normative in nature, and are not founded on explicit theoretical ideas about ‘good’ practice or theoretical understandings of the role of the teacher in postmodern schools. Indeed, PETE programmes seem to do little to disrupt recruits’ ‘apprenticeship-of-observation’, even though Lortie revealed this problematic aspect of professional socialisation over three decades ago. The student teachers’ narratives seem to be locked into ‘modernist’ or ‘classical’ ideas about good PE practice, which are inappropriate for meeting the challenges of working with socially diverse pupils or in collaborative teacher groups. Recruitment to PETE via examinable PE appears paradoxically to accentuate the students’ sports performing (teacher) selves, rather than providing them with a solid understanding of PEs content knowledge on which to develop broader PE teacher professional identities. Therefore, the paper asks whether teacher educators need to reassess their recruitment policies to PETE, as well as to systematically re-analyse their ‘taken-for-granted’ notions of teacher professionalism.

Getting in touch with our feelings: the emotional geographies of gender relations in PETE.

This paper attempts to illustrate how embodied ways of knowing may enhance our theoretical understanding within the field of physical education teacher education (PETE). It seeks to illustrate how teacher educators’ viewpoints and understanding of gender relations are inevitably linked to socially constructed webs of emotions, as much as to intellectual rationales. Indeed, the paper argues for the need for PETE research to transcend the dualistic divide of reason/emotion. It builds upon interview data from an investigation interested in illuminating the ways in which teacher educators develop their professional identities, using the lenses of gender equal opportunities and equity to examine the degree to which identities reflect ‘managerial’ or ‘democratic’ professional projects. In particular it analyses the way in which ‘gender talk’ seems to evoke strong emotional reactions, often ‘negative’ feelings, while at the same time, gender equity concerns remain on the periphery of the discipline, despite increasing research evidence which reveals damaging discriminatory learning environments. By using Hargreaves (2000) concept of ‘emotional geographies’ the paper contends that ‘negative emotions’ about gender issues are currently hegemonic on account of todays configurations of human relations in PETE, because the disciplines feeling rules construct ‘negative feelings’ as being reasonable. Acknowledging that professional identities are on-going projects, and that feeling rules can be re-configured, the paper also seeks to illustrate how competing emotions may in the future lead to gender equality assuming a new role in PETEs ‘regimes of truths’.

Narrative inquiry in physical education research: the story so far and its future promise

At a recent international education conference, current life history and narrative research within Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) was criticised for its seeming inability to ‘produce anything new’ and for lacking ‘rigour’. This paper aims to respond to the criticism and to reassert the strengths of narrative inquiry in the current moment. It maps out narrative and life history research (published in English) carried out in PETE, illuminating a spectrum of narrative approaches and a richness of theoretical perspectives. It underscores the need for PETE scholars to acknowledge the broad range of philosophical assumptions about knowledge and how we come to know as this underpins all research, whether carried out within a qualitative or quantitative research tradition, and to develop a climate of mutual respect for these various positions if we are to avoid stagnation, hegemony or blind spots in our research agendas.

Narratives from the road to social justice in PETE: teacher educator perspectives

Developing teacher education programmes founded upon principles of critical pedagogy and social justice has become increasingly difficult in the current neoliberal climate of higher education. In this article, we adopt a narrative approach to illuminate some of the dilemmas which advocates of education for social justice face and to reflect upon how pedagogy for inclusion in the field of physical education (PE) teacher education (PETE) is defined and practiced. As a professional group, teacher educators seem largely hesitant to expose themselves to the researchers gaze, which is problematic if we expect preservice teachers to engage in messy, biographical reflexivity with regard to their own teaching practice. By engaging in self- and collective biographical story sharing about ‘our’ teacher educator struggles in England and Norway, we hope that the reader can identify ‘her/his’ struggles in the narratives about power and domination, and the spaces of opportunity in between.

Narrative inquiry and research on physical activity, sport and health: exploring current tensions

Becoming a tyranny? Ubiquitous and in danger of losing all meaning? Divisive and alienated enclaves? These strong concerns about narrative inquiry and its scholars voiced by advocates, not adversaries, in the social sciences (Gergen & Gergen, 2011; Riessman, 2008; Squire, Andrews, & Tamboukou, 2008) form a backcloth to this special issue. As narrative scholars, we believe that the theoretical bricolage of narrative inquiry evident in the field of sport and movement pedagogy has made valuable contributions to knowledge and may continue to provide important insights into complex phenomena associated with embodiment. Yet, the latter we would argue is contingent upon scholars’ critical reflection about, and a heightened sensitivity towards, ongoing theoretical and methodological tensions. For example, tensions between eventand experience-centred narratives; whether narrative is conceived as a celebration of experience or as a starting point for its deconstruction; whether it is an expression of internal states or a dialogical construction; or whether it is understood as a form of social action; or of the ways in which researchers’ own narratives influence their agendas. Judging from the enormous response to the call for papers, it seems many share our concerns and this special edition brings some interesting contributions to the research community’s conversation. Most of the aforementioned tensions arise from how individual scholars conceptualise narrative: as a set of data material, a method, an ontological way of understanding the social world, or perhaps all three of these aspects. Common for the disparate perspectives is the notion that narration is fundamental to human meaning-making. Both individual and collective embodied experience is mediated, and made ‘real’, via the linguistic shaping and telling of stories, and the processes of their consumption. Moreover, narratives are inevitably relational and imbued with power. Yet, strains emerge on account of the wide range of disciplinary subject traditions and philosophies of science and knowledge that characterise narrative inquiry, sport sciences and education research. The articles in this special edition bear witness to this diversity. There are contributions grounded in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, gerontology, disability studies, education and the studies are further informed by theories of pragmatism, social constructivism, critical pedagogy, critical arts and poststructuralism. In addition, most of the articles draw upon a range of theoretical perspectives

A whitewashed curriculum? The construction of race in contemporary PE curriculum policy

ABSTRACT Analyses of curricula in a range of countries show how they tend to reinforce, rather than challenge, popular theories of racism. To date, we know little about the contribution of physical education (PE) curriculum policy to the overall policy landscape. This paper examines the construction of race and racism in two national contexts (Norway and England) as a means of putting race and anti-racism on the PE policy research agenda. It adopts a critical whiteness perspective to analyse how whiteness, as a system of privilege, contributes to the racialisation of valued knowledge in PE and asks, who potentially benefits and/or is marginalised within the learning spaces available in the texts? The discourse analysis reveals that two discursive techniques of whiteness combine to privilege white, Eurocentric knowledge content. Unmarked white PE practices and students are constructed as universal, normative and contingent. As a result, non-white PE practices and students are positioned on the margins in contemporary policy texts. By revealing the racialisation processes evident in the texts, we aim to trouble the professions taken-for-granted truths about race in PE as integral to working towards the development of an antiracist subject.

‘I just treat them all the same, really’: Teachers, whiteness and (anti) racism in physical education

ABSTRACT This paper explores physical educators’ perspectives on race and racism as a first step towards disrupting whiteness and supporting the development of antiracist practice. With close links to sport, a practice centrally implicated in the creation and maintenance of racialised bodies and hierarchies, Physical Education (PE) offers an important context for a study of whiteness and racism in education. Using collective biography we examine physical educators’ narrative stories for what they reveal about the operation of whiteness and racism in PE. Teachers draw on narratives from curricula texts which uphold and reinforce notions of the racialised other, thereby reasserting normative, universal white knowledge. Their pedagogy is underpinned by a colour blind approach where race is ‘not seen’, yet essentialist and cultural discourses of race are nevertheless deployed to position particular racialised and gendered bodies as ‘problems’ in PE. Engagement with antiracism is limited to professional rhetoric within pedagogical practice.