Theresa A. Walton

‘If You Really Knew Me’ … I am empowered through action

In this paper, we argue for the importance of creating a context that allows students to explore their sense of ‘self’ and their embodied identities, specifically within a physical education context. We specifically explore how students’ mediated and embodied identities are ‘translated’, particularly as they engaged in activist research by become co-meaning makers and co-interpreters throughout the research process. The purpose of this study was to engage high school girls in collaborative activist research to explore how they made meaning of their mediated identities, how they translated these identities to their embodied sense of self and how that influenced their schooling experiences. Participants were three ninth grade girls from a coeducational class in a suburban high school located in the Midwest region of the USA. During the first phase of the study, data were collected from focus group interviews, media consumption logs and descriptive field notes from observations. In the second phase, participants created their own activist-based project. The transcriptions and field notes were coded using content analysis and the constant comparative method. Participants shed light on their media consumption and how this consumption influenced their interactions with others and their own embodied identities. Their media consumption led the girls to take action by developing a survey that was based on the television show entitled, If You Really Knew Me, to explore the challenges and issues the student body encountered that influence their mediated and embodied identities. Through this experience, the girls indicated that they felt a sense of empowerment by taking social action. Results offer insight into the girls’ lived experiences in physical education and high school, the girls’ experience and process in developing their projects, the outcomes of this school-wide action research project and how they translated their embodied identities.

“Beautiful You”: Creating Contexts for Students to Become Agents of Social Change

ABSTRACT The authors argue for creating a context within education where teachers can utilize critical pedagogical practices to explicate the hidden curriculum, explore students’ sense of self and embodied identities, and engage students to empower themselves to speak up and take action about issues of embodiment and their understanding of social inequalities within schools. They specifically explore how high school girls’ mediated and embodied identities were translated, particularly as they engaged in participatory activist research by becoming co–meaning makers and co-interpreters during the research process. During the first phase of the study, data were collected from focus group interviews and descriptive field notes from observations. In the second phase, participants created their own activist-based project. Participants shed light on the social issues they encountered in high school and how these experiences influenced their embodied identities, which led them to develop Beautiful You and thus become agents of social change.

Framing Title IX

The passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was a pivotal moment in the history of women in education. Yet, rather than focus on the dramatic expansion in educational opportunities for women, public discourse over the last four decades deals almost exclusively with the profound influence of Title IX on scholastic athletics. Title IX and athletics are intrinsically linked in the public imagination.