Abstract

Research has shown that Physical Education (PE) is a white, male, and able body-dominated profession, particularly in Spain. When some female pre-service PE teachers, who had a difficult relationship with their bodies and sports abilities, enrol in such a degree, some of these problematic relations come to light. Participants for this study were four female pre-service teachers who self-identified as lesbian, anorexic, visually impaired, and big respectively. Data were collected through participant-produced texts, graphical representations, and interviews. The authors then reconstructed the participants’ stories which are presented in the form of narratives. The conceptual tool of embodying norm-criticality helped us to highlight the importance of critical reflection about own beliefs, past experiences and understandings, and their influence on pedagogical practices in PE. This study contributes to the push towards a change of the stereotypical beliefs of what a PE teacher should be or look like, and in this way, emphasises the vast benefits of diversifying PE teachers’ beliefs and understandings.

RAS ID

62105

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

2023

Volume

30

Issue

5

School

School of Education

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Identifier

Valeria Varea

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3572-4976

Comments

González-Calvo, G., & Varea, V. (2023). Lesbian, anorexic, disabled, and big: Other ways of being a female physical education teacher. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 30(5), 601-616. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2023.2277380

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1080/13540602.2023.2277380