TY - JOUR
T1 - The politics of pleasure
T2 - an ethnographic examination exploring the dominance of the multi-activity sport-based physical education model
AU - Gerdin, Göran
AU - Pringle, Richard
PY - 2017/2/17
Y1 - 2017/2/17
N2 - Kirk warns that physical education (PE) exists in a precarious situation as the dominance of the multi-activity sport-techniques model, and its associated problems, threatens the long-term educational survival of PE. Yet he also notes that although the model is problematic it is highly resistant to change. In this paper, we draw on the results of a year-long visual ethnography at an all-boys secondary school in Aotearoa New Zealand to examine the workings of power that legitimate this model of PE. Our findings illustrate that the school conflates PE and sport, to position PE as an appropriate masculine endeavour and valued source of enjoyment, as it articulates with good health, social development and competitiveness. We argue that student experiences of pleasure within PE—as co-constitutive with discourses of fitness, health, sport and masculinity—(re)produce the multi-activity sport-based form of PE as educationally appropriate and socioculturally relevant, thus making the model somewhat resistant to change. We stress that our study should not be read as a vindication of this PE model.
AB - Kirk warns that physical education (PE) exists in a precarious situation as the dominance of the multi-activity sport-techniques model, and its associated problems, threatens the long-term educational survival of PE. Yet he also notes that although the model is problematic it is highly resistant to change. In this paper, we draw on the results of a year-long visual ethnography at an all-boys secondary school in Aotearoa New Zealand to examine the workings of power that legitimate this model of PE. Our findings illustrate that the school conflates PE and sport, to position PE as an appropriate masculine endeavour and valued source of enjoyment, as it articulates with good health, social development and competitiveness. We argue that student experiences of pleasure within PE—as co-constitutive with discourses of fitness, health, sport and masculinity—(re)produce the multi-activity sport-based form of PE as educationally appropriate and socioculturally relevant, thus making the model somewhat resistant to change. We stress that our study should not be read as a vindication of this PE model.
KW - Foucault
KW - Masculinity
KW - Physical education
KW - Pleasure
KW - Politics
KW - Sport
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84924310081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13573322.2015.1019448
DO - 10.1080/13573322.2015.1019448
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84924310081
VL - 22
SP - 194
EP - 213
JO - Sport, Education and Society
JF - Sport, Education and Society
SN - 1357-3322
IS - 2
ER -