Fitness testing: how do students make sense of the gender disparities?

Abstract

The ways in which students make sense of the gendered fitness expectations found in a norm-referenced fitness testing program (i.e. President's challenge physical fitness test) were the focus of this study. Participants were 18 fifth grade students who completed fitness tests in their physical education classes. They were interviewed using a standardized, open-ended protocol designed to elicit their perceptions of the fitness test. Three salient themes emerged from the data: (1) students used notions of essentialism and social construction to explain gender differences; (2) students observed their peers’ performances through gendered lenses; and (3) students provided suggestions for change. Based on the findings from this study, researchers and practitioners may begin to recognize the ways in which fitness testing affects how students socially construct ideologies about fitness, ability and their bodies.

Keywords:

• Fitness testing
• Gender
• Discourse
• Post-structuralism
• Physical education

Notes

1. The term ‘pedagogical practice’ is inclusive of all aspects of the curriculum that teachers knowingly or unknowingly and covertly or overtly include in their teaching. In broad terms, ‘pedagogical practice’, can refer to which content is included, personal teaching philosophies, and formulation of class expectations and routines, to name a few. When discussing fitness testing as a ‘pedagogical practice’, this includes which program the teacher selects or is expected to administer, how the tests are administered (i.e. publicly, privately, peer groups), frequency of testing, and what the teachers do with the fitness assessments (i.e. program evaluation, to create individualized fitness plans, rewarding the students, publicly displaying students’ results.)

2. Throughout this article, usage of language that discusses the fitness expectations in terms of gender disparities is used. Initially this may seem problematic due to the fact that girls’ and boys’ fitness expectations for the PCPFAP are actually based on biological sex differences. However, we apply Judith Butler's (1999) perspective of gender to this examination of fitness testing. Butler stated, ‘Gender is always a doing’ (p. 33). We conceptualize the performance of gender(s) as a social construct that students’ are constantly negotiating between and across when they experience fitness testing and other dominant discourses that are rooted in essentialist notions of physicality.

3. This study was part of a larger study. The interview protocol used in the larger study includes questions/prompts that in addition to addressing issues related to the divergent gender expectations also asks students about their motivational dispositions towards fitness tests. Table 2 includes the entire interview protocol.