Physical contact in physical education – immigrant students’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Physical contact is common in physical education (PE) and is often also perceived as necessary in the subject. At the same time, no-touch discourses in sport and PE affect both teachers and students in many western countries. Teachers in the subject have for example become increasingly reluctant to touch their students due to risks of allegations. In addition, many European countries have recently experienced a great influx of immigrants from non-western countries, which has resulted in more multicultural classrooms across Europe. This can be problematic in PE due to cultural differences regarding physical contact, especially with the opposite sex. The purpose of this study is to investigate physical contact between teachers and students in PE from an immigrant student perspective. This is understood through the didactic contract. For this purpose, interviews using photo elicitation have been conducted with immigrant upper secondary school students in Sweden. The major findings suggest that the following negotiation aspects determine whether physical contact can be regarded as legitimate by the students: the professionalism of the teacher, the teacher-student relationship, teachers’ instructive skills, the emotionally engaged teacher, opposite sex issues and teachers and students with similar immigrant backgrounds. These aspects are also part of the process of developing a didactic contract regarding physical contact between teachers and students. In conclusion, it is clear that some of the aspects legitimise physical contact and build trust between the teachers and the students, while others challenge this legitimisation and trust.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical contact
• physical education
• intergenerational touch
• touch
• immigrant students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria are included in the lowest HDI groups.

2 One city school and two rural town schools.

3 Students who were not born in Sweden and have a non-western background.

4 5 individual interviews and 3 pair interviews were conducted with the male students and 2 individual interviews and 3 pair interviews with the female students. There was also one gender-mixed interview.