Facilitators and barriers of inclusion: a critical incident technique analysis of one non-binary Physical Education teacher’s workplace experiences

ABSTRACT

Background: Publications documenting how teaching is typically undertaken in highly cis-normative school spaces are beginning to increase in popularity. Scholars highlight how school Physical Education (PE) departments operate as highly gendered, and exclusive spaces which are typically ruled by gender-binarised discourses. This ideology is heavily manifested in everyday practices such as male/female-divided changing rooms, PE uniforms, and curriculums. However, the experiences of non-binary PE teachers working in these spaces remains mostly non-existent. Purpose: The research questions for this study were to explore the experiences of a non-binary PE teacher and disrupt the inequalities of power in PE spaces where cisgender teachers are deemed the ‘norm’, and anything outside of this is positioned as the ‘other’. This paper highlights the stories of one non-binary PE teacher’s everyday experiences. Context: The participant, who will be referred to as Seb, was in the 25–35 age group and worked in a state-funded school in a rural area in the northwest of England. Design and Analysis: This study employed a qualitative, single-participant case study method to analyse the experiences of the teacher. Data consists of a participant’s narrative account via online interviews. The participant was encouraged to tell uninterrupted stories of their career, achieved through accessing their own ideas and thoughts in their own words. The interviews were audio-recorded and then transcribed. The researchers analysed the data using deductive and latent coding processes. Conclusion: The paper will conclude by highlighting the main findings, limitations of the study, and opportunities for further research. Practice recommendations will be suggested, focussing on practices that infuse cultural humility such as encouraging a personalised, socially-nuanced pedagogical approach towards including and affirming the identities of gender diverse PE teachers in schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusion
• non-binary
• LGBTQ
• teacher training
• physical education

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 As authors we have purposefully chosen to not compare the rights of non-binary English people with non-binary individuals internationally. This is to attempt to resist an 'us and them' culture that can sometimes materialise in academic research on this topic, especially when comparing the UK to countries in the global south. We believe by doing this here, it would fail to acknowledge the complexities involved in attempting to have different nations assume the same cultural beliefs about sexual orientation or gender identity and that each government's priority should be about looking after individuals or communities as a whole.