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Articles

Inclusion and exclusion in multi-ethnic physical education: an intersectional perspective

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ABSTRACT

Current educational policies on inclusion emphasise viewing ethnically diverse populations as a resource, yet scholars have pointed out that the Norwegian school system seems to value diversity to an only limited extent. This critique applies to physical education (PE) in Western countries. In this article, based on students’ stories from a multi-ethnic PE context, an intersectional perspective is used to investigate how processes of inclusion and exclusion are revealed. Data consist of semi-structured interviews with 17 students of diverse backgrounds and fieldnotes from observation in 56 PE lessons. Three questions are addressed: How are students’ cultural backgrounds acknowledged by teachers and students in a PE class? How are aspects of culture and ethnicity present in the activities being taught? How are aspects of race, ethnicity, and culture reflected in the communication in two multi-ethnic PE classes? The findings indicate that knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds is not considered important for PE and that taught activities silently reflect a taken-for-granted majority culture. This paper makes some reflections on the implications of those findings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ingfrid Mattingsdal Thorjussen is a PhD student in the Department of Social and Cultural Studies at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway. Ingfrid’s primary area of research has been studying aspects of inclusion and exclusion in diverse PE contexts.

Mari Kristin Sisjord is a Professor of Sport Sociology. Her main interests are youth sport, alternative sport cultures (in particular snowboarding), sport and gender, and sport and ethnicity. She is the Department Head for Cultural and Social Sciences, The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway.

ORCID

Ingfrid Mattingsdal Thorjussen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8199-6625

Notes

1 Scholars hold different views on whether intersectionality should be considered an analytical perspective, a theoretical framework, or an overriding paradigm (Bilge, Citation2010). We use the term ‘intersectional perspective’ to emphasize the analytical aspect, yet we argue that intersectional analysis in combination with Hill Collin’s matrix of domination might be considered as a theoretical framework for investigation (Hill Collins, Citation2009). For a more thorough discussion, see Bilge, Citation2010.

2 In the Norwegian school system, students are categorized according to their first language. A minority language-speaking student is defined as a child or young person that has a first language other than Norwegian or Sami (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, Citation2016).

3 ‘C- news’ refers to issues of conflict, crisis, catastrophes, crime … etc.