‘It's just the way it is…’ or not? How physical education teachers categorise and normalise differences

Abstract

This article explores how Dutch physical education (PE) teachers discursively construct body differences between students related to gender, (dis)ability and health. Our results show how disciplinary technologies of categorisation and normalisation are embedded in two distinct discourses that our participants used: the discourse of naturalness for explaining and managing differences in gender and ability and the discourse of transformation for explaining and managing differences in health. Both these discourses produced body norms in PE as male, abled and slender. However, how the teachers managed deviance and normalcy varies per discourse. ‘Fat’ bodies that were produced as deviant through the discourse of transformation were disciplined in explicit ways. The use of the discourse of naturalness resulted in justification and naturalisation of perceived differences in gender and (dis)ability and practices such as differentiated teaching.

Keywords:

• physical education
• gender
• (dis)ability
• health
• discourse
• Foucault