Dualing with gender: teachers’ work, careers and leadership in physical education

Abstract

The discursive practices of physical education reflect not only the expectations and constraints of discourses in the wider society, educational organizations and bureaucracies, but also the pervasive influences of working with and within sport. Within physical education, and specifically in the lives, work and careers of physical education teachers, in what ways are gender dualisms breaking down and in what ways are powerful gendered discourses still influential? This paper will outline results from research on teachers’ work, careers and leadership in physical education, with a particular focus on gendered patterns. A mixed methods research design was used with 556 female and male participants in the quantitative phase and 17 participants in the qualitative phase. Some of the results challenged gender dualistic ways of thinking about physical education teachers’ work, careers and leadership while other results indicated ways in which powerful dominant discourses still shape gendered patterns.

Notes

1. Also known as Education Queensland.

2. From this perspective, the concept of ‘empowerment’ that has been so popular in critical pedagogy is problematic because it assumes that someone has possession of power to ‘share’ in order to ‘empower’ the other (see Luke & Gore, 1992, for a variety of authors that deconstruct the concept of ‘empowerment’).