Perceived differences and preferred norms: Dutch physical educators constructing gendered ethnicity

ABSTRACT

Many physical education (PE) teachers have been challenged by the shift from teaching in primarily ethnic homogenous contexts to multi-ethnic (ME) classes. Teachers in secondary schools often experience difficulty in class management in such classes. This difficulty may limit their ability to create a positive student–teacher relationship and may result in practices of inclusion, exclusion and marginalisation. The purpose of this paper was to explore how Dutch PE teachers construct their relationship with their students and manage differences in ME classes. Using video stimulation, we interviewed 11 Dutch secondary school PE teachers about their teaching and managing of ME classes. Findings showed that these teachers tended to target a specific group of boys in their teaching and class management. In addition, their class management seemed to be based on an invisible norm about appropriate student behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers
• students
• ethnicity
• care
• national identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Dutch concept of allochtoon (or in plural allochtonen) literally means coming from other soil/another country. Only non-Western immigrants are labelled as such.

2. The following criterion is stated for interpersonal competency: ‘contributes to integration and collaboration between students with different cultural background or sexual orientation’ (Aloco 2013: 38).

3. Since a gymnasium is usually not considered to be a classroom, we use the phrase class management.

4. The number of female teachers participating in the study reflects the percentage (33%) of women teaching PE in the Netherlands, while the number of participating immigrant teachers (37% of our sample) exceeded the national percentage (5%) (Stamos 2015; Van den Berg, Van Dijk, and Grootscholte 2011).

5. Location is not a determinant of the socio-economic status of the students attending a school, however. Parents can choose to send their children to any school in the country.