‘Of course I ask the best students to demonstrate’: digital normalizing practices in physical education

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we focus on the use of digital video technology for instruction in physical education (PE). Physical educators can produce PE instruction videos (PIVs) as educational resources and often use them to enable independent learning situations. Little research has focused on the criteria teachers use to select students for demonstration in such video practices, while such selections may impact the constructions of (un) desirable bodies in PE. The purpose of this study therefore was to uncover discourses that guide teachers in their selection of students to demonstrate in instructional videos and to discuss the possible consequences these selections may have for the privileging and marginalizing of certain students. We recruited six physical educators who participated in a network of early adopters for ICT in PE and we used their own PIV's as instruments for individual stimulated recall interviews. We subsequently discussed issues raised in these interviews with four focus-groups. We analyzed the data inductively by using open, focused and selective coding, looking for themes in the explanations the teachers used about their selection of students. The results suggest that the selection of students to demonstrate was based on a degree of perceived competence to perform well in the video and a degree of perceived resilience to cope with public scrutiny of their bodies. The teachers constructed hierarchies of desirable bodies that were embedded in intersecting discourses of ability, gender and ethnicity. This resulted in the selection of students who primarily embodied practices associated with white, able-bodied masculinities while other bodies were made invisible. We reflect on how these discursive practices may privilege and marginalize certain students and the possible consequences of this and of the use of students in such videos in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical-education
• video-instruction
• demonstration
• biopower
• intersectionality
• gender
• ability
• whiteness
• teachers

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Anne Flintoff for her insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Corina van Doodewaard http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8798-402X

Annelies Knoppers http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5247-9488

Ivo van Hilvoorde http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8499-9792

Notes

1. See for example a database with over 1500 Dutch instructional videos for PE at: http://www.visueellerenbewegen.nl/demo-gymwijzer/, or www.PEGeek.com.

2. See, for instance: http://www.supportrealteachers.org/ballroomsocial-dance-instructional-videos.html

3. According to Statistics Netherlands 7.2% of the students on these schools has a migration background. http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLNL&PA=80042ned&LA=NL

4. There seems to be an unwritten guideline in the Netherlands to avoid ‘race’ and mentioning visible differences such as skin color (Hondius, 2009). Public policy and research documents offer alternative words such as immigrant background, culture, ethnicity, or (until 2016) the dichotomy ‘allochtoon versus autochtoon’ (born outside or in the Netherlands). In practice, the use of the word allochtoon still captures a mix of racial thinking and cultural hierarchies (Essed & Trienekens, 2008). The use of such words contributes to the invisibility of discourses and ideologies of whiteness (Weiner, 2015).

5. In our data, we present a variety of words that teachers used to discuss issues of race/ethnicity. Their struggle for the ‘right’ word might be due to their uneasiness to ‘talk race’ (Hondius, 2009 – see also footnote 4). Such discursive practices show how processes of differentiation and discrimination may work (Flintoff, 2015). According to Hondius (2009) these discursive practices, add power to the strong tendency to distinguish ‘them’ from us’, and as such, add power to racial thinking and cultural hierarchies.

6. The software of BAM videodelay allows videorecording and delayed displaying without collecting data, for quick visual feedback. See for more information: https://thepegeek.com/2012/07/top-apps-for-pe-teachers-part-16/

7. We label this perceived lack of self-confidence because we do not know if the girls to whom the teachers referred, actually lacked self-confidence.

8. The data are not clear about whether these are boys or girls.