deportigualízate: enacting critical intersectional feminist pedagogy in Spanish PESTE

ABSTRACT

Background

Physical education is seen as a subject that can both entrench but also challenge inequities. Within Spain, there is legislation requiring educators to teach about gender equity in schools across all subjects. Given this, topics around gender (and equity more broadly) are being taught in some Spanish Physical Education-Sport Tertiary Education (PESTE) programmes.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore university students’ experiences of engaging with a critical intersectional feminist pedagogy unit in a Spanish PESTE programme.

Methods

This paper represents one participatory action research study that is part of a larger research project exploring equity in physical education. The authors use qualitative data generation methods (including interviews, evaluations, field notes, and others) as well as data analysis (narrative analysis, descriptive coding, concept coding) to develop the findings.

Findings

The findings examine two teaching moments from the unit that students resonated with the most. In so doing, the authors examine the specific factors that the students discussed the most as affecting the way they think about equity in health, physical activity, and education.

Conclusions

The authors conclude by arguing that critical approaches to physical education that draw on embodied pedagogies and emplaced criticality have the ability to make ripples of change that can help raise issues of equity amongst future physical education professionals.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• social justice
• physical education teacher education
• gender
• curriculum

Introduction

We are moved by things. And in being moved, we make things. (Ahmed 2010, 33)

The field of physical education, it seems, has persistent difficulties with addressing issues of equity and diversity (Flory and Landi 2020). Across diverse settings, physical education practices have been critiqued along lines of gender (e.g. Fisette 2011), race and ethnicity (e.g. Blackshear and Culp 2021), sexualities (e.g. Landi 2019), abilities (e.g. Haegele 2019) and at an intersection of these factors (e.g. Fitzpatrick 2013). Physical education, however, is also a place where young people can engage with, and challenge, inequities through embodied learning. Many educators have targeted teacher education settings as places to engage with critical pedagogies to address these inequities (Philpot 2015).

Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programmes worldwide have historically reproduced gender-based inequities through gendered practices (Flintoff 2000). Examples of these practices include recruiting predominantly male students (Brown 2005), privileging curriculum developed by male educators (Kirk 1992), as well as the (mis-)treatment of women by faculty and classmates (Flintoff 2000). Brown (2005) argued that PETE students have developed a traditional gendered habitus that gets reproduced over time. Some PETE programmes try to challenge the gendered habitus of students, but this has proven to be difficult (Philpot, Smith, and Tinning 2021). To do so, many PETE programmes have used critical pedagogy (Philpot 2015).

Critical pedagogy emerged in PETE research as early as the 1980s (Kirk 1986) and has been used across the world (Philpot 2015; Walton-Fisette and Sutherland 2018). Different forms of critical pedagogies in physical education include, but are not limited to, an activist approach (Oliver and Kirk 2015), social justice pedagogies (Gerdin et al. 2022; Walton-Fisette et al. 2018), democratic pedagogies (Butler 2016), transformative pedagogies (Philpot and Ovens 2019), and critical pedagogies of affect (Kirk 2020). Hill et al. (2018) categorised the different social justice pedagogies into four distinct approaches: (a) neoliberal, (b) humanist, (c) critical, and (d) action-orientated.

According to Hill et al. (2018), neoliberal and humanist approaches teach to ‘accept diversity and difference’ but fail to interrogate the underlying structures that produce inequity. Critical approaches, on the other hand, teach acceptance but also use critical theory to explore why inequities exist in health, society, and education. Some critical work, however, has been criticised because it is often seen as ‘raising problems’ without offering ‘concrete solutions’ (Fitzpatrick 2019). When this happens, students leave physical education feeling guilty or helpless rather than empowered. Kirk (2020) argued that some critical pedagogies do offer solution-orientation instruction. Perhaps these approaches align to Hill et al.’s (2018) final category: action-orientated approaches.

Action-orientated pedagogies (Hill et al. 2018) go beyond critiquing inequity by empowering young people to solve local issues of discrimination. Here, students identify a local issue (e.g. inequitable budget for women’s sport) and work as a group to develop concrete solutions to that problem. However, Fernández-Balboa (2017) recently warned that focusing on solutions to a single problem often leaves theory out of instruction. This results in two issues: (a) solving ad-hoc problems does not address larger structural causes that produced the problems to begin with; and (b) by focusing on a single issue (e.g. gender), students may lose sight on how broader structures oppress diverse social identities (e.g. race, sexuality) differently.

Over 30 years ago, Dewar (1991) argued PETE programmes should adopt an intersectional theoretical lens because the concept works to address broader social structures by focusing on relationships among multiple forms of inequity (e.g. race, gender, social class). Some scholars have used intersectionality in their research practices as a theoretical tool to critique oppressive structures in physical education (e.g. Flintoff, Fitzgerald, and Scraton 2008). To our knowledge, however, Blackshear and Culp’s (2023) book on critical race theory is the only explicit use of intersectionality to inform pedagogical practices in physical education. The goal in this paper is to explore ‘what happens’ when using intersectionality as part of a critical pedagogical approach in a Spanish Physical Education-Sport Tertiary Education (PESTE) setting.

Spanish PESTE

Within Spain, there are no undergraduate PETE programmes that lead to a secondary teaching licence. Instead, students gain their teaching licence through a one-year postgraduate certification programme. Most students who enrol in these postgraduate certification programmes are graduates from undergraduate PESTE programmes. PESTE programmes usually sit within broader sport and physical education departments, and prepare a range of professionals within the fields of health, physical activity, and education. Some of these professions include future sport coaches, sport managers, fitness instructors, physical educators, and others.

Spain has a gendered history in (physical) education. According to Pérez-Samaniego and Santamaría-García (2013), young women and girls were considered ancillary to men within educational settings. This is because men developed curriculum materials for physical education programmes and women were expected to follow along (Pérez-Samaniego and Santamaría-García 2013). The historical debris from gendered practices still affects PESTE programmes today (Serra Payeras et al. 2018). For example, women account for only 20% of the students in Spanish PESTE programmes (Serra Payeras et al. 2019). Perhaps this is one reason why university applicants have labelled PESTE programmes as ‘highly masculinised’ (Serra Payeras and Rey-Cao 2021).

Serra Payeras and colleagues (2018) also found that sport and physical education departments fail to mention sociocultural issues in their policies and curriculum content. The lack of content around social equity is perhaps one of the reasons why women (Serra Payeras et al. 2019) and LGBTQ+ identified persons (Devís-Devís et al. 2018; Vilanova et al. 2022) feel marginalised in Spanish PESTE programmes. Having recognised gender inequity as a problem, policy makers mandated that teachers develop and implement lessons about gender and social justice in schools at all educational levels since 2007 (Organic Law 3/2007). PESTE programmes are now expected to teach about gender inequities. One potential way to address these different forms of discrimination has been through critical pedagogy (Devís-Devís and Sparkes 1999).

There has been minimal (but important) work on critical pedagogies in Spanish PESTE programmes since the 1990s (Devís-Devís 1990). Many Spanish PESTE teachers wanting to enact critical pedagogy struggle to do it in practice. Further, because PESTE programmes are located within sport departments, critical pedagogy is often marginalised by colleagues (Serra Payeras et al. 2018). The critical pedagogies that do persist in PESTE programmes often have students reflect on their biographies or explore different gendered identity positions (e.g. man taking a woman’s role in dancing) (Devís-Devís et al. 2018). One way to extend on these practices is using a critical pedagogical approach informed by an intersectional feminist lens.

Theory: critical intersectional feminist pedagogy

Critical intersectional feminist pedagogy is a teaching approach that combines critical pedagogy (Freire 1970), intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991), and feminism (Ahmed 2017). Critical pedagogy seeks to empower young people to think critically and transform unjust social systems they are experiencing (Freire 1970; Giroux 1988). Although there are multiple forms of critical pedagogy, but some themes that are similar across these approaches are: (a) raising critical consciousness, (b) dialectical learning, (c) transformation and praxis, and (d) empowerment. Raising critical consciousness provides students with opportunities to become aware and critically analyse systems of oppression in their world (Freire 1970). This is usually done through reflective and dialectical processes where teachers use discussion and critical inquiry (Giroux 1988). By merging critical theory into discussions, teachers want students to apply theoretical concepts to lived experiences and practices (praxis) (Freire 1970). The goal here is to empower young people to critique and transform existing power structures in order to emancipate them from oppressive systems (hooks 1994).

Historically, feminist theory is intertwined with critical pedagogy (Weiler 1991). This is because different strands of feminism were used across the world to gain women’s rights. Yet, early forms of feminism have been critiqued for framing inequity predominantly around White women’s experiences (hooks 1994). Intersectionality is a framework that builds on the feminist project by exploring the unique forms of oppression that people face due to having multiple social identities (e.g. race, sexuality, ability) and not only gender (Crenshaw 1991). From an intersectional lens, critical analysis of inequity moves beyond focusing on one social identity (e.g. just gender) and instead looks at the relationships between multiple social identities (e.g. race and gender and social class). Intersectional feminism identifies and analyses different forms of oppression that operate (often unevenly) based on the interaction and intersection of multiple social identities (e.g. gender, race, and sexuality) (Crenshaw 1991).

The critical intersectional feminist pedagogy used in this paper attempts to merge the theoretical principles of critical pedagogy (Freire 1970; Giroux 1988) with the advances made by intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991; hooks 1994). In so doing, the planning of a critical pedagogical approach means: (a) raising critical consciousness to the diversity of experiences amongst social identities (Crenshaw 1991); (b) producing dialectical encounters to explore 'other' social identities (Freedman 2009); (c) develop theoretically informed strategies to produce transformations (Crabtree, Sapp, and Licona 2009); and (d) empower young people through messages of love and hope (hooks 1994). In this paper, we explore the experiences of Spanish PESTE students who engaged with a critical intersectional feminist curricular unit called deportigualízate.

Methods

This paper is part of a larger participatory action research design that explores the enactment of deportigualízate in Spanish physical education settings. The project had multiple phases including curriculum development, consultation, enactment, amongst others. This paper focuses on the enactment of the deportigualízate curriculum in a class within a PESTE programme.

The deportigualízate (‘sport equalization’) Curriculum

The word deportigualízate is a play on words in Spanish that combines the word ‘deporte’ (sport) with ‘igualdad’ (equality). deportigualízate is a curriculum unit originally developed for young people (aged 12–18) and adapted for PESTE students. The purpose of the unit is to teach about inequities that persist in sport through an intersectional feminist lens. The development of deportigualízate was a multi-stage process that included consultation with young people, PESTE students, PESTE faculty, physical educators, and equity scholars. Whilst there is not enough room to explain the process here, we encourage readers to read about the curriculum development elsewhere (Castro-García et al. Forthcoming). Below, we provided a curricular outline (Table 1) of the unit that includes four lessons that lasted 90 minutes each. Students were expected to participate in class activities and use a workbook for homework. In this paper, we specifically focus on two in-class activities that were enacted during Day 1 and Day 3.

Table 1. Curriculum Unit Outline

Day	Topic	Objectives	Activities
			Classroom	Workbook
1	Inequities in Society	Identify inequalities within different systems of privilege that are associated with social stereotypes and the problems they raise in achieving equity.	Privilege walk	Let’s reflect on gender equity
2	Social Agents: Gender & Social Identities	Become aware of how the socialisation we receive is affected by gender and other social stereotypes and how these can augment and limit young people.	#likeagirl	How are we and why?
		Engage with situations and reflect on how different socialisation agents (school, family, sports system, media) aid in the social construction of different gendered identities.	I examine the reality	What they want us to believe
3	Sport, Gender & Social Identities	Analyse the role of sport in the creation and maintenance of stereotypes about the body and sexism in our society.	Who is who?	What do you see?
4	Transforming Sport	Propose initiatives that make it possible to promote changes to sport and education to be inclusive of diverse genders and social identities.	We are the change	We enact the change

Setting and participants

This study took place in a Spanish university PESTE degree programme during Autumn 2020. Women comprised of less than 20% of students in the PESTE programme. The PESTE degree programme is dominated by traditional sport skills and biophysical science courses. Only 3 of the 39 courses in the programme curriculum include social justice content (e.g. gender, race). There is one elective course named ‘Women and Sport’ that addresses gender inequity. The deportigualízate unit was enacted in this course because the objectives aligned with the activities. The ‘Women and Sport’ course comprised 24 students (11 self-identified women, 13 self-identified men). The unusually high number of women is likely because students chose to enrol in the elective (not required) based on interest. It is likely the men who chose this elective may not espouse the dominant beliefs about gender in the PESTE programme. Lastly, the course took place during the pandemic which meant restrictions were used to safeguard against spreading the infection. Even though the course was in-person, there were mitigating conditions that affected teaching and learning, such as physical distancing and the wearing of masks.

Data generation

There were multiple forms of data generated for this paper including questionnaires, reflective field notes, artefacts, and group interviews. For questionnaires (Marshall, Rossman, and Blanco 2016), Marina collected pre-information surveys that gathered background information about the students. The questions ranged from personal background (e.g. demographics, upbringing), their experiences in PESTE (e.g. degree programme content, preparation), and their thoughts on gender equity (e.g. equity in sport, equity in PESTE). Other questionnaires included a formal course evaluation where students provided quantitative and qualitative feedback on the instructor, course content, and their learning experiences. Only the qualitative feedback was included in this paper.

Data were also generated using reflective field notes (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 2011). Reflective field notes included reflective memos Marina wrote after teaching each class. In these, she reflected on ‘what happened,’ ‘what was learned,’ ‘what emotions were expressed,’ and ‘what contradictions were present.’ In addition, Marina wrote jottings whilst teaching to remind her of certain activities or events (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 2011). Marina also collected classroom artefacts (Marshall, Rossman, and Blanco 2016) including daily online ‘exit slips’ where students provided anonymous feedback after each lesson. Artefacts also included assignments like individual critical reflections and a weekly workbook that students completed during the unit. After the semester, she conducted two semi-structured group interviews (Kvale 1996) that were divided by gender (six self-identified men and six self-identified women). She asked questions about their engagement with the course content, their experiences participating in activities, as well as their overall thoughts about deportigualízate.

Data analysis

Multiple data analysis techniques were used for this paper. First, Marina anonymised and immersed herself in the data. She then produced summaries of topics that were brought up by students in the data. She gave the summaries to Dillon and David as an initial analysis and understanding of ‘what happened.’ After reading the summaries, Dillon and David met with Marina and acted as sounding boards, to connect her summaries to previous literature, theory and appropriate methods. After re-reading her data, Marina chose two critical moments that characterised ‘important’ events, based on students’ feedback. Marina re-constructed these events by developing ‘narratives’ (Saldaña 2015) to explain the activities. She started by taking a point of view, contextualising the class, outlining characters, and depicted actions that allowed the plot to unfold. Marina revised the stories over the course of writing the paper.

Marina also compiled relevant data (e.g. field notes, transcripts) into a single document. Marina and Dillon independently coded the data and her narratives using descriptive coding, outlining topics they saw in the data. Marina and Dillon met together and mapped their different codes onto a white board. They discussed their conflicts, affirmations, and then further re-coded the data using concept coding (Saldaña 2015). Concept coding was done through an active discussion where a series of codes produced ‘bigger picture’ concepts (e.g. ‘jarring pedagogies,’ ‘intersectional empathy’) that illustrated deeper meaning. After mapping, Marina and Dillon deductively analysed the concepts using the critical intersectional feminist pedagogical principles outlined in the theory section. They completed the analysis by theming the data (Saldaña 2015) to produce a meaningful (re-)presentation of the data. Throughout the process, Marina and Dillon often sent David excerpts and summaries where they received feedback that was integrated into their write-up. This helped refine and (re-)construct the themes into the findings below.

Trustworthiness: transparency, reflexivity, and acknowledgement

By situating our work in a critical and transformative paradigm (Landi 2023), we do not subscribe to perspectives of trustworthiness that seek to use methods (e.g. member-checking, triangulation) to ‘find a truth.’ Instead, we consider research to be trustworthy when it follows a high-quality process that illustrates the following: (a) transparency, (b) reflexivity, and (c) acknowledgement. For transparency, we purposefully took great effort to explain the design and methods of this research. We provided an overview of the project, explained how data were generated, analysed, and (re-)presented here in detail. We hope our thorough explanation of this process has been transparent and displayed methodological rigour.

We recognise reflexivity is not just about authors’ awareness of how they affect research, but how the research affects authors. Each of us are scholars who conducted research on issues of equity and diversity. Marina is a Spanish straight woman who grew up in all-male environments in sport. She recently completed her PhD and, while she was a predoctoral fellow, she visited the University of Strathclyde where she worked with Dillon and David. Dillon is a white queer neurodiverse man who grew up in the USA but has spent his career in Aotearoa New Zealand, the USA and the UK. David is a white straight man who grew up in the UK and has held senior-level academic appointments in multiple countries (e.g. Australia, Belgium, Ireland, UK). Thus, our writing team has a diverse composition in gender, ethnic background, citizenship, sexuality, ability, languages, and professional experiences. Each of us played a role in the construction, enactment, interpretation, and (re-)presentation of this research.

Marina was most instrumental, as she developed and taught the curriculum within her Spanish context. The data she generated, analysed, and (re-)presented were embedded in her experiences and culture as well as passion for equity in Spain. Dillon drew on his expertise in qualitative data analysis and critical theories to help Marina choose and apply different data analysis techniques. David was integral as a veteran scholar to help position the study in relation to broader discussions in the field. As we reflexively consider our positions, we acknowledge the results presented here are always partial, crystallised, and shifting because each step of the research process is implicated by our subjectivities. What gets presented in this paper resonated for us and what we felt was meaningful for physical education.

Findings and discussion

The results are split into two sections: Activity 1 and Activity 2. In each section, we start with a narrative of an activity that was enacted with the PESTE students. After the narrative, we unpack each activity to identify specific pedagogical concepts that were important for the enactment of each activity. We conclude the paper with a reflection on how these different concepts relate to one another and the aims of critical intersectional feminist pedagogy in physical education.

Activity 1: Who is who?

It is the middle of November. The weather outside is frigid but the windows are open due to COVID. Everyone is wearing jackets and is spaced at least one desk from one other. It may be cold, but I (Marina) am sweating so I take off my jumper. I sweat every time I teach a deportigualízate lesson. It’s the nerves of being a new lecturer that is a younger, smaller woman with students who range from older (mostly men) to a few years younger. The students are sitting in their desks and I project pictures of different bodies playing sports. Plot twist: I hide the athlete’s face and other features to make it difficult to identify the sex of the athlete.

I start with a picture of a leg and foot doing synchronised swimming. I ask, ‘What do you see?’ Miguel quips, ‘A very small foot!’ Marta adds on, ‘A muscular leg but not as muscular as a man’s leg.’ Most of the class nods in agreement. So, I ask questions about gender to question their assumptions, ‘Does everybody see a woman’s leg?’ Students are in resounding agreement. They seem comfortable and confident with their response. Pamela, however, starts questioning if it actually can be a man’s leg. Pamela is a self-identified lesbian that challenges her classmates to question taken-for-granted assumptions. In this case, even Pamela is unsure. She says, ‘I don’t see the differences you see. But I have never seen a male synchronized swimmer, so I don’t know.’ Some classmates turn around, nod and say, ‘Hey, maybe she is right.’ Raul disagrees, ‘But the size of the foot, the hyperextension of the ankle, the thinness of the leg, it must be a woman!’

We continue through pictures and the students continue to justify their answers based on their beliefs about bodies, sports, and even uniforms. One picture is a man, classical dancer. Patricia (a professional dancer) says it must be a woman because the shoes are beige and ‘men’s shoes are black.’ The next picture is the arm of a woman canoeist. The class agrees it is a very muscular arm. Raul confidently claims, ‘He is Saul Craviotto, I know him. That is his arm!’ I do my best not to laugh, keep a straight face and continue. The students defend their beliefs because, as Guillermo puts it, ‘It’s not biologically possible for a woman to have this muscular of an arm!’ Claudia starts to question this logic. She says, ‘Women Olympians have muscular bodies too!’ Yet doubt creeps back in to Claudia's reasoning, ‘But it’s not possible for them to have that strong of an arm!’ I bite my tongue, control myself, and encourage their (incorrect) responses.

As we inch closer to the end, the students become impatient, wanting the results to the ‘gender reveal’. One student asks, ‘Marina, are you going to tell us who is who?’ Another student chimes in, ‘Yeah! Tell us!’ After making confident and bold arguments, I play a video that presents the solutions one by one (Figure 1 is an example of a reveal).

Figure 1. Image of Teresa Portela in the ‘gender reveal’.

As results unfold, they realise how wrong their assumptions were. They express shock with each new ‘reveal’ leading to gasps, squeals, or hands slamming on desks. Most students swell with surprise. Some stoop with shame. After the 10 results are revealed, they realised: they were wrong for 9 of the 10 athletes. I ask, ‘What do you see now?’ The students debate about how stereotypes are formed, a small group of boys still held strong in their beliefs, others arguing about sexism. The students in one way or another, were ‘jarred,’ ‘moved,’ or ‘pushed’ by the gender twist. By the end of class, I am not the only person without my jumper on. Time creeps away as the next lecturer is asking us to leave the class. The students, still arguing, leave the classroom while I take a deep breath, a sigh of relief and hope it provokes some reflection and maybe even lead to greater thinking about gender and sport.

Jarring pedagogies to raise Kinaesthetic critical consciousness

Jarring is defined as the act of shaking or the state of being shaken (Dictionary.com). Within physical education, the goal to move students usually takes the form of physical activity. In deportigualízate, moving includes emotions, bodies, and thoughts. The purpose of this activity was to jar (or move) students’ preconceived notions about gender in sport. Tertiary settings are important places to get students to re-consider their beliefs about the body, health, and education (Kirk 2020). Engaging with beliefs, however, is an embodied, sensuous and affective event. As Alejandro and Luis stated in their group interview:

Alejandro:

I think the first thing that comes to all our minds, I guess is that of the images, because it is very visual.

Luis:

Mmmm 〈thinking〉 for me, if you say to me ‘deportigualízate,’ I think of photos, unintentionally. That is the initial flash that comes to me (…) even those students already promoting equity said, ‘Shit! How is it possible that she was a woman if she had such a muscular arm?’

For Alejandro and Luis, the ‘Who is Who’ activity used photos and flashes to produce jarring moments where students had to confront their embodied emotions and beliefs. Jarring pedagogies are about producing embodied discomfort where things are ‘out of line’ and create opportunities for students to re-consider their knowledge, beliefs, and feelings. Pereira-García, López-Cañada, and Elling-Machartzki (2022, 100) argued, ‘bodies are a means of making meanings, and students can get a more complex understanding of genders … ’ Because students have different bodies, they have different embodied reactions to these jarring pedagogies. This was clear as the girls not only felt shock, but also shame:

Ana:

(…) because the picture has muscle we assumed it is a man … a woman can’t have those legs! … Then I got to see the arms of that woman, I loved it! But, how could I have thought, ‘no, impossible that it was a woman?’ I was so ashamed!

Julia:

it was a huge moment.

Pamela:

yes, really.

Ana:

We all turned pale … 

Jarring pedagogies are not just about ‘shock’ but include a range of embodied emotions that range from pleasure, guilt, shame, excitement, and empowerment. Through affective embodied responses, tiny spaces crack open and allow the students to critically question the values, assumptions, and biases that are embedded in sport. Jarring pedagogies produce the ‘elbow room’ (Safron 2020) to raise, in Culp’s (2020) words, a critical kinaesthetic consciousness (159, original emphasis) where embodiment is understood as a material and social effect.

One of the ‘topics’ raised by students in their critical kinaesthetic consciousness was how sport played a role in socialising their beliefs about gender. Physical educators are socialised into gender norms before they enrol in university (Brown 2005). Raising a critical kinaesthetic consciousness (Culp 2020) about how stereotypes have been taught through sport was important for these students. Juan stated in his individual reflection:

We saw how our own mind and perception of sports is totally conditioned by assimilating into sports as male or female and even thinking that certain anatomical body shapes cannot be possible for women.

For Juan, the ‘Who is Who’ activity raised a critical kinaesthetic consciousness about how sport played a role in teaching him about gender. The words Juan used are crucial. He used terms like conditioned, assimilating, sports, and body. In other words, Juan highlighted that his beliefs about gender were not just cognitive but embodied practices that ‘school bodies’ (Kirk 1998) to perform and act in socially acceptable ways. The students that participated in deportigualízate, however, not only questioned this knowledge but also raised a critical kinaesthetic consciousness about how these stereotypes were normalised. In Guillermo’s reflection, he noted the connection between gender stereotypes and ‘scientific’ knowledge:

I was the first to say that it was impossible for Teresa Portela’s arm to belong to a woman, since it was anatomically unthinkable. When we saw the picture, we were struck in silence because we were wrong.

Guillermo’s reflection is important because he critically questions how values, beliefs, and stereotypes get normalised and how they go unquestioned when justified through ‘scientific’ beliefs. In other words, cultural understandings of the body are entangled with, and legitimised through, biomedical knowledge (Landi 2019). Therefore, biomedical knowledge is not neutral but teaches implicit messages about the body and gender (Pronger 1995). Because of this activity, Guillermo critically and kinaesthetically questioned if differences between gender are as ‘natural’ as previously believed. This is important because if differences in gender are not ‘natural,’ it opens up the possibility for inequities being socially produced. In this case, social beliefs about young women and girls get embodied and can limit what they can do in sport (Fisette 2011). As Carmen stated in her reflection:

Gender equity in PE is important, so girls do not grow up with stereotypes, with a lack of confidence, with inequalities, but that they see sport in the same way as their male peers. An accessible world, a positive experience where anyone can succeed.

By raising a ‘critical kinaesthetic consciousness’ about the natural differences in gender, the ‘Who is Who’ activity also jarred students to think about how inequities are produced in sport. Rather than being natural inequities, these differences are re-imagined as social processes that are embodied through sport. Therefore, jarring pedagogies are those productive moments where spaces crack open and students can critically and kinaesthetically question taken-for-granted assumptions. In so doing, a raised critical kinaesthetic consciousness is an affective space where students question their own values in relation to society and culture.

Activity 2: Privilege walk

Today, I am excited to be with the students but nervous. I initially planned to do the privilege walk outside. But it is raining and COVID restrictions have forced us into a classroom. Rather than doing a ‘privilege walk,’ I develop a ‘digital privilege walk.’ I give each student a notecard with different descriptions of people. Some examples are: (a) man, 21, black, deaf-blind, mother is teacher, father is lawyer; (b) woman, 24, pregnant, mother is baker, father is unemployed. I ask the students to visualise, embody, and perform the person on their notecard. I tell them to imagine the house they grew up in, their friends and their life goals. The students start to react to embody new identity. Adriana states, ‘Oh, poor guy!’ Aarón follows up, ‘Yes, oh my god!’ Lucía quips, ‘I don’t have to worry, I’m a daddy’s boy.’

I announce, ‘We are running a digital race!’ I give instructions about using Kahoot to present different statements for students to read and respond ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ based on their (new) identity. I tell them their response will influence their position on the ‘leader board.’ The first statement reads: ‘I was in a sports club at a young age.’ The students click. The next statement follows, ‘My parents helped me with homework as a kid.’ Some students make facial gestures but hold their tongue, click. The class is quietly waiting for the next statement. It reads, ‘It was easy to be accepted to University.’ Carlos moans: ‘I couldn’t even finish secondary school!’ Some classmates turn around in empathy. Next statement, ‘I had opportunities to study abroad in Uni.’ Isabel quips, ‘Well, I can … thanks to my parents’ money.’ Some students laugh. ‘Lucky you!’ says Martín. Isabel continues, ‘The problem is that university accommodations are not adapted for someone like me (with a visual impairment).’ I ask her, ‘So, can you, or can’t you?’ She smiles and we proceed through the statements.

At the end of the race, Kahoot shows a podium with three people who ‘won.’ I ask them to reveal their ‘identities.’ Iván shares his ‘obvious’ identity, ‘What do you expect? Of course, I am playing a white, straight and wealthy man.’ His classmate Marta adds, ‘So am I,’ as she stands in second place. ‘And who is third?’ I ask. ‘It’s me!’ Guillermo continues, ‘And well … I’m a woman, but you know: white, straight, and wealthy too.’ A similar narrative plays out with the people who are last in the race, all from disadvantaged groups. After revealing their ‘identities,’ the students debate which categories come with more and less privilege. They don’t need me here. They ‘discover’ that diverse traits in sex, gender, ethnicity, (dis)abilities, sexual orientation and social class are marginalised. They are emboldened and raving against capitalism, discrimination, and other prejudices!

I initially let them get their feelings out but then try to ‘re-direct’ their passion. I ask, ‘What is the role of physical education and sports in continuing discrimination?’ Some students laugh. Pablo says, ‘Marina, you know the teachers here are not even able to adapt their sessions when someone has an injury, how are we going to learn to be different?’ I find it motivating they feel comfortable to speak freely, but I’m not confident enough to critique my colleagues. I re-direct the conversation again. I point out that on their cards I sometimes did not include characteristics (e.g. sexuality, ethnicity). I ask the students how they imagine their character in an ‘area’ that was missing. All the students imagine themselves occupying a position of privilege. That is, everyone imagined themselves as white, straight and (wait!) athletic and skinny. Miguel reflects, ‘Well, of course, nobody wants to be “from a marginal group”, that’s why we imagine ourselves with characteristics that give us power.’ Most students nod their head in agreement with a mix of obviousness but also shame.

I ask again, ‘What role do we have, as sport and physical education professionals in changing this?’ The students are vocal against discrimination but when pressed about actions, they stayed silence for over a minute. Ana, breaks the silence, ‘We need strategies to teach empathy and caring in our teaching.’ Pedro adds, ‘Yes and not judge people and be interested in them.’ Leonardo comments, ‘In our society, we have to learn there are “bad” people and you must strive to achieve your goals, even if they make it difficult for you.’ Leonardo is the only Black student in the class and provides an insight that many others had not considered. After he speaks, silence falls again because students did not know how to respond. A new teacher is waiting in front of the door with a grim face, crossed arms, and staring at us with impatience. Time runs out. It is time to go back to reality … again.

Intersectional empathy and experimental praxis

One could argue it is easier to critique systems rather than transform them (Kirk 2020). In either case, it is important to target our critique (and transformation) within systems we are part of. The Privilege Walk was meant to provoke critical thinking in a way that students could relate to their lived realities. Iván and Luis stated this in their group interview:

Iván:

It reflected our society (…) How it is segregated by economic status, by condition, … and it impacted me a lot, really (…) it made me think a lot.

Marina:

What about you, Luis?

Luis:

This activity? I also loved it (…) the context helps to realize the problem of inequality, the seriousness of these inequalities.

For both Iván and Luis, the ‘context’ of the prompts was relatable to their lives (e.g. sport, university). Therefore, they saw how the Privilege Walk ‘reflected their society.’ This shifts critical inquiry from a cognitive practice to an emplaced activity where theories ‘come to life’ in relation to culture. Not everyone experiences culture the same way. Thus, debating was important because it is a dialectical process and interchange of ideas from diverse perspectives. Two students left these statements in their anonymous evaluations when asked about ‘positive’ experiences:

The debate that has been generated and how we were able to freely express our opinion and know that of others.

The debate, time flies when we all participate, it is more enriching to listen to each other and debate different ideas than not to listen to someone just as if it were a monologue.

It is important that students felt there was value in expressing their opinions. Importantly, they also said it was ‘enriching to listen to each other.’ Thus, it is important that students discuss their shared experiences of a similar event (e.g. sports, university) because they are different depending on their identity positions. Therefore, the students shared a similar ‘common ground’ (Ahmed 2004) in sport, education, and PESTE. Yet, their experiences of this ‘common ground’ were different because they had differing social identities (e.g. gender, race, social class). By listening to the experiences of people from other subject positions, students can build empathy toward others as they share that ‘common ground’ moving forward.

If we accept that critical pedagogy is about embodied feelings (e.g. jarring, guilt), we must also consider that it covers a range of feelings – including love (hooks 1994). Love is not limited to romance but is expressed in many relationships through acts like caring (e.g. friend, mentor, family). The students stated that learning about different stories helped to develop empathy and care for others. These comments were left in the anonymous class evaluations:

I imagined myself as a different person than I am. I had to internalize and empathise with this person’s feelings.

Putting ourselves in another person’s shoes, thinking and imagining what their characteristics were and answer questions, to think about how society treats them.

A key element of deportigualízate was expanding the range of embodied experiences for students. Whilst it is not possible to fully understand the lived experiences of others, it is helpful to consider their struggles. Therefore, building empathy was a dynamic process of ‘putting one’s feet into another persons’ shoes’ but also thinking about those experiences may be different for unique social identities (e.g. race, social class). Empathy then, needs to be explored using intersectionality, but also made relevant to the common ground or shared culture. One factor relevant to sport in Spain was machismo.¹ Luis stated the following in a group interview:

It was focused obviously on machismo, a way of facing machismo, but you put other things in  …  if I’m not mistaken, you put Black, social issues, economic issues, and that I also think that contextualizes machismo  … 

Luis recognised that a purpose of the activity was to challenge sexism (or Machismo). Yet, he also understood that machismo cannot be isolated from other social factors but rather intersects with ethnicity, social class, ability, and others. This is important because as students realised they shared a ‘common ground’ (e.g. Machismo), they also figured out that common ground oppressed people in different ways. Luis and Carlos continued:

Luis:

In the end, everyone has experienced some sort of discrimination. So we can all relate to how it feels. In this activity, you touch our hearts because we all experience that inequality. That is what unifies us, the fact that we all experience struggle.

Carlos:

Yes, you did a lot of that, emotional blows, didn’t you? (…) I also remember  …  it was also a boy or girl of this or that family, in the end, that touches you inside and even the most narrow-minded person says ‘fuck!’ Something is happening at that moment.

Intersectional empathy is recognising that we may be participating in the same event, but our experiences of that event are different depending on our unique social identities. Intersectional empathy is a shared ‘starting point’ (Ahmed 2017) where PESTE students explored why experiences are different and consider ways of changing physical education to be more inclusive.

In critical pedagogy, one way to ‘imagine’ how (physical) education can be done differently, is by using praxis (Freire 1970). deportigualízate required students to complete workbooks at home and do activities with others in their communities. This is one way to combine theory and practice (praxis). Pamela shared her experience in her group interview:

I was blown away by the Privilege walk. And then when I put it into practice, in-person, doing steps, how well it came out, it was like … I have fallen in love with this activity.

Using the privilege walk in Pamela’s sport setting was unexpected. Indeed, she was expected to use intersectionality to analyse some event in her community. Yet, she took it a step further by using her time with young people in her coaching role to enact the ‘Privilege Walk.’ This is significant because Pamela reconsidered which knowledge was important for her to teach (e.g. skills, tactics, equity) and be courageous enough to try something new. When asked why she ‘fell in love’ with the activity, she continued:

If you have them get into the new identity and talk to them, they physically see each other. They see who is first, who is last  …  and when they start thinking about it, it changes their face. I didn’t think it would go so well, and it went so well that I said ‘Wow!’ I want to use it with more people or with other groups to see how it works  … 

There are two interesting points to this passage. The first is that Pamela was moved by deportigualízate, and in being moved, she wanted to shift her own practice. In this way, deportigualízate could be about spreading tiny ripples of movement. If the student acts as one ripple, they may go on to embed praxis-based activities in their own settings potentially producing more ripples and greater movement. The second is the repetitive (but different) nature of the movements. When Pamela used the activity in her own setting, there is a repetition of similar movements (e.g. jarring, emotions, walking). Yet, these movements are experienced differently because the people and cultures are different. Therefore, the activity had a shared common ground, but the experiences and outcomes were diverse. In this way, critical pedagogy may not be about provoking a particular transformation (Kirk 2020) but rather is an experimental praxis where critical pedagogies may produce different results with diverse people and cultures.

Conclusions

We started the paper with Ahmed’s (2010) statement, ‘We are moved by things. And in being moved, we make things’ (33). Reflecting on the purpose of this paper, perhaps the aim could be (re-)formulated to explore ‘what movements does deportigualízate produce amongst Spanish PESTE students.’ Our findings suggest deportigualízate relied on a range of factors including theory, embodiment, and affect to move students emotionally and intellectually around issues of equity in physical activity.

deportigualízate is a critical intersectional pedagogy that ‘jars’ students to produce embodied transformations. Jarring pedagogy produces forces that affect the body in a range of ways (emotionally, cognitively, physically). We saw this in the ‘Who is Who’ activity where students were shocked, ashamed, and surprised. Part of this ‘jarring,’ however, is about raising a critical kinaesthetic consciousness (Culp 2020) where students draw on their experiences to employ emplaced criticality. Here, students identify and critique the oppressive structures that affect their shared communities. This was apparent when students criticise the different systems that affect people based on their gender, sexuality, ability, social class, race, and other factors. They drew on their experiences but also considered the experiences of others. In so doing, the students recognised that they shared a similar ‘common ground’ (e.g. PESTE, sport, schools) but also had different experiences within those similar spaces.

In understanding the different experiences, the students thought about one another more carefully and empathetically. They thought about how others reacted to activities and how they may be affected differently. In so doing, they developed empowering relationships where they learned new knowledge and supported one another. Importantly, for some students they drew on this new knowledge to develop/ adapt activities to experiment with embedded transformative praxis. We saw this with Pamela who adapted the ‘Privilege Walk’ activity based on the new knowledge she developed from her classmates and changed her sport practices. Thus, deportigualízate is about creating movements, ‘a small wave (…) here, there, each movement making another possible, another ripple, outward, reaching’ (Ahmed 2017, 3).

Lastly, whilst most of the responses from students were positive, it is unrealistic (and unfair to the reader) to think this was an easy and straightforward process. There were times of conflict, resistance and of course, outright rejection. These conflicts, however, enriched debates and may have added to different forms of understanding. There were times when relationships were not empowering and were problematic. Even the lessons used have limitations; for example, relying on (and reinforcing) the very gender binaries we sought to disrupt. Yet, this process is ‘sticky’ (Ahmed 2017) and imperfect. Perhaps those sticky (and imperfect) moments can lead to movements and change over time. Or in the case of deportigualízate, multiple ripples of embodied transformation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Xunta de Galicia [grant number ED481A-2019/028].

Notes

1 ‘Machismo’ is a socially used term in Spain that refers to a type of sexism. It encompasses a set of attitudes, norms, behaviors, and practices that reinforce and preserve masculine and heterosexual dominance.