Fever pitch: spatial, material, and temporal organisational dimensions of gendered peer relations on the school football pitch

ABSTRACT

We investigate the importance of spatial, material, and organisational factors to gendered peer relations on the school football pitch. The study is part of an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from preschool class up to grade eight (approximately ages 5–13). The findings in this study are based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with pupils at three schools in Sweden. Our findings illustrate how social-ecological elements of spatial, material, and organisational factors such as school design, the material construction of the pitches, and the temporal organisation of the space through scheduling promote gendered positioning and fevered interactions which influence peer relations and sometimes contribute to degrading treatment, harassment and bullying. Our study demonstrates how these processes need to be understood as complexly related to social-ecological factors beyond the football pitch setting.

KEYWORDS:

• School
• gender
• peer relations
• football
• bullying
• ethnography

Introduction

The school playground is a space where pupils form friendships, construct social identities, and have a degree of freedom to decide over the activities they engage in (Baines, Blatchford, and Golding 2020; Paechter and Clark 2007). Unfortunately, some areas of the playground may be dominated by certain pupils (Mulryan-Kyne 2014) and may be used in such a way that contributes to degrading treatment, harassment and bullying (Fram and Dickmann 2012; Frelin and Grannäs 2014; Zumbrunn et al. 2013). Previous research has shown that the football pitch is an area of the playground that is commonly dominated by certain pupils and is a site for the configuration and reinforcement of hegemonic masculinity (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017; Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez 2019, 2021; Mayeza 2017; Spark, Porter, and de Kleyn 2019). Hegemonic masculinity can be understood as a ‘configuration of gender practice’ (Connell 1995, 77) at the local, regional, and global level (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) that serves to establish and reinforce a hierarchical order that operates to both exclude girls and to position boys in a social hierarchy according to their perceived masculinities (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017).

Football has been discussed in terms of the heightened excitement and feverish emotions that the game evokes, as in ‘football fever’ (e.g. Ricatti and Klugman 2020) and ‘fever pitch’ (e.g. Hornby 1996). Such feverishness entails that school football pitches are sometimes characterised by rough play that serves to exclude certain pupils from participating in games (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017). Such rough-housing may also serve to characterise football pitches as masculine spaces, where girls are often excluded from, or during, games because of perceptions that they are not good at playing or do not want to play (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017; Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez 2019, 2021). Perceptions of the football pitch as a masculine space may also lead to many boys experiencing pressure to participate in football (Mierzwinski and Velija 2020) and viewing fevered interactions on the football pitch as a normal part of the peer climate (Mierzwinski and Velija 2020; Ringrose and Renold 2010).

The social status of boys is often connected to their in-game masculine performances, with such performances subject to the policing of peers during games (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017). Such gender policing can take the form of low-level forms of gender regulation, such as the one-off use of degrading treatment, or more systematic and severe bullying interactions (Payne and Smith 2016; Ringrose and Renold 2010). Indeed, while some girls may be subjected to degrading treatment, harassment and/or bullying for contravening dominant femininity norms when engaging in ‘too much’ football (Clark and Paechter 2007; Mayeza 2017), some boys may also be subjected to degrading treatment, harassment and/or bullying for either not playing football and being perceived as crossing normative gender boundaries (Mayeza 2017), or playing in such a way as to bring their masculinity into question (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez 2019, 2021; Mayeza 2017).

In the Swedish school context, the term bullying is commonly used to distinguish between one-off acts of degrading treatment (e.g. hitting and name-calling) and harassment (i.e. degrading treatment connected to discriminatory grounds such as gender and ethnicity) and repeated ones (i.e. bullying) (Swedish National Agency for Education 2022). Swedish schools are required to address all incidents of degrading treatment and harassment, rather than only focusing on repeated incidents. Despite research highlighting the complexity of bullying, there is still a tendency in schools to understand incidents of degrading treatment, harassment and bullying in terms of the negative behaviour of individual pupils (Swedish National Agency for Education 2022). While there has been considerable research into school bullying, there has been little focus on how the school built environment impacts bullying processes (Francis et al. 2022; Horton, Forsberg, and Thornberg 2020).

In this paper, we explore the importance of spatial, material, and organisational factors of the school environment to gendered peer relations on the school football pitch and how these factors may contribute to the evocation of feverish emotions, and to degrading treatment, harassment and/or bullying when they reach a fever pitch (i.e. a state of intense excitement or agitation). In doing so, we take a social-ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner 1977), which broadens out the focus from the behaviour of individuals and opens up for a consideration of the importance of spatial, material and organisational aspects of the school environment.

A social-ecological perspective

Social-ecological perspectives have been used to investigate the complexity of various phenomena, including aspects of school climate (e.g. Wang and Degol 2016) and school bullying (e.g. Espelage et al. 2015). Social-ecological perspectives consider, for example, individual characteristics, peer group processes, the school environment, school-home relations, policy decisions, and societal norms (Espelage et al. 2015; Valido et al. 2021). A social-ecological perspective on gendered peer relations attends to how such relations are nested within four interconnected systems: the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystems (Bronfenbrenner 1977, 1979). The microsystem refers to the immediate context wherein individuals interact with one another within a particular setting, such as a school. The mesosystem refers to the interrelation between different microsystems and emerges whenever the individual moves into a new setting, such as an after-school football club. The exosystem is an extension of the mesosystem and refers to those settings in which events occur that affect the individual, but where they are not involved as active participants, such as activities at the school organisational level. Finally, the macrosystem refers to dominant societal and cultural norms such as those related to age, gender, and sexuality, as well as legal frameworks, such as regulations about school architectural design (Bronfenbrenner 1977, 1979).

Studies utilising a social-ecological framework to investigate school bullying have tended to focus on peer interactions within the microsystem setting (i.e. the school) (Carrera, DePalma, and Lameiras 2011; Horton 2016). Fewer studies have examined the significance of the ‘particular physical and material characteristics’ (Bronfenbrenner 1979, 22) of the school microsystem setting (Francis et al. 2022; Horton 2016; Horton, Forsberg, and Thornberg 2020). As Bronfenbrenner (1977) pointed out, it is important to investigate not only the relations between individuals or groups of individuals but also the relations between those and the environment within which they interact. Gendered peer relations on the football pitch are influenced by spatial and material aspects of the setting, for example in terms of school, playground and football pitch design (Fram and Dickmann 2012; Frelin and Grannäs 2014; Mayeza 2017; Spark, Porter, and de Kleyn 2019), lack of space and pupil density, and resource scarcity (Horton, Forsberg, and Thornberg 2020; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017). Gendered peer relations on the football pitch are also influenced by temporal organisational aspects such as the unstructured nature of activities (Mulryan-Kyne 2014; Vaillancourt et al. 2010; Woolley 2019), scheduling (Zumbrunn et al. 2013), and teacher presence and involvement (Clark and Paechter 2007; Craig, Pepler, and Atlas 2000; Horton, Forsberg, and Thornberg 2020; Spark, Porter, and de Kleyn 2019).

By utilising a social-ecological perspective, it is thus possible to explore how the spatiality, materiality, and temporal organisation of the school football pitch contribute to the evocation of feverish emotions, and to degrading treatment, harassment and school bullying when these reach fever pitch. A social-ecological perspective also helps us to examine how microsystem processes in school might be related to the meso-, exo- and macrosystems.

Materials and methods

The study is part of a larger ethnographic research project focusing on the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling. The findings in this article stem from fieldwork conducted at three comprehensive schools in Sweden, which we call Hillside, Woodland, and Clifton. After receiving ethical approval from the regional ethical review board, we contacted the school principals and informed them about the focus of the project. We were then invited to the schools, where we presented the project to school staff, and to the teachers and pupils of the relevant classes. Informed consent was obtained from all participants and pseudonyms have been used for the schools and pupils to ensure confidentiality.

Hillside is a municipal school located in a town with an estimated 4000 inhabitants in a residential community located close to a medium-sized Swedish city. Hillside has 220 pupils divided into seven classes, with one class per grade from preschool class up to grade six (i.e. ages 5–13). Woodland is a municipal school located in an administrative district of a medium-sized Swedish city. The school has 350 pupils divided into 16 classes, from preschool class up to grade six. Clifton is a private school located on the outskirts of a medium-sized Swedish city. Clifton has 150 pupils divided into five classes from preschool class up to grade six, and a preschool. Grades 1–3 (i.e. ages 7–10) and grades 4–6 (i.e. ages 10–13) are mixed-age classes.

We conducted fieldwork for 8–10 weeks at each school, spending two–three weeks with one preschool class, one second-grade class, and one fifth-grade class at each school. In total, we conducted roughly six months of fieldwork, with fieldnotes written down in field notebooks. Prior to conducting participant observations, we conducted interviews with the schools’ pupil health team or school safety team. During fieldwork, we interacted with pupils and teachers, but focused our attention on the pupils’ daily activities, their interactions with peers and teachers, various spaces of the school, and school and classroom rules. We spent our time in the schools much like the pupils themselves and did not assist the teachers in their work except on a few occasions when explicitly asked, for example by walking at the end of the line when crossing a street to ensure the safety of younger pupils. Our involvement in peer activities varied, sometimes actively participating in games and othertimes simply observing. When necessary, we also provided assistance and support to pupils.

Participant observations informed the interviews with teachers and pupils, which were conducted towards the end of the fieldwork. In total, we interviewed 21 teachers and 121 pupils from the three schools. This article is based on participant observations and interviews with pupils (see Table 1), which included 31 group interviews (three–six pupils in each) with pupils from preschool class (i.e. ages 5–6), second grade (i.e. ages 8–9), and fifth grade (i.e. ages 11–12). Due to mixed-age classes at Clifton, three interview groups included pupils from first grade (i.e. ages 7–8), two interview groups included pupils from third grade (i.e. ages 9–10), two interview groups included pupils from fourth grade (i.e. ages 10–11), and one interview group included pupils from sixth grade (i.e. ages 12–13). One individual interview was also conducted with a sixth-grade pupil after he requested to be interviewed late in the fieldwork. All interviews were conducted in assigned rooms at the schools to ensure confidentiality and ranged from 20 min to 2 h in duration. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Fieldnotes were typed up into Word documents to facilitate analysis.

Table 1. Numbers of participating pupils in interviews, organised by grade and school.

	Grade
	Preschool class	Grade 2	Grade 5	Total
Hillside School	14	16	17	47
Clifton School	9	16^a	12^b	37
Woodland School	10	13	14	37
Total	33	45	43	121

Note: ^amixed grades including 1–3, ^bmixed grades including 4–6.

Analysis was guided by constructivist grounded theory and involved initial, focused and theoretical coding (Charmaz 2014). A recurring pattern identified during the initial coding was the school football pitches’ association with disputes, fights, and bullying. During focused coding, we specifically focused on aspects related to the football pitch. In contrast to a Glaserian grounded theory (Glaser 2014), constructivist grounded theory rejects naïve inductivism and a tabula rasa researcher ideal that ignores previous research and theories. Instead, constructivist grounded theory acknowledges that the research process is influenced by the researchers’ positionality, knowledge, assumptions and training. Furthermore, it argues that researchers should begin a grounded theory study with reading literature and using an open mind instead of an empty head (Charmaz 2014; Thornberg 2012). Accordingly, we began our study with the social-ecological perspective as a starting point and ‘a loose frame for looking’ (Charmaz 2014, 31) at the school football pitch and what was going on there. We did not force theories on our data but remained as open as possible and followed leads that we interpreted in the data. Thus, there was an iterative process between literature, data gathering and analysis (Thornberg 2012).

In the theoretical coding, we explored the relationship between concepts, and the social-ecological perspective was further incorporated to account for the interplay of factors. In line with our grounded theory approach, we use those aspects of the social-ecological perspective that make the best analytical fit with our participants’ main concerns (Charmaz 2014; Forsberg 2022). Our findings highlight how school design, material construction of the pitches, and the temporal organisation of the space through scheduling influence gendered peer relations on the football pitch by raising tension levels, and fuelling fevered interactions, gender positioning, and sometimes even degrading treatment, harassment and/or bullying.

Findings

Playing football was a largely unstructured within-school activity and one of many playground activities pupils chose to engage in during their breaktime. It was a popular activity attracting a large number of pupils at all schools. The courses of the games were largely decided by the pupils. Teachers were mainly involved as breaktime monitors but also had a responisibility to handle incidents such as disputes and bullying as part of the schools’ broader goals of creating safe and inclusive environments for pupils. Our findings demonstrate how the school football pitches were social arenas for interactions and incidents contradicting such goals. Interactions were rather characterised by tensions and emotions, which sometimes led to competitive processes, such as demonstrating football skills, wanting to win, and wanting to play ‘real’ football characterised by rough play and hard tackling. These interactions were also related to gendered positioning where playing rough and engaging in competitive play were associated with a local form of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). This contributed to situations where girls were sometimes excluded from playing football. Our findings thus reflect previous research pointing to the importance of gendered, social hierarchical, and competitive processes on the football pitch (e.g. Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez 2019, 2021; Mayeza 2017; Spark, Porter, and de Kleyn 2019).

However, we also illustrate how various spatial, material, and temporal organisational factors raised tension levels and thus led to gender positioning, fevered interactions, and sometimes degrading treatment, harassment and/or bullying. While these elements (i.e. spatiality, materiality, and temporal organisation) at times overlap, we deal with each of them in turn to facilitate clarity. These elements affected the football pitches at all three schools, but some differences will be highlighted throughout the findings.

Spatiality, physicality, and negative peer relations

From a social-ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner 1979), the spatial elements highlighted the importance of microsystem factors such as the size of the space in relation to the school playground and how the space was used and perceived based on its connection to gender, fevered interactions, and negative peer relations. Each school has a specific space for football taking up a relatively large percentage of the outdoor space of the school. At Hillside, the football pitch constitutes a separate fenced-in area located next to one of the playgrounds, but at Woodland and Clifton the football pitches are incorporated parts of the playground spaces and could just have easily been used for other playground activities.

At Clifton, the football pitch is at one end of the playground and could, like the pitch at Hillside, thus be easily avoided. Woodland, though, has a relatively small playground for the number of pupils, which is divided into two parts by a mesh fence. Even though the pitch is fenced in on three sides, the pitch constitutes one half of the school playground, and other activities often occurred at the non-fenced-in end of the pitch. At the other end of the pitch there is also an open section through which pupils often passed on their way to and from the school’s gymnasium and handicraft rooms. This meant that the football pitch could not be easily avoided, and even pupils who were not playing football were at risk of being negatively affected, and even hurt, because of the physicality of the space. From a social-ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner 1979), this highlights exo- and macrosystem factors such as how architectural ideas and playground designs influence the construction of the pitches and shape the microsystem interactions occurring there.

Some pupils at Woodland spent their breaks either watching the football from the open end or playing with their own football at the edge of the football pitch. One fifth-grade girl, Tyra, explained why she thought the football pitch was the least safe space at the school:

Right now, I think it’s the football pitch … because when you go to PE class, sometimes you cross the football pitch, then maybe there are people who are playing football and then maybe you get hit by a ball. Once I got a ball in the face.

Tyra highlighted the risks associated with crossing the football pitch on the way to the school gymnasium in terms of being struck by stray balls. Sally, in the same interview, explained that it was also pretty unsafe just to be near the football pitch because of the risk of being struck by a football. The football pitch created a sense of insecurity because of the risk of unpredictable harm when in close proximity to it.

Another reason for why the football pitches at the schools were considered to be unsafe spaces, particularly for girls and younger pupils, was the gender positioning that occurred there, as games of football were often dominated by boys engaging in rough play. This points to microsystem factors of how the space was used, in that it was considered to be a ‘rough’ and ‘tough’ space where a certain degree of physicality was expected in the course of games. The physicality and the associated toughness and supposed straightforwardness of boys were raised by some fifth-grade boys from Hillside, who talked about the gendered differences between boys and girls:

Miko:

The boys can show more that they don’t like [someone], if you play a game, for example, that you don’t pass them the ball.

Liam:

Or just like this: you shoot the ball, like in football, you kick the ball at that person and then you just say, ‘Oh, that wasn’t on purpose’ with a sarcastic voice like this.

Miko:

But then, in the lessons, you just say ‘sorry’ and then the other says ‘It’s cool.’

Liam:

Then it’s sorted out, then you don’t care much more about it later.

The boys suggested that during conflicts boys would not pass the ball to certain people or would shoot a ball at someone and claim it ‘wasn’t on purpose’. They talked about such incidents as easy to resolve (e.g. by saying ‘sorry’ afterwards) and not something boys really ‘care much more about’, but also alluded to the ways in which physicality at the football pitch could take the form of disguised degrading treatment and/or bullying interactions associated with gendered and competitive processes.

The association between gendered and competitive processes was highlighted more explicitly at Clifton, where teachers had restricted two sixth-grade boys from playing on the same team. The two boys, Roland and Simon, played for the same football team outside of school and were considered to be the best footballers at the school. They were often captains when choosing teams during the breaks, but had unsuccessfully tried to convince their teachers that it would be best if they were on the same team. As Rickard, a fifth-grade boy in the same class as Roland and Simon, pointed out, the teachers’ decision to not allow them to be on the same team was an attempt to stop Roland and Simon teaming up and targeting another boy:

And when we play football, then there are two people who always want to be on the same team, and they are not allowed because they keep on doing this, they shoot at people on purpose, and they do it against a certain person. You know who it is? They kind of shoot so that it goes into the goal and so on. … And then they [the teachers] said they could not be on the same team, but then when David [a teacher] is not there, then they make sure to be on the same team sometimes.

Rickard indicated that Roland and Simon were repeatedly targeting, and hence bullying, another boy by shooting the ball at him whenever they were on the same team. Not only did they shoot the football at him, but they also sought to score goals off him, and thus further degrade him by positioning him as partially at fault for the goals that they scored. While teachers attempted to deal with the situation by separating Roland and Simon, the situation appeared to be ongoing, because teachers were not always present at the football pitch. These spatial elements highlight not only micro- (i.e. use of space, physicality, and gender positioning) and mesosystem-level factors (i.e. participation in out-of-school football), but also macrosystem-level norms about competitiveness and the masculine nature of football.

Materiality, fevered interactions, and negative peer relations

The material elements point to the abrasive materiality of the football pitches and how this may promote gendered positioning, fevered interactions, and sometimes even degrading treatment, harassment and/or bullying. From a social-ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner 1979), the material elements raise questions about how interactions on the football pitches are shaped by exo- and macrosystem factors related to architectural ideas and playground designs. The football pitches at all three schools were built using abrasive materials increasing the risk of pupils getting seriously injured. The football pitches at Woodland and Clifton were made of concrete, while the football pitch at Hillside was made of gravel. At Woodland, the football pitch also had raised concrete edges, as noted in the fieldnotes at the start of fieldwork in late January:

There is a football pitch that is surrounded by a mesh fence. There is no grass. It is concrete with raised edges, and I noticed that a boy fell and hit his hip on the raised concrete. I went to help him up, but he said he was ok.

Teachers at both Woodland and Clifton were aware of the obvious safety issues related to having concrete football pitches. During a break at Woodland, one of the teachers expressed his frustration about the lack of focus on improving the design of the football pitch:

I talked to Haris at the edge of the football pitch. He has worked here for 19 years and said he has made suggestions for improving the school football area. For example, expanding the area out past where the bikes are parked and making the ground safer. He pointed out the raised edges and said that whenever something happens, they focus on ‘interventions’ instead of prevention. He said that, in 19 years, the municipality and the owners of the property have not done anything. Our conversation stopped when Lennart [a second-grade pupil] came over. A boy from another class had kicked him.

Haris expressed his frustration that rather than changing the design to prevent injuries, the focus was on intervening when something occurred. As Haris pointed out, the material design of the football pitch could cause significant damage, for example, if a pupil fell and struck their head. Falls were not uncommon during games of football, as highlighted by the following fieldnote from Clifton in mid-November:

I walked down to the ball area, where a group of kids were playing floorball with a teacher, and another group were playing football, while being watched by a special education teacher. Roland, a sixth-grader, who is much better than the others at football, skipped by but missed the ball as he went to shoot. He spun, fell backwards and smacked his head on the concrete. I heard it clearly. I rushed over to help him, and then the teacher ran over, helped him up, and walked him back to the school building.

At all three schools, pupils raised injury concerns related to the design of the pitches both in terms of the lack of space and the abrasive materiality. When asked whether it would be easier if the football pitch was bigger, a second-grade boy at Woodland, Ajay, explained:

And it would be better if there was grass that you slipped on, then you wouldn’t hurt yourself, because grass isn’t as hard as gravel. Someone maybe just, someone just runs and someone just kicks a ball and then you just get it right behind you on your feet and then you fall, but you don’t get hurt. It has happened to me on the football pitch, me and [another boy] were playing once, so [he] wanted to pass to me but I ran away, so he hit my feet, so I hit my knees and it started bleeding a lot … it hurt like hell.

As Ajay highlighted, it is easier to get injured on a concrete football pitch than on a pitch made of grass. This is not only significant for the potential injuries sustained, but also has implications for the extent to which tensions on the football pitch may boil over and interactions may become fevered and conflictual. This was highlighted by a pair of fifth-grade boys at Hillside:

Liam:

I think there are more conflicts, for example on the football pitch, if you get pushed or–

Daniel:

Kind of tackled.

Liam:

Yeah, tackled quite hard on the pitch, and then you hurt yourself because it’s gravel, then it can become a pretty big conflict because then the two people will be really angry at each other.

As pointed out by Liam and Daniel, the abrasive materiality of the football pitch can lead to more conflicts because the effects of the initial action (for example, being pushed or tackled) can lead to injury, which may not have occurred on a grass football pitch. This can lead to an emotionally charged, or fevered, interaction, whereby the pupils involved get ‘really angry at each other’.

The ever-present risk of injury meant that pupils might overreact to what may otherwise be somewhat innocuous challenges, and this might not only lead to degrading treatment and/or harassment, but also more sustained bullying situations. Hian, a fifth grader at Hillside, explained how a ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ challenge in a game led to a more sustained bullying relationship with a boy, Brian, from another class:

I remember Brian from the fourth grade. You know shoulder to shoulder in football. I didn’t even do it hard and after that he started calling me an idiot immigrant, no, idiot negro, and asking me, like, why I’d come to this country. And he started pushing me, tearing at my clothes, kicking me, hitting, and then finally he started chasing me. So I tried, I didn’t even want a fight because it’s just unnecessary, it’s a waste of time. And he started following me all the time and kicking me as hard as he could right here, like here, yeah.

Hian explained how his ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ challenge was not hard, but still led to what he referred to as ‘a fight’. Hian expressed that he was not only subjected to degrading treatment (e.g. being pushed and hit) and racial and xenophobic harassment (e.g. being called an ‘idiot negro’ and asked why he had come to Sweden), but also more sustained bullying in terms of being followed ‘all the time’ and kicked. Hian’s bullying experience highlights how the abrasive materiality of the football pitch may lead to fevered interactions that can spill over into other areas of the school.

Hian’s experience also reveals how such situations may be made more likely by different grades coming together in a confined physical space, where injuries can easily occur due to the competitive and gendered processes taking place there. This highlights the ways in which the temporal organisation of space through scheduling and the organisation of breaktimes at the exo- and mesosystem levels can influence the use of space, competition over space, and who engages in football. Swedish macrosystem-level norms and exosystem-level school rules about everyone having to be outdoors during breaktime also have an impact on these interactions.

Temporal organisation, fevered interactions, and differentiating practices

The temporal organisation elements address how scheduling of grades and differentiating practices may promote gendered positioning, fevered interactions, and incidents of degrading treatment, harassment, and/or bullying on the school football pitches. From a social-ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner 1979), exosystem-level factors of scheduling and how schools deal with issues on the football pitches are made relevant. In terms of scheduling, the football pitches at all three schools were spaces where different groups came together at certain times, as part of their scheduled breaks. As a second-grade boy, Kurt, at Woodland, explained: ‘there are usually conflicts on the football pitch when we are out during breaks because everyone is usually there’. As Kurt suggested, having a large number of pupils scheduled on the football pitch at the same time can lead to conflicts.

Many conflicts were related to co-operative and competitive tensions about which rules apply, which positions to play, and who should decide. Some conflicts, however, involved more fevered elements, such as shooting the ball into someone’s stomach or kicking their feet out from under them. Some of these incidents appeared to be caused by different grades trying to take control of the space. Highlighting the ways in which different grades competed for space on the school football pitch, and how such competition was hierarchically organised according to age, a second-grade boy, Andreas, stated:

Sometimes, we quarrel quite a lot with the third graders, but on the football pitch, the fourth graders, yeah sometimes they eat really fast and go out straight away, like Willy, and then they try to take the ball from us and … and they try to be cool like that. Sometimes they come, like from PE … Well, and then we quarrel quite a bit. But the third graders, I mean, they try to take over the whole pitch; they want to, like this; they try to decide.

Andreas suggested that the fourth graders, who were scheduled to eat later than the second graders, would hurry out to the football pitch at lunchtime, ‘try to take the ball’ from them and ‘try to be cool’, and that the third graders would also try to ‘take over the whole pitch’ and ‘try to decide’ who could play. These types of situations happened at all three schools, where mostly older boys used their higher position in the age-based school hierarchy to target younger boys. This highlights how such conflicts were related to the relative social status of the different grades and gender positioning between boys, where older and younger boys competed for use of the most popular area of the school playground.

At Hillside and Clifton, some girls also participated in games, but they were sometimes subjected to exclusionary processes and degrading comments about their supposed lack of ability. This was pointed out by two fifth-grade girls at Hillside:

Ninni:

Almost since preschool class, when I started playing football with the boys, he’s complained a lot like this: ‘Yeah, but you can’t play football, and—’

Olivia:

Ninni and I played football a lot with the boys and we heard a lot of comments like: ‘Girls shouldn’t be included because they’re not good.’

Ninni:

Yeah, people said: ‘I don’t think they should be allowed to play.’ And when you stood in line like this and chose. They just said: ‘No, we’re with the girls.’

Olivia:

‘No, not them!’

As noted by Ninni and Olivia, girls were positioned as unable to play football, as not being good at football, and as not belonging on the football pitch. They received degrading comments and were selected last when choosing teams. These incidents had been repeated and they had received degrading comments from both older and younger boys.

In an attempt to make the football pitch more inclusive for girls and end the rough play among boys, the football pitch at Hillside was designated a girls-only space once a week. However, the temporal organisation of the Hillside football pitch into a girls-only space caused tension, as highlighted during a fifth-grade class meeting:

The school day begins with a class meeting with questions and feedback from the pupil council. A question that has apparently been raised is whether there should be separate times for girls’ and boys’ football. Melody announces that girls’ football will remain but no boys’ football. Teacher Tess asks Melody if there is any reason why there will be no boys’ football and Melody says that when everyone is playing, everyone can participate but that it can be a bit rough when it is just boys’ football. Some guys react with anger. Henry asks, ‘Who says a girl cannot play rough?’ One boy shouts ‘Discrimination!’ Another boy raises his fist in the air and sarcastically says ‘Feminism’. Teacher Tess says: ‘We should never play rough. Last week we agreed that there would be no rugby-style play.’

Melody announced that girls-only days would continue, but there would be no boys-only days, as when only boys are playing, games are ‘a bit rough’. Boys are positioned as the problem, while girls are positioned as not playing rough, even though some boys reacted to these distinctions. The teacher stated that the class agreed the previous week that there should be no rough play on the football pitch whatsoever. Many boys and some girls in the class were, however, angry and frustrated about the girls-only time and viewed it as discrimination and as a means of separating girls and boys.

While the school staff had decided to create a girls-only day to end rough play and to make the football pitch more inclusive for girls, teachers were not always present to enforce the rule. On several occasions during fieldwork, fifth-grade boys hurried out after lunch to play on the football pitch during this girls-only breaktime, which then led to gender positioning interactions between pupils. Exosystem factors such as scheduling thus contributed to these social processes, as highlighted by a fieldnote from Hillside.

I walk over to the football pitch, where I count 21 pupils playing. A lot of boys from fifth grade are playing. Some disputes break out: apparently it is girls-only time today but a lot of boys are playing. Some of the third-grade boys shout at the fifth-grade boys to get away from the pitch as it is girls-only time. A fifth-grade boy, Miko, replies: ‘No girls want to play.’ A fifth-grade girl, Ninni, shouts at the boys: ‘Let them [i.e. the girls] play; the girls in third grade want to play.’ The boys leave. Ninni, Olivia, and Molly from fifth grade join the third grade girls to play.

As seen in this example, the fifth-grade boys attempted to play during girls-only time, saying that no girls wanted to play. It was also the younger boys who made the first attempt to make the older boys get off the pitch because it was girls-only time. While the third-grade girls and some of the fifth-grade girls played football during girls-only time, the involvement of the third-grade boys might be an example of them engaging in ongoing competitive status processes with boys in other grades.

Some pupils pointed out that girls-only time was problematic because it reinforced perceived distinctions between girls and boys. For instance, Ninni and Olivia suggested that instead of girls-only time, they could let girls choose to play a particular kind of football game using one of the goals, as this would allow some boys to also utilise the space, while excluding those boys who were the source of conflicts on the football pitch. In a similar way, Marcus, a boy from the same class, suggested they could allocate a break for a non-rough game, so that boys could also play without playing rough and hard. These pupils point to ways of temporally organising the space in such a way as to address the hegemonic form of masculinity dominating the space without reinforcing dominant perceptions of the inherent differences between boys and girls.

Discussion

Our findings show how fevered interactions, contestations of space, gender positioning, and incidents of degrading treatment, harassment and school bullying on the school football pitch cannot be reduced to the actions of individual pupils, or even to the interactions between pupils. Indeed, our study confirms that macrosystem norms about competitiveness and masculine prowess influence school football games (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez 2019, 2021; Spark, Porter, and de Kleyn 2019). A certain level of physicality was expected in the course of games and was regularly exhibited by boys through rough play and hard tackling (cf. Mierzwinski and Velija 2020). This local form of hegemonic masculine physicality, combined with the competitiveness of games, contributed to the exclusion of some boys and girls. While boys appeared to experience pressure to take part and thus engage physically (cf. Mierzwinski and Velija 2020), girls were positioned as non-physical in their football play. Some of the interactions that took place on the football pitches were repeated and severe, and thus constituted bullying, whereas other interactions were forms of gender policing which contributed to the context within which the fevered interactions and bullying emerged (Pascoe 2013; Payne and Smith 2016).

While our findings illustrate the importance of hegemonic masculine norms to peer relations on school football pitches, they also demonstrate how the spatiality, materiality, and temporal organisation of the school football pitches influence these gendered peer relations in various ways. Spatial aspects such as the size of the playground and the location and size of the school football pitch influenced pupils’ use of the pitch and affected pupils who were nearby. At Woodland and Clifton, the football pitches were incorporated parts of the playground spaces and could have been used for other playground activities. These spaces were, however, usually dominated by games of football, as football was a popular activity at all three schools, particularly among boys. When lots of pupils were scheduled to have a break at the same time, the football pitches became crowded, which in turn impacted the use of the pitches and led to increased competition over the use of those spaces (Clark and Paechter 2007; Martínez-Andrés et al. 2017). Indeed, decisions taken at the exosystem level about the organisation and scheduling of breaktimes, combined with macrosystem-level norms about pupils being outside during breaks, served to increase the gendered tensions that sometimes spilled over and took the form of less controlled fevered interactions, and even incidents of degrading treatment, harassment and bullying.

Spatial elements were also related to the material elements of the spaces (e.g. whether they were made of gravel or concrete). With reference to safety, both pupils and teachers suggested that the pitches should be made of grass instead. This raises questions related to the exosystem and macrosystem levels about financial decisions, playground designs, and architectural ideas influencing the construction of pitches. The abrasive materiality of the pitches also fuelled fevered interactions between pupils, because of the heightened risk of getting hurt when falling on the hard ground. As the example of Hian illustrates, such fevered interactions may continue outside of the game and develop into bullying episodes which are no longer tied to the game but rather draw on differentiating discourses of race or ethnicity.

Teachers dealt with issues of masculine gender positioning, fevered interactions, and incidents of degrading treatment, harassment and bullying at the football pitch through the temporal organisation of the space. At Clifton, this involved separating two of the more skilled boys from teaming up together and ganging up on another pupil. At Hillside, this involved the introduction of a girls-only time. However, teachers were not always present to enforce these rules, which meant that pupils were often left to deal with issues of spatiality and materiality by themselves. Enforcing a girls-only time seemed to reinforce dominant perceptions of the inherent differences between boys and girls. Rather than reducing the rough play among boys, the girls-only time seemed to fuel this form of play and add to gender positioning and fevered interactions, not only between girls and boys, but also between boys from different grades. Such findings point to the relevance of exosystem factors such as the number of teachers available and how they are scheduled to monitor playgrounds and football pitches. However, temporal organisation is not enough in itself for dealing with social hierarchical and gendered processes on football pitches. More attention needs to be placed on underlying macrosystem-level norms about the gendered distinctions between boys and girls, the dominance of physicality, and the ways it relates to a local form of hegemonic masculinity that finds expression on the football pitches.

Conclusion

The findings in this paper highlight how understanding of fevered interactions, contestations of space, gender positioning, and incidents of degrading treatment, harassment and bullying on the school football pitch cannot be reduced to the actions of individual pupils, or even to the interactions between pupils. Rather, our findings demonstrate that these interactions are complexly related to various social-ecological factors. We argue that creating truly safe and inclusive school environments for pupils requires being proactive and focusing on prevention rather than just interventions. Doing so entails focusing on how interactions on school football pitches are influenced by spatial, material, and temporal organisational dimensions and how these, in turn, are connected to different social-ecological systems beyond the microsystem football pitch setting.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the school principals who provided us with access to the schools, and to all those who participated in the study and took their time to share their experiences with us.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet [grant number: 2017-03604]