Inclusion and exclusion in multi-ethnic physical education: an intersectional perspective

ABSTRACT

Current educational policies on inclusion emphasise viewing ethnically diverse populations as a resource, yet scholars have pointed out that the Norwegian school system seems to value diversity to an only limited extent. This critique applies to physical education (PE) in Western countries. In this article, based on students’ stories from a multi-ethnic PE context, an intersectional perspective is used to investigate how processes of inclusion and exclusion are revealed. Data consist of semi-structured interviews with 17 students of diverse backgrounds and fieldnotes from observation in 56 PE lessons. Three questions are addressed: How are students’ cultural backgrounds acknowledged by teachers and students in a PE class? How are aspects of culture and ethnicity present in the activities being taught? How are aspects of race, ethnicity, and culture reflected in the communication in two multi-ethnic PE classes? The findings indicate that knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds is not considered important for PE and that taught activities silently reflect a taken-for-granted majority culture. This paper makes some reflections on the implications of those findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusion
• intersectionality
• ethnicity
• culture
• diversity
• physical education

Introduction

Globalisation and trends in migration have made Western societies ethnically and culturally diverse. In Norway, immigrants and Norwegians born of immigrant parents constituted approximately 17% of the population in 2017 (SSB, 2017). How ethnic and cultural diversity is accommodated, both in general society and in institutions, such as schools in particular, is therefore important. The educational sector has increasingly focused on social inclusion, which is understood as the school’s ability to acknowledge heterogeneity and value diverse groups of students as a resource for education (Ludvigsen, 2015; Lund, 2017; The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2013). However, scholars have found that the Norwegian school system seems to accommodate diversity to an only limited extent and that it is color-blind and insensitive towards difference, variation, and non-conformity (Ainscow & César, 2006; Haug, Nordahl, & Hansen, 2014).

There are few studies focusing on how students of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds are included in Norwegian physical education (PE) classes (Thorjussen & Sisjord, 2018). Internationally, however, scholars have suggested that PE is not exempt from the above critique (Flintoff & Dowling, 2017; Sato & Hodge, 2017). Researchers have pointed to how existing power relations in PE serve to privilege boys/men and middle-class and Western thought and how, as a consequence, certain groups of students experience marginalisation and exclusion due to their ethnic and/or cultural backgrounds (Fitzpatrick & Santamaría, 2015; Flintoff, 2015; Hastie, Martin, & Buchanan, 2006). Furthermore, the concept of inclusion itself seems to be scarcely discussed in studies of PE in ethnically diverse classes. As such, we share Evans’s (2014) concern that equity and inclusion has ‘been so much part of the mainstream, natural attitude in PE and sport in recent years that it has lost its resonance and import’ (p. 321).

The present article is part of a larger PhD project that aims to explore secondary school students’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion in PE in a multi-ethnic school context. Three questions are addressed in the article: (1) how are students’ cultural backgrounds acknowledged by teachers and students in the PE classes? (2) how are aspects of culture and ethnicity present in the activities taught? (3) how are aspects of race, ethnicity, and culture reflected in the communication in two multi-ethnic PE classes? Within a framework of intersectionality¹ (Anthias, 2006; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016), our purpose is to illuminate the ways in which culture and ethnicity are communicated and conveyed both implicitly and explicitly and how that communication may influence processes of inclusion and exclusion.

Inclusion within the framework of intersectionality

From an intersectional perspective, lived experience is an important starting point for understanding inclusion (Hill Collins, 2016). Through investigating students’ stories of their experiences within a particular context, one can gain insight into the structural processes that produce inequality and exclusion. According to Martin (1995, in Yuval-Davis, Kannabiran, & Vieten, 2006), the stories we tell about ourselves and each other can reveal processes of identification and positioning: ‘these narratives are contested, fluid and constantly changing but are clustered around some hegemonic constructions of boundaries between “self” and “other” and between “us” and “them” and are closely related to political processes’ (Yuval-Davis et al., 2006, p. 2). Hence, it is important to account for wider social and political contexts in order to examine the interplay between structures and individual experience (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016).

Central to intersectional thought is a concern for social justice and a critical examination of how unequal power relations appear as natural and taken for granted, causing society (or education) to (re)produce rather than challenge processes of exclusion in society (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016). Power relations should be analysed both via intersections – how gender, age, ethnicity, and religion constitute ‘interlocking, mutually constructing systems of power’ (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 27) – and across domains of power. In Hill Collins’s matrix of domination (Hill Collins, 2009; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016), these domains are interpersonal (‘how people relate to each other, and who is advantaged and disadvantaged within social interactions’ [Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 7]), disciplinary (how the different treatments people encounter discipline them in various ways in, for example, education), cultural (hegemonic ideas, e.g. that education provides everybody with equal opportunities), and structural (how intersecting power relations of class, gender, race, and nation shape institutions and institutional practice).

By taking an intersectional perspective, the focus changes from seeing identity as a possession, something essential and held by individuals, to considering the processes of identification and the power relations embedded in these processes (Anthias, 2006). As such, identity only makes sense as a relational concept (Bhambra, 2006). However, as pointed out by Anthias (2006), identity cannot be perceived as something we freely choose; for instance, a person might identify as Norwegian but be seen by others as a foreigner and part of an ethnic minority group. How one identifies or is identified by others in terms of ethnicity might have real consequences in the everyday experiences of students in terms of inclusion or exclusion. Furthermore, the relational aspect of intersectionality points to the rejection of binary thinking (Hill Collins, 2016). One is not necessarily only or always included or excluded.

In PE, scholars have argued that previous research has unintentionally (re)produced a view of some students as ‘problems’, or ‘bodies at risk’, providing homogeneous pictures of students with non-Western backgrounds (Fleming, 1994; Hamzeh & Oliver, 2012; Macdonald, Abbott, Knez, & Nelson, 2009). As a response, scholars have increasingly adopted intersectional perspectives, allowing for complex and contextualised understandings of individual experiences (Azzarito & Solomon, 2005; Benn, Dagkas, & Jawad, 2011; Dagkas & Hunter, 2015; Hill, 2015; Hill & Azzarito, 2012; Knez, Macdonald, & Abbott, 2012; Stride, 2014, 2016; Walseth, 2015; With-Nielsen & Pfister, 2011). By considering cross-cutting social divisions, such as gender and social class, individual differences and their opportunities and constraints can be recognised (Stride, 2014, 2016).

Intersectionality’s emphasis on difference has been raised as a critique, as it can draw attention away from a more hard-hitting analysis of power (Flintoff, Fitzgerald, & Scraton, 2008; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016). However, taking an intersectional perspective does not exclude the possibility that certain categories in some situations ‘overrule, capture, differentiate and transgress others’ (Staunæs, 2003, p. 105). We agree with scholars who argue that issues related to ethnicity often work in subtle forms and that there is a need to ‘locate’ the tensions in order to avoid reproducing the same stories (Azzarito, Simon, & Marttinen, 2017; Barker et al., 2014). Using students’ stories as a starting point, we have therefore chosen to focus particularly on ethnicity and culture.

Inclusion in Norwegian physical education

The way the Norwegian school system has included students of diverse backgrounds reflects a tension within education. On the one side, the school plays an important part in neutralising social differences to facilitate social mobility and a socially just society. On the other side, the school should be an arena in which differences are acknowledged and considered a resource (Westrheim, 2014). As a backdrop for the current study, we discuss two ways (official policy and content integration) in which this tension appears in Norwegian (physical) education; our discussion draws on international PE research relevant to these issues.

Official policy

The school has been considered an important arena in which students can become ‘Norwegian’, playing a significant role in the country’s nation-building project (Engen, 2014). As in many Western countries in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, assimilation was considered the best way of including ‘the other’ in Norway (Bhambra, 2006; Brochmann & Hagelund, 2012). The most striking example was how the indigenous Sami people were exposed to a Norwegianization policy, which was a forced assimilation into the Norwegian language and way of living that lasted until the 1970s (Skogvang, 2019).

Today, Norway has a public policy of integration. Integration is seen as a two-way process in which everybody, whatever their background, has equal social and legal rights (Brochmann & Hagelund, 2012). In turn, everybody is expected to take part in the Norwegian community and participate in education and work (Ministry of Education and Research, 2018). Scholars have argued that increasing social inequality due to immigration in Western countries encourages a ‘return to assimilation’, as assimilation is no longer contrasted with diversity but rather with ‘segregation, ghettoization and marginalization’ (Brubaker, 2001, p. 543). In Norwegian education, this trend is reflected in an increasing emphasis on common values and inclusion in the Norwegian community (Ministry of Education and Research, 2018). Dowling and Flintoff (2015) argued that Norway’s PE curriculum appears to construct the Norwegian culture of physical activity as an unarticulated neutral background; this is exemplified by the following extract from the curriculum: ‘The physical activity culture, such as play, sports, dance and outdoor life, is part of how we establish our identity in society and what we have in common’ (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2015a, unpaginated).

Scholars have pointed to how PE in western countries struggles to include diverse groups of learners (Azzarito et al., 2017; Barker, 2017; Benn & Pfister, 2013; Dagkas, Benn, & Jawad, 2011; Macdonald et al., 2009). PE, like sport, often appears as ‘color-blind’, and consequently, ethnic and cultural differences are downplayed or ignored (Barker et al., 2014). However, research shows how students in PE tend to be measured against ‘the mythic norm of the white, male, heterosexual, upper-middle-class, able individual’ (Macdonald et al., 2009, p. 3). Research has revealed how ethnic majority PE teachers tend to view ‘non-white’/‘non-Western’ male and female students through a ‘deficit perspective’ and see PE as an arena in which to ‘show them the way’ (Barker, 2017, p. 8), reflecting ‘unidirectional assimilation policies’ (van Doodewaard & Knoppers, 2018, p. 197). These findings point to the challenges and implications of an overwhelmingly white group of PE practitioners in Western countries (Douglas & Halas, 2013; Harrison, Carson, & Burden, 2010; Simon & Azzarito, 2017; Whatman, Quennerstedt, & McLaughlin, 2017). They also suggest that teachers are given insufficient preparation and follow-up for teaching in multi-ethnic contexts (Barnard Flory, 2015; Dagkas, 2007; Lleixà & Nieva, 2018; Sato & Hodge, 2017).

Content integration

Cultural diversity has been handled in the Norwegian school system through what might be termed content integration (Banks, 2006). In the 1987 curriculum, the cultural aspect of activities was made explicit for the first time in PE, with the statement that schools attended by students with an immigrant background should use the opportunity to teach children games from other countries. In the current PE curriculum, cultural knowledge is found explicitly in only one competency aim for Grades 8–10. The aim regards ‘dance’, in which students should be able to ‘perform dances from youth cultures and other cultures’ (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2015a, unpaginated). However, the core curriculum emphasises that students’ diverse cultural backgrounds should be considered a resource and enrichment in education and that the teaching should stimulate students’ ‘unique interests and abilities’ (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2015b). In general, the national curriculum is broadly defined in terms of content, with great opportunities for teachers to make local adjustments.

The way culture appears as content in PE in Norway, as well as other Western countries, has been criticised for being selective, adding to a Eurocentric core curriculum, and constructing culture as something belonging to ‘the other’, thus maintaining unequal power relations between an unnamed majority culture and minority cultures (Dowling & Flintoff, 2015; Macdonald et al., 2009; Rovegno & Gregg, 2007). There is still, however, a lack of studies investigating how the cultural aspect of activities is conveyed in everyday, regular PE lessons in Norway.

Methodology

The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two co-educational PE classes (Class A and Class B) of 26 and 25 students aged 14–16 years. The methods were participant observation (Fangen, 2010) and semi-structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The school in which the study took place is a public compulsory school in the Oslo area with approximately 40% minority language-speaking students.² About one third of the students in Class A and almost half of the students in Class B were minority language-speaking. Access was obtained through a PE teacher from a colleague’s network. The PE teacher had worked at the school for several years and had good relations with school management, other teachers at the school, and students. In this way, the teacher served as a gatekeeper (Fangen, 2010) and facilitated the project’s approval by the management of the school.

The first author conducted the empirical investigation. The data consist of written field notes from observations of 56 PE lessons and semi-structured interviews with 17 students. The observations took place periodically between March 2014 and November 2015. During the observations, the researcher made jottings that were rewritten into extensive field notes later the same day or the next. The researcher pursued an open and exploratory approach to the field in order to increase the possibility of discovering the unexpected (Fangen, 2010). However, the theory and literature regarding inclusion and PE in multicultural contexts informed the observations.

At the end of the fieldwork, 11 students from Class A and six students from Class B were interviewed. The interviews, lasting from 50 to 80 min, were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Students were selected for interviews according to a generic purposive sampling technique (Bryman, 2016) to reflect the diversity among students. Nine girls (five with ethnic majority background, four with ethnic minority background) and eight boys (three with ethnic majority background, five with ethnic minority background) were interviewed. All interviewees were born and raised in Norway. The parents of the interviewees with an ethnic minority background came from countries in South Asia, the Middle East, West and North Africa, and North America. Based on the observations and field notes, additional selection criteria were the students’ visible skills (e.g. ball possession during games or test results in athletics), attitudes expressed towards the subject (e.g. engaged or opposing), and students belonging to different social groupings within the class.

During the study period, two male and two female teachers were involved, all of whom were white, ethnic Norwegians. Two had completed PE teacher education, one had general teacher education, and one had no formal teacher education. All had a minimum of two years of teaching experience (one of them had more than 10 years). Though the teachers varied in educational background and level of experience, the analysis revealed great similarities in how they handled issues of culture, ethnicity, and race in their practice. To preserve anonymity, the teachers are presented as one character and referred to as ‘s/he’.

The teachers taught a broad spectrum of sports, sporting techniques, games, and fitness exercises that can be described as traditional in the Norwegian context, with an emphasis on various ball games as well as athletics/track and field, gymnastics, and outdoor education. In line with the national guidelines for the subject, the students received 60 min of PE each week. Additionally, the equivalent of 30 min of theoretical lessons per week were provided over the school year.

Analysis

We analysed the data followed Riessman’s (2008) description of a thematic narrative analysis. We adopted a broad definition of narrative, seeing it as ‘extended accounts of lives in context’ (Riessman, 2008, p. 6), developed during interviews or constructed in field notes. The first step involved coding all the sequences and episodes in which students and/or teachers explicitly brought up issues related to race, culture, and ethnicity in interviews or in lessons, as captured in the field notes. Second, using the data, theory, and policy documents, such as the curriculum, the codes were organised according to the three themes formulated as questions (Riessman, 2008).

A central aspect of thematic narrative analysis is to work with each interview transcript (or field notes from a field visit) separately (Riessman, 2008). It was therefore important not to separate the extracts from the interviewee/participant when interpreting the sequences of text. Thematic narrative analysis focuses on the time and place of narration. For instance, we looked for the silences in the data (Munk & Agergaard, 2018) to consider what might be missing and why, and we also looked for situations in which the participants remained silent, for example, when the teacher did not respond to a student’s comment. In accordance with Fangen (2010), the accounts were first interpreted in light of the data: the interview, interview with peers, and field notes. Secondly, the data were interpreted in light of the national and political context and previous research in the field of PE/education.

To increase the trustworthiness of the study, the first author kept a journal throughout the fieldwork (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). The journal contained preliminary thoughts regarding analysis, methodological reflections, and reflections on how her position as a white ethnic Norwegian, along with aspects such as gender, social class, religion, age, and PE experiences, might have influenced questions and interpretations, as well as on how the participants acted, interacted, and talked to her in the field and during interviews (Pennington & Prater, 2016).

Ethical considerations

The project was approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Permission to conduct research at the school was obtained from the school management. Written, informed consent was collected from teachers and parents, and oral consent from the students interviewed. Consent stated that all data would be handled confidentially. The participants and parents were informed of their right to withdraw at any time. All names of persons are pseudonyms.

In the study, we refer to categories in terms of ethnic background. Categories are not neutral descriptions of concepts; they contain political guidelines and can lead to stigmatisation and hierarchization of people (Niemi, 2002). In the results section, the students are presented according to how they positioned themselves in terms of ethnic identity. In the text, we also use the terms minority/majority to emphasise unequal power relations.

Findings and discussion

How are students’ cultural backgrounds acknowledged in the PE classes?

The findings revealed that students’ cultural backgrounds were seldom referred to during the lessons. Moreover, both teachers and students expressed a common understanding that knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds was not relevant in PE. In the interviews, the students were asked if they thought there were students who would like it if their PE teacher knew more about their cultural background. Most of them, like Ike (Nigerian-Norwegian, male), said that such issues belonged to the subject ‘Christianity, religion, philosophies of life and ethics’ [KRLE] or social studies: ‘[In PE] it is not important … maybe in KRLE, but not in any other [subjects].’ Elisabeth (Norwegian, female) emphasised:

[In PE] I don’t really believe culture … or religion has got that much to do with how others view you. … so you can just as well be dark-skinned and be Christian; you don’t need to be Muslim … I don’t really believe that you need to think about it a lot.

In a positive manner, Elisabeth said that colour-blindness could prevent stereotypical assumptions. However, her statement also implied that students’ backgrounds do matter and non-white students are positioned as stereotypes. Overall, the stories reflected the cultural domain of power through which sport and PE (but also education in general) are often considered/perceived to be level playing fields where everyone is equal, regardless of background (Barker et al., 2014; Flintoff & Dowling, 2017; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016). In turn, cultural differences are downplayed (Harlap & Riese, 2014). However, not acknowledging ethnic and cultural differences might enforce a sense of similarity based on the unarticulated norms of majority culture (Harlap & Riese, 2014). In the interpersonal domain of power, perceived sameness was enacted in the social relations in class, as reflected in the following statement from Eline, a Norwegian girl: ‘I don’t really believe background matters that much [in PE], because … when you’re in a class, then most [students] kind of act like everyone else.’ Eline’s statement gives an indication of how ‘color-blind’ pedagogical practices might reinforce processes of assimilation (Barker et al., 2014; van Doodewaard & Knoppers, 2018).

One of the interviewees, Miryam, a Norwegian-Kenyan girl, explained how students’ knowledge of their ethnic or cultural backgrounds was sometimes used as a resource during the lessons.

Miryam

When we are going to work on countries, if a person is for example from the USA, then that person knows more about the USA than we know, more like on the traditions and festivals and those kind of things … [if in geography] we learn about Africa, and the teacher asks if someone is from Africa, the students raise their hands and we start talking about what they know … but it is a long time since we have done that now.

Interviewer

How did you like that?

Miryam

We learn new stuff then … from a person that follows the traditions, then we learn more in a way … 

In the statement, Miryam indicated how teachers enriched her learning experience when they incorporated students’ firsthand knowledge. However, the statement might also be interpreted as showing essentialist thinking in education by positioning students as representatives of their parents’ home countries or even continents (Chinga-Ramirez, 2017). The data indicated that episodes of the kind Miryam referred to appeared as content additions only on special occasions (‘long time since’ last time) and that cultural knowledge was related to cultures that were ‘other’ than the Norwegian culture (Westrheim, 2014). Implicitly then, students might have learned (in the disciplinary domain of power) that perspectives outside the taken-for-granted Norwegian hegemonic knowledge are not important (Lidén, 2001). This can be seen in the following statements from Navid, identifying as a Persian boy, when asked whether he thought students would like teachers to have more knowledge of their cultural backgrounds:

Navid

They do have a curriculum from the government and have to follow the books for the subject. Of course, it would be nice if the teacher knew something about your home country. For example, if [name of PE teacher] knew something about Iran, then you could have a conversation about it, and that would be fun. But it is not something that I think about as a wish.

Interviewer

Ok, more like it is nice if they know. Do you think other students also think like that?

Navid

It is not like I expect that we learn about Iran in our lessons, as long as there is no conflict. Let’s say a student is from Palestine. Then I would expect in social studies that we learned about it maybe.

While Navid stated that it would be nice if the teachers knew more about his background, he apparently held the view that this is not something to expect. PE research has revealed how students internalise a Western gaze regarding what is legitimate knowledge, not seeing how this might (re)produce unequal power relations between ethnic minority and ethnic majority positions (Azzarito, 2009, 2016). Not having one’s ethnic and cultural background acknowledged in education can lead to feelings of exclusion, othering, and a devaluation of one’s cultural belonging (Lidén, 2001; Strømstad, Nes, & Skogen, 2004). An extract from the interview with Maya, a Norwegian girl with Persian background, might illustrate the latter:

Interviewer

Have you ever felt really proud of your background?

Maya

Eh, no? Well, I don’t know, no, no … 

Interviewer

No?

Maya

Well, there has been a lot of talk about Iran and such since they don’t get along so well with America, so there is some of that. You always hear such negative things, but I’m not ashamed about it. But it’s not like I’m walking around super proud.

Both Maya and Navid were born and raised in Norway, and both have parents who immigrated from Iran in the 1990s. However, while Maya said in the interview that she considered herself Norwegian, Navid strongly identified as Persian. In different ways, they both indicated how the educational context (re)produced a marginalised image of non-Norwegian cultures. Navid said that he expected only to learn about other countries if there was a conflict there. He pointed to how exclusion operates in the cultural domain through an increasing ethnification of Norwegian media stories in which ethnic minorities are commonly pictured in relation to ‘c-news’³ (Eide, 2014) and presented as a threat. This serves to fuel the return to assimilationist strategies of social inclusion in society (Brubaker, 2001). Maya, on the other hand, told how stories of war and conflict were experienced as negative comments through the interpersonal domain of power. These experiences influenced her identification with Persian culture. Maya’s and Navid’s similar yet different stories showed how complex inclusion/exclusion is and highlighted how issues of race and ethnicity work in subtle ways (Barker et al., 2014).

How are aspects of race, culture, and ethnicity present in the activities taught?

The findings revealed a silence on issues related to ethnicity and culture in relation to the activities taught. In the interviews, the students described PE as a subject with a combination of sporting activities (typically listing sports such as soccer, floorball, volleyball, or athletics) and exercises from a health perspective (learning how to exercise and have a healthy diet). Marie, a Norwegian girl, described it as ‘physical kind of, and a bit health, what to eat and those kinds of stuff, some exercises and running’. Juan, a Norwegian-Mexican male, agreed:

Interviewer

What do you think your PE teacher wants you to learn in PE?

Juan

It seems like s/he is concerned about diet and maybe how the body functions, muscles and those kinds of stuff.

Interviewer

Is there anything you miss, or something you would like to learn more about in PE?

Juan

Emm, we could have something like baseball, but that would require some equipment. I understand that we might not be able to make it, but just learn about sports that are not common in Norway; that would be fun.

Juan indicated how the majority culture was embedded in the activities, stating that he missed learning about sports that were not common in Norway. The students’ narratives regarding PE and learning content largely reflected western discourses around sport, fitness, and health, which corresponds with previous research (Azzarito, 2009; Walseth, Aartun, & Engelsrud, 2015). Hasan, a Norwegian-Pakistani boy, said in the interview that it would be nice if the PE teacher knew about cricket; he eagerly spoke about how widespread the sport was outside Norway. Magnus, a Norwegian boy, offered a different perspective:

Interviewer

During PE, has your teacher ever talked about sports from different countries?

Magnus

Yes, that’s true, there are some sports that … are not really played in Norway like they are in other countries … like cricket for instance. There are some in my class that … really like it a lot, but I hardly know what it is (laughs a bit).

In this statement, Magnus positioned himself in the majority culture by reflecting on how his own frame of reference appeared to be limited to sports taken for granted as part of Norwegian culture, which hardly recognises cricket. On the one hand, his statement indicated how some students’ knowledge is excluded and holds a marginal place in the subject. On the other hand, his story pointed to the resources available in the multi-ethnic classroom, realising how his peers had knowledge of a sport he barely knew about.

According to the field notes, issues related to the cultural aspects of activities appeared to be developed in only two situations. On these occasions, the teachers introduced sports that were not common in Norway, including boball from Finland and netball, referred to as a major sport in Australia and South Africa. Though putting netball and boball on the programme might indicate that the teachers tried to facilitate cultural activities, these were only introduced through a mention of the countries they were played in. Other activities were not further accounted for in terms of origin or cultural connections, thus emphasising how activities from other cultures were named, and hence positioned, as off-centre in relation to normative content (Dowling & Flintoff, 2015; Fylkesnes, Mausethagen, & Nilsen, 2018).

Moreover, boball and netball did not appear to be anchored in the student group in the same manner as Juan and Hasan’s wish to play baseball or cricket. Adding cultural content to these lessons was to a minor degree in line with thoughts of inclusion in terms of viewing diversity as a resource (Ludvigsen, 2015) and building upon students’ prior knowledge and experiences (Westrheim, 2014). Students might then experience othering (Strømstad et al., 2004) in that PE did not reflect their ‘interests and abilities’ (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2015b, unpaginated). The finding revealed how power in the structural domain (Hill Collins, 2009), through the curriculum and teaching in the disciplinary domain, might cause students to internalise common understandings, such as ‘we might not be able to make it’.

It is interesting to note that both of the sports introduced were from Western countries. The finding is associated with how ‘non-Western’ movement cultures are excluded and marginalised in PE (Rovegno & Gregg, 2007; Whatman et al., 2017). Our findings coincide with those of Flintoff and Dowling (2017), who revealed that teachers’ pedagogy tends to centre on activities that are taken for granted and unproblematically positioned as part of ‘our’ shared knowledge (p.10). At a local level, this reflects how power operates in the structural domain (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016) through PE teachers who are all positioned in the majority culture (Douglas & Halas, 2013). Unintentionally, inclusion in the multi-ethnic PE class appeared as assimilation into Norwegian and Western physical culture.

How are ethnicity and culture reflected in the communication in two multi-ethnic PE classes?

In general, the field notes revealed that ethnicity and culture remained silent topics in PE lessons. On one occasion, one of the students came up with a comment reflecting a cultural aspect of the activities. However, this comment was scarcely followed up on by the teacher:

At the end of the lesson, the students gather in a ring, sitting on the floor. The teacher explains that they are now building the foundation for the gymnastic lessons in the 10th grade. S/he continues by stating that those who are really good gymnasts do the somersault on a beam like the one they tried to balance on today. David (Norwegian, Sri Lankan parents) raises his hand and is allowed to talk. David says that he saw someone on the television doing some kind of Pakistani gymnastics; he does not quite remember, but he think it was a Pakistani sport. The teacher moves on and says that s/he is very impressed with what people manage with their bodies in new sports such as breakdancing and snowboarding (Field notes, 26 March 2014).

In this situation, it seemed as if the teacher overlooked David’s comment, continuing the argument about how impressed s/he was by gymnasts and athletes in new sports demanding high levels of acrobatic skills, activities s/he was familiar with. Similarly, scholars have found that teachers often struggle to, or even miss opportunities to, move teaching outside their own cultural frame of reference (Lidén, 2001; Rovegno & Gregg, 2007). In another way, it could be interpreted as unintentional assimilation in which teachers train their students in their own frame of interpretation (Lidén, 2001). This can be further illustrated by the following incident, in which one of the students brought up the issue of racism:

[The students have been practicing techniques in soccer and are now going to play:] ‘Put all the balls between the goalposts!’ teacher shouts. … Afterwards the students are asked to sit in a ring. I sit down among the students. There is an opening in the ring where the teacher is standing. ‘What’s important when we are going to play now?’ s/he asks. ‘Team play,’ Erik said. ‘Good,’ the teacher responds. Maya suggests teamwork. The teacher confirms that’s also correct. ‘No racism,’ Erik says in a low voice. He repeats it a couple of times. The teacher waits. ‘Scoring,’ Christopher mutters to his side mates. Some students start giggling. ‘Diving,’ Christopher suggests – more laughter. Ina has raised her hand and the teacher asks her to answer. ‘Engagement,’ she says. ‘That’s also important,’ the teacher states (Field notes, 3 June 2014).

Posing an apparently open question, the teacher seemed to be selective in what s/he responded to, apparently only giving credit to the ‘positive’ answers of ‘team play’, ‘teamwork’, and ‘engagement’. Erik’s reply, indicating that racism might be associated with the game of soccer, got no response. In this way, openly posed questions at the interpersonal level reveal how power operates in the disciplinary domain through teaching students what the ‘correct’ answers are and which answers are excluded and considered disturbing elements in the teaching (Lidén, 2001).

While the teacher’s non-response to both Erik and Christopher’s comments could be interpreted as an indication of not taking the answers seriously, it could also be a sign of uncertainty over how to respond. Failing to grasp situations that appeared uncomfortable might then be an unconscious tactic. This understanding is also present in previous research, showing that many teachers and student-teachers’ experiences do not include appropriate strategies for when issues of discrimination or racism occur (Flintoff & Dowling, 2017; Osler & Lindquist, 2018). Although we cannot know whether the teachers’ hesitation to follow up on comments related to race, ethnicity, and culture was due to a disregard of these issues or a lack of knowledge of how to properly respond, the hesitation might nevertheless, through the disciplinary domain of power, communicate a devaluing of cultural diversity or a denial of race relations (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016; Milner, 2010). In turn, this might further contribute to positioning the cultural, racial, or ethnic other in a marginal position in the field of PE. It is important to recognise, however, that Erik and David also challenged the taken-for-granted nature of PE content by making ‘disturbing’ comments.

Discussion

In this article, we have investigated processes of inclusion and exclusion in multi-ethnic PE, as reflected in the students’ stories as well as in field notes. Through applying an intersectional perspective, the analysis and interpretations generated insight on how individual stories were entangled with deeper structures of inequality within the context of PE. Here, Hill Collins’s matrix of domination (Hill Collins, 2009; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016) provided a useful tool to locate these structures and see how power relations operated through the cultural, structural, disciplinary, and interpersonal domain within PE.

In the cultural domain, the stories mirrored the commonly held idea that PE, like sport, is a color-blind context and, hence, cultural and ethnic backgrounds are not important (Barker et al., 2014; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016). The findings revealed that students’ diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds were not drawn on in PE teaching and that the cultural aspects of activities were seldom articulated. Teachers’ choices of activities appeared as an implicit and taken-for-granted reflection of the majority culture (Dowling & Flintoff, 2015). This reflects the structural domain of power: how culture and ethnicity shape PE institutionally, for example, in terms of who is teaching and what is being taught. Through PE lessons, the disciplinary and interpersonal domains of power intersect as students learn which topics are worth covering, which answers are considered correct or appropriate, and what they might expect in terms of teachers’ knowledge (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016; Milner, 2010).

While colour-blindness might be ideal for challenging racialized and stereotypical beliefs, the findings revealed how acknowledging students' backgrounds only in certain subjects might reinforce processes of exclusion and othering (Strømstad et al., 2004). Within the context of colour-blindness, the findings indicated how students with an ethnic minority background in some cases might even become complicit in (re)producing social inequality and unequal power relations (Azzarito, 2009; Barker et al., 2014; Hancock, 2016; Hill Collins, 2009; Walseth, 2015). We argue that it is crucial that PE teachers realise the potential of PE to counter and disrupt hegemonic ideas that cause exclusion (Azzarito, 2016; Douglas & Halas, 2013; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Macdonald et al., 2009). As our findings revealed, this potential is already present among the students. In the stories, students challenged these ideas by imagining that different sports were taught, reflecting that it would be nice if teachers knew more of students’ diverse backgrounds and posing questions during lessons that could disturb taken-for-granted reference frames in the teaching (Stride, 2014).

Our findings support the critique that Norwegian schools accommodate diversity only to a limited extent (Haug et al., 2014). In particular, this seems to relate to PE. As has been a concern of several scholars, our data indicated that issues related to ethnicity, culture, or race/racism are still a ‘silenced dialog’, rarely addressed in PE (i.e. Azzarito & Solomon, 2005; Douglas & Halas, 2013; Macdonald et al., 2009). We agree with Tolo (2014), who argued that low consciousness in single schools is an indication of a structural problem. Accordingly, our findings should not be reduced to the praxis of single teachers in PE but should rather be seen as a reflection of hegemonic ideas and structures in society at large and in (physical) education (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016), including the finding that PE teachers have not been sufficiently educated on how to work in culturally and ethnically diverse classrooms (Flintoff & Dowling, 2017; Sato & Hodge, 2017).

Implications

It is encouraging to read in recent public papers that ‘multicultural knowledge’ should be encountered broadly and implemented in an interdisciplinary way in future curriculums in Norway (Ludvigsen, 2015). We hope this paper has been successful in revealing some of the actual and possible consequences, in terms of inclusion and exclusion, of perceiving PE as an arena in which ethnic and cultural differences are not relevant (see also Macdonald et al., 2009). Articulating issues of ethnicity, race, and culture is challenging and requires teachers to be sensitive and self-reflective (Hastie et al., 2006; Rovegno & Gregg, 2007). However, in order to provide students with culturally relevant educational experiences and to develop students’ critical awareness of how culture and ethnicity shape physical culture, these issues should be made explicit in PE.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ingfrid Mattingsdal Thorjussen is a PhD student in the Department of Social and Cultural Studies at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway. Ingfrid’s primary area of research has been studying aspects of inclusion and exclusion in diverse PE contexts.

Mari Kristin Sisjord is a Professor of Sport Sociology. Her main interests are youth sport, alternative sport cultures (in particular snowboarding), sport and gender, and sport and ethnicity. She is the Department Head for Cultural and Social Sciences, The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway.

ORCID

Ingfrid Mattingsdal Thorjussen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8199-6625

Notes

1 Scholars hold different views on whether intersectionality should be considered an analytical perspective, a theoretical framework, or an overriding paradigm (Bilge, 2010). We use the term ‘intersectional perspective’ to emphasize the analytical aspect, yet we argue that intersectional analysis in combination with Hill Collin’s matrix of domination might be considered as a theoretical framework for investigation (Hill Collins, 2009). For a more thorough discussion, see Bilge, 2010.

2 In the Norwegian school system, students are categorized according to their first language. A minority language-speaking student is defined as a child or young person that has a first language other than Norwegian or Sami (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2016).

3 ‘C- news’ refers to issues of conflict, crisis, catastrophes, crime … etc.