As inequality in education has risen, marginalized student populations have experienced greater barriers to entry in the context of physical activity (PA) and physical education (PE). Such barriers can be experienced by girls solely due to their gender. As such, prior research has shown that girls are viewed as more vulnerable and thus are more confined and supervised in spaces of PA and, furthermore, have expressed a need for a sense of safety when engaging in PA (Clark, 2015; Azzarito & Hill, 2013).
The precarity of girls in PA environments extends into the domain of PE. In the article, Stereotypical Views of Beauty and Boys STILL Not Letting Girls Play: A Student-Centered Curriculum for Young Girls Through an After-School Activist Approach, authors Risto Marttinen, Brianna Meza, and Sara B. Flory studied the barriers experienced by fifth and sixth grade girls in the context of PA and PE. To do so the authors utilized an activist approach with a feminist poststructuralist lens. An activist approach requires four critical elements:
Student-centered pedagogy
Creating spaces in curriculum for girls to focus on embodiment
Inquiry-based education centered in action
Sustained listening and responding over time (Oliver and Kirk, 2015)
Employing such an approach through a feminist poststructuralist lens provided the researchers with a way to understand how gendered, cultural, and racial discourses among girls can be understood, how language affects individual experiences, and how individuals express themselves (Gavey, 1989).
Research was conducted through the after-school GIRL (Gaining Insight through Reflective Learning) program at Waterfalls Elementary school, a Title I school which serves a majority Hispanic/Latino student population. The study focused on nine 10 to 11 year old students who participate in the GIRL program consistently throughout the year. Two coaches, Bri and Olivia, ran the program and acted as researchers in this study.
The GIRL curriculum was semi structured and student-centered and had two goals:
To influence participants’ lives and empower them to practice high levels of confidence and satisfaction with their bodies
To provide a safe space in which girls can discuss various concerns regarding the body
While the after school program was centered around these goals, the interests of the students were used to inform pedagogical and curricular decisions. This student-centered approach involved a cyclical process of planning, responding to students, listening to respond, and analyzing the responses; this relates directly to sustained listening and responding over time, which is integral to an activist approach.
The GIRL curriculum was divided into four 7-week segments across the school year (you can read a free open-access article summarizing the program here):
The first segment of the curriculum focused on introductions, trust-building activities, and effective communication strategies
The focus of the second segment was introducing activities such as showing the girls empowering videos and engaging in magazine exploration activities
The third segment of the curriculum, a student-centered pedagogy approach, focused on providing choices to the girls for completing activities in different ways (e.g., writing or discussion), or providing activities the girls had suggested
The final segment focused on culminating activities that would make a lasting impact; this aligned with an inquiry-based education centered in action
Throughout all segments, data were collected via a researcher journal, field notes and observations, participant’s journals through- out the program, participant’s winter break journals, semistructured interviews with students, e-mails between the after-school program coordinator and researcher, and artifacts created by participants during GIRL sessions.
Data analysis conducted for this study found that, echoing prior scholarship by Oliver and Hamzeh (2010), boys acted as a barrier for the girls in environments of PA. Instances throughout the GIRL sessions in which the participants expressed feelings of demoralization in PA contexts because of boys. Rosa, one of the participants expressed this in an interview saying, “I don’t like to play soccer with the boys, because there’s, like, you can’t play because you’re a girl. It’s like who cares?”, and later explaining that she choose to play basketball rather than soccer specifically because of the boys dismissals. Moreover, when the girls would participate, the boys actions would further acts of ostracism toward the girls: “several data sources pointed out that the boys would not pass the ball to the girls during soccer; would be rough or overly competitive; and would control how the sports were being played (i.e., boys vs. girls). This resulted in the boys’ behavior (e.g., playing rough) dissuading the girls from engaging in PA at school”. While such actions took place in school, the affects of these actions were felt beyond the school yard; one such example, “[One participant,] Sarah discussed in her interview that she would not join a soccer team in fear of playing against others who play rough, like the boys at her school. She also explained that her dad was the only male she would play with because she knew he would not play rough”.
It’s also key to acknowledge that in order to be accepted at all in an environment of PA amongst boys, girls were expected to have a prerequisite ability level when compared to the boys and show more outwardly aggressive behavior. “[I]t was noted in Bri’s field notes that, the boys allowed Diana, another [participant in the GIRL program], to play because she was good at soccer. In our observations, Diana almost always played hard and aggressive on the field and was on the same skill level if not better than the boys”. This barrier presents a difficult balancing act as girls are made to decide between being seen as a girly-girl or a tomboy (Fisette, 2013).
The concomitant goal of the GIRL curriculum was to engage the participants in discourse regarding “body image, expos[ing] negative messaging the girls face, and explain[ing] how they can navigate this often-complicated environment”, as well as redirecting negative discourse regarding gender to a more positive dialogue. As an example, during an activity Catrina, another participant, stated that the best way to celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports Day was to, “tell boys to tell us congrats because they don’t let me play when it’s soccer.” Possibly an expression of a want to be celebrated by her male peers, the GIRL curriculum utilized student-centered activity which allowed the participants to be heard in an environment where they had a say in what was done; “While they were not in control of their PA spaces, the girls were able to have control in the GIRL sessions as their opinions were consistently sought after and encouraged to maintain the student-centered nature of the curriculum.” Bri reflected on this in her field notes writing that the girls seemed excited when hey were able to vote on what activity was conducted.
The second theme presented alignment with the ideal female body. Student journals allowed the coaches to both understand how the participant’s views of gender norms and beauty standards impacted them, as well as engage the participants on these often touchy subjects in a private manner. Bri utilized this engagement to “consistently challenge the thinking of the students. This was not done in a way to make the student feel that they are making the ‘wrong’ decision, but more so challenging them to critically analyze why the girls were making the comments they were making about beauty.”
Beauty was a common subject of discussion and much of this discourse was steeped in positive language and messages. One such message that the participants frequently offered was, “just be yourself.” When asked why she wrote “be yourself” in several of the journal activities which centered around beauty and body image, Paulina replied, “Because, I don’t want to change anything (about her body)”, demonstrating positive body image and confidence.
The findings of the research reflect that the desire to be a “girly girl” did not present much of a barrier to PA. This reminded us of work by Oliver et al (2009) in their “Las Nińas Pueden Tambien” article. The behavior by the girls may be attributed to the concurrence of several aspects of the GIRL program. Firstly, the format in which the program was delivered put the participants at the center of the pedagogical and curricular decision making, set aside the first segment of sessions to build foundational trust, intentionally built stronger relationships throughout the program, and offered a space in which the girls could express themselves. All of these decisions resulted in a palpable environment and feeling of safety in which the girls could be themselves, without the desire to employ a girly girl affectation. Secondly, the coaches were able to facilitate a trusting relationship with the participants. This is partially due to the fact that the after school sessions were comprised of only girls, but more due to the fact that the coaches intentionally planned for and engaged the participants in activities to build such a relationship. Encapsulated by participant Alicia during an interview, “because you guys are, like, girls, so, like, I would feel uncomfortable to say it to Coach Roberto and stuff. But, like, for you guys, you guys, like, you guys understand how we feel, because you guys been through it before.”
While a girl-only environment is not feasible in PE or school-based PA settings in the USA, the findings of this research does identify barriers to PA experienced by girls because of their gender as well as pedagogical and curricular decisions that stymied these barriers. Not least of which is giving the participants a voice in curricular decision making and building relationships throughout the school year in an attempt to create a sense of safety within the classroom.