Green, Matthew James George (2024) A figurational analysis of gendered peer group dynamics in secondary PE: ethnographic insights into banter, bullying and changing room processes. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.
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Text (Doctoral thesis)
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Abstract
Amid the United Kingdom (UK) Government’s Keeping Children Safe in Education and Duty of Care in Sport reports, this thesis examines young people’s gendered peer group dynamics in secondary Physical Education (PE), providing ethnographic insights into banter, bullying, and changing room processes. Empirical evidence gained from over 120 lesson observations, 14 pupil focus groups, and nine teacher interviews was thematically analysed. This analysis also involved applying the figurational concepts of figuration, established-outsider relations, identity, and gender civilised bodies to explain age-based and gendered nuances and fluctuations in pupils’ peer group dynamics, behavioural norms, emotional expressions, and teacher-pupil relations within the PE figuration. Key findings reveal how policy, structure, and pedagogy enabled and constrained greater degrees of sociality, gendered identity expression, and asymmetric power relations within sex-segregated PE lessons. These figurational dynamics manifested both prosocial and conflict-based banter, variously understood as humorous, offensive and bullying, and became more heightened within changing rooms. With age, boys and girls were increasingly expected to navigate social, psychological and emotion-laden tension balances, with pupils’ peer group dynamics, behavioural norms and emotional expressions becoming increasingly gendered through their five years of secondary PE. Such nuances and analysis gained by examining multiple PE platforms, year groups, and spaces provides much needed original findings, which question government endorsed changing room provision, school behavioural policies, and PE teachers’ communication styles. Therefore, this thesis calls for subject-specific: (a) (in)appropriate banter awareness initiatives, (b) bullying reporting mechanisms, and (c) co-constructed and agreed teacher presence within changing rooms.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > GV0201 Physical education and training |
| School/Department: | School of Science, Technology and Health |
| URI: | https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/11092 |
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