What happened to critical pedagogy in physical education? An analysis of key critical work in the field

Introduction

In 2008, I met with Michelle Fine in New York and I told her about the critical practice of a health and physical education (HPE) teacher I was working with. The teacher based his approach on forming meaningful connections with students and making power relations in schools explicit. At the time, I theorised his work as ‘critical multicultural education’ (Fitzpatrick, 2010; May and Sleeter, 2010), and as ‘critical pedagogy’ (Kincheloe, 2007, 2008). His approach, I reflect now, can also be seen as an intersectional critical pedagogy, because, in addition to explicitly teaching about culture, he also addressed gender, sexuality, and racism. Michelle Fine was interested to hear about this work and surprised that critical practice was happening in physical education (PE). She made the comment (above) during our discussion. While this all happened some time ago, her observation stuck with me and stuck in me, partly because I practise critical approaches to HPE myself (and I have been mentored by, and work alongside, many others who do likewise). The comment also stuck for another reason: in many research studies (my own recent ones included) with young people in schools, PE is a highly contested and conflicting space. While many young people express enthusiasm for PE classes, others find it an exclusionary, and even hated, subject. This is especially true for many girls, and students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and/or queer (Denison and Kitchen, 2015). It also seems to be a class where racist, homophobic, sexist, fat-phobic and able-ist perceptions, comments, and assumptions persist in especially visceral and enduring ways (Azzarito, 2009; Sykes, 2011; Wright et al., 2004). In fact, despite a long history of critical scholarship in HPE (e.g. Fernández-Balboa, 1997; Fitzpatrick and Enright, 2017; Kirk, 2004; Robinson and Randall, 2016; Tinning, 1988, 2002; Wright et al., 2004), educators outside the field rarely associate PE practice with the terms ‘critical pedagogy’, ‘critical practice’, and ‘social justice’. While this might also be said of some other subject areas, PE’s close association with sporting cultures might, at least in part, explain widely-held perceptions that it remains sexist, racist, homophobic and able-ist.

In an article reporting on a US study into why students like or dislike PE, Couturier et al. (2005: 171) explain that:

Even students who like physical education can be confronted by obstacles to their participation because of the necessity of changing and/or showering, required fitness testing, uncomfortable weather conditions, and potential for injury.

Several points are of interest in Hawkins’ argument. He is writing from his position in the USA, and so his critique both emerges from and centres on that context. However, it is clear that materialism and pragmatism (as well as health-centric practices) have had a much wider and more global impact on PE. These are connected to and emanate from neoliberal and individualistic cultures globally. Writing from the UK, for example, Evans and Davies (2004: 10) argue that:

It is worth reminding ourselves, especially at a time when teachers and researchers are increasingly steered by the barren managerial mantras of liberal individualism – achievement, assessment and accountability – that higher and worthier principles could drive PEH [PE and health] curricula in their pursuit of educational, social and moral ideals. (Evans and Davies, 2004: 10)

If Hawkins (2008) is correct that materialism, pragmatism and health concerns are the three forces currently driving PE practice, then it is no wonder that critical approaches in PE classes are rare, and that many students dislike PE experiences that are tailored to so narrow an agenda. Indeed, the driving forces that Hawkins identifies are anathema to the very underpinnings of critical education and work against calls for the discipline to be more inclusive, less marginalising, sexist, homophobic, and so forth. If we take ‘health concerns’ here as an example, we can see that PE practices that are aligned directly to improving health tend to privilege certain pedagogies and make assumptions about the body. Such practices rest on the (highly contested) notion that body size is linked to health, and that physical activity opportunities might focus, for example, on weight loss (Burrows and Wright, 2004; Evans, 2003) . It is no surprise then that students who are judged as being ‘overweight’ (a notion that most critical pedagogues would contest) feel marginalised, excluded and judged in PE classes (Powell and Fitzpatrick, 2015; Powell and Gard, 2015; Sykes, 2011).

Having said that, critical approaches to PE (and critical work on the body, health, physical activity, and sport) actually have a long history. Indeed, critical theory and practice have been visible in PE since at least the 1980s (Kirk, 1986a, 1986b; Kirk and Tinning, 1990; Tinning, 1985, 1988), and consistently ever since (Azzarito and Solomon, 2005; Azzarito et al., 2006; Felis-Anaya et al., 2018; Fernández-Balboa, 1997; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Gay and Kirkland, 2003; Kirk, 2004, 2006; Tinning, 2002; Wright et al., 2004). More than 25 years ago, Richard Tinning (1991), one of the leading critical pedagogues in PE internationally, argued that questions of pedagogy relate fundamentally to what teachers see as the central problem of concern. If the central problem is technical rationality (how might I teach this skill most effectively?) then the teaching approach will likely be focused on, what he called, ‘performance pedagogy’ (this is a kind of recipe or model for ‘good teaching’; it tends to ignore context, power relations and student perspectives). Tinning (1991: 9) argued that PE teachers for whom equity and injustice are the central problem, are more likely to ‘reflect on the social, moral and political nature of their work’ and enact a much more nuanced and student-centred approach, one which attends directly to relations of power, social hierarchies and exclusion. This position, however, relies on the assumption that teachers are able (and willing) to choose, that they can overcome or ignore the wider underpinnings of the field in which they are immersed and somehow overcome materialism, pragmatism and health-based orientations. This is difficult work and, from a poststructuralist perspective (see below), perhaps even ontologically impossible. More recently, however, Tinning (in press) argues that, within social contexts, teachers may be more or less receptive in terms of forming critical dispositions, and he argues that such dispositions can be enabled.

In the intervening years since Tinning’s (1991) article, critical approaches to PE have themselves been varied and inconsistent. Dyson et al. (2016) view such diversity as a strength but critical work as a whole is clearly at odds with other wider moves in the field toward technical rationality, health-based approaches, and more recent calls for models-based practices. Meanwhile, another area of research in the field focusing on poststructuralist approaches to the discipline (Evans et al., 2004) has also gained significant traction, albeit (again) while still being largely ignored by the majority of those engaging in atheoretical forms of pedagogical work. Scholars drawing on poststructuralist ideas tend to centralise theory, using it as a ‘catalytic agent…a vehicle for thinking otherwise, a platform for outrageous hypothesis and for unleashing criticism (Evans and Davies, 2004: 11). As Evans and Davies (2004: 10) argue:

The purpose of theory, then, whether generated by teachers in schools, or researchers and academics elsewhere, is to de-familiarise present practices and categories, to make them less self-evident and necessary and to open up spaces for the invention of new forms of experience and pedagogy. We erode these elements of our practice in schools and ITE [Initial Teacher Education], at our peril. (Evans and Davies, 2004: 11)

In this article, I consider how we might continue to forward critical approaches to PE, which are clearly greatly needed, given the ongoing and irrefutable evidence that PE spaces continue to marginalise and exclude. More than this, however, is the need to contest the pragmatism, materialist and health-based orientations that the field seems ever more aligned with and committed to. I have consciously avoided here the platitudes of neoliberalism. While, like others in the field, I greatly value (and have engaged myself) in a critique of neoliberalism (Evans and Davies, 2017), I take a break from it here because, I fear, we have made ‘it’ both scapegoat and shorthand for all that is wrong, and, in this sense, it has come to mean everything and nothing. In this paper then I use Hawkin’s (2008) ideas as a kind of framework to reflect on four contemporary frameworks for critical PE, drawing on the work of Richard Tinning, Laura Azzarito, my own work (with a teacher named Dan), and Kim Oliver and David Kirk. I have chosen these four approaches for specific reasons. First, they hail from different national and social–political contexts spanning the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Second, they address both the theoretical and applied, as well as maintaining a contemporary and on-going commitment to the potential for critical practice in light of poststructuralist critiques, and in line with changing youth and global cultures. Finally, each of these scholars has had both a significant history in the field, and continue to remain committed to the potential of and for critical practices to transform the field. ¹ While the underlying philosophies of the authors differ, they would each, I imagine, consider themselves advocates of rethinking PE in order to – in Tinning’s terms – ‘problematize knowledge construction, legitimation and to critically engage…ideology, power and culture’ (Tinning, 2002: 224). My aim here is to comment on their work and explore how each of these approaches contends with the challenges discussed above. I also briefly consider why, on the whole, these approaches have (arguably) failed to change practice in PE. I end with some thoughts about how the field of PE might move forward or, at least, what the conditions of possibility might be.

Richard Tinning’s modest pedagogy

After many years of advocating for sociocritical approaches to PE, Tinning published an article entitled ‘Toward a modest pedagogy: Reflections on the problematics of critical pedagogy’ (Tinning, 2002). In that article, he argues that critical approaches to teaching in general, and to PE specifically, are more complicated than was communicated in many texts on the subject in the 1980s and 1990s. He points out that attempts during the 1990s to include critical approaches in programmes at the Universities of Queensland and Deakin (both in Australia) met with mixed responses from students. Some students even interpreted the critical approaches as hegemonic. Tinning (2002, 2016) notes that critical approaches to teaching in PE can be affronting for students: partly because the practice is so ‘other’ to their experiences in school, and, in part, because such alternative practices are difficult to implement. Part of this difficulty lies in the fact that discussing issues of power (such as gender, sexuality, racism, etc.) makes people feel uncomfortable, especially those who are at the top of social hierarchies. As a result, Tinning (2002: 236) argues for ‘a more sceptical, less utopian counter education’, what he calls a ‘modest pedagogy’ that rejects claims to certainty but would seek to develop emotional commitment in students in an embodied rather than cognitive way. He suggests engaging the Platonian concepts of logos, mythos and thymos as orientating explorations for learning.

This article is a thoughtful and responsive reflection on the failures of critical pedagogy when it ‘cleaves’ to certainty and order. In this, Tinning argues that critical approaches to pedagogy can themselves become just as rigid, and thus as problematic, as other approaches. Several things struck me in reflecting on Tinning’s article. The first is that the use of the word ‘modest’ could take the heat out of the drive for change in PE. While Tinning’s position here is engaged in a reflexivity that is missing in much critical work, for me this needs to be balanced with the urgent need for change in the field. The second observation is that I wonder if the students in courses at Deakin and Queensland were so affronted by critical approaches because these ideas challenged their own forms of privilege and power. While I have no evidence of student demographics in those courses, student populations in prestigious universities tend to be largely White and middle class. Research shows that these populations are often most resistant to critical ideas (Banks and McGee Banks, 2009; May and Sleeter, 2010). In my own research and experience of teaching critical issues, tertiary students who were not from White middle class backgrounds tended to welcome critical pedagogical approaches (Fitzpatrick and Langi, 2015). Tinning also notes that the receptivity of students is also connected to background and context but he maintains that education can connect with and even shape teacher dispositions. Beilharz’s point here – that critical approaches are, by definition, supposed to be uncomfortable – is relevant:

The purpose of critical sociology, indeed, is to poke you in the eye, not to massage. For in order to do sociology, we need both to feel sufficiently confident about our own places in the world, and sufficiently detached to view the familiar as though it were exotic, or at least contingent. (Beilharz, 2001: 2)

Returning to Hawkins’ argument that philosophical pragmatism is part of the crisis underpinning PE, there is a certain hand wringing resulting from the reflexivity of critical pedagogues about their hopes and dreams for the field. Those who subscribe to the pragmatic alone, however, and who do not engage with critical perspectives also do not bother with this kind of introspection and reflection. This is significant because their claims to truth and certainty are, as a result, much stronger and more consistent. This has the ultimate effect of positioning critical approaches as questionable and problematic, while rendering mainstream pedagogical approaches as unproblematic, as certain (and thus more easily implemented).

I now turn to a consideration of another form of critical practice in PE: Laura Azzarito’s (2010) call for critical feminist approaches to PE.

Laura Azzarito: feminist (intersectional) critical pedagogy

While Laura Azzarito has a significant body of work committed to critical and poststructuralist writing in PE and sport (see, for example, Azzarito, 2009; Azzarito and Harrison, 2008; Azzarito and Solomon, 2005; Azzarito et al., 2006, 2014), I focus here on her article: ‘Future girls, transcendent femininities and new pedagogies: Toward girls’ hybrid bodies’ (Azzarito, 2010). In that article, she argues that girls’ subjectivities in contemporary times are caught in media-driven displays of femininity at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and social class. She notes that:

New economic and social forces produced by global power relations inform girls’ physicality in complex and contradictory ways. The effects of dominant public health discourses of healthy and physically active girls implicitly fabricate racialized and classed girls’ bodies, while at the same time, global trends promote monocultural ideals that erase ‘difference,’ by reclaiming and stabilizing whiteness. (Azzarito, 2010: 262)

Azzarito writes into this space, drawing attention to two feminine stereotypes: the ‘future girl’ (a global, healthy and fit young woman); and the ‘alpha girl’ (a high achieving, sporty and assertive young woman). She points out that, while these images might be empowering, they also subsume race, are promoted as available to all, and reject feminist politics. She notes that ‘the illusion that the desirable, powerful, ideal femininity’ not only ‘blurs boundaries between virtuality and reality’ but also works to ‘erode girls’ “differences” in terms of social class, race, sexuality, religion and disability’ (Azzarito, 2010: 268–269). The alternative critical pedagogy that Azzarito argues for engages a critique of these media-driven subjectivities in order to:

shed light on girls’ performance of their physicality in their specific multicultural locations by paying close attention to their everyday body practices and the dynamic interconnection between these practices and the new femininities available in global media spaces. (Azzarito, 2010: 269)

While Azzarito does not give specific details in this article of how a critical media pedagogy might engage young people, she does suggest that the notion of hybridity is a productive tool for exploring and exposing dominant notions of girls’ physicalities. She argues, hopefully perhaps, that hybrid bodies welcome engagement with difference and that ‘conversations about the complexity and nuances of “differences” among girls that shape their everyday body experiences allow them to interrogate new hierarchies of high- and low-status feminine bodies’ (Azzarito, 2010: 272). The difficulties of realising this work in PE classes notwithstanding, Azzarito’s engagement with new theoretical positions across gender, culture and race is an important, contemporary and sophisticated approach to critical PE. Her suggestions directly contest pragmatic and culturally-materialist approaches to PE by engaging a politics of the body as a site of cultural meaning. Her notions also implicate a focus on health by critiquing media-driven images of the healthy and fit (White) female body. Her assumption that the new physical educator in contemporary times needs to engage with cultural theory and new media in sophisticated ways is an important challenge, and one which the field would do well to respond to.

Katie Fitzpatrick: multicultural and intersectional critical pedagogy

I now turn to my own (Fitzpatrick, 2013) discussion of critical multicultural practice in PE. This is not a description of my own practice, but that of a teacher I spent a year with during a critical ethnographic study in New Zealand. In this work (Fitzpatrick, 2010, 2013; Fitzpatrick and Russell, 2015), I describe how the teacher, Dan, enacted an intersectional critical pedagogy with students in both health education and PE, which engaged gender, sexuality, social class, and ethnicity. I was privileged to spend a great deal of time in his classes and I observed that Dan employed five key elements in his teaching, each of which contributed to his critical practice: building the environment; deconstructing power; playfulness; studying critical topics; and embodied criticality.

Kim Oliver and David Kirk: activist pedagogy

The final example of critical pedagogy in PE that I want to discuss here is Kim Oliver’s long-standing work with girls in PE (Hamzeh and Oliver, 2012; Oliver and Hamzeh, 2010; Oliver and Lalik, 2000, 2001, 2004a, 2004b; Oliver et al., 2009) and, more recently, her work on activist pedagogy with David Kirk (who also has a long history of critical work in the field, e.g. Kirk, 1986a, 1986b, 2004, 2006; Kirk and Tinning, 1990). In this paper I focus specifically on their recent work together, which addresses girls and PE (Oliver and Kirk, 2015, 2016).

Oliver and Kirk (2016) begin with the assumption that there is a problem with girls in PE. They argue that decades of literature and research on this problem have failed to come up with any solution. Oliver and Kirk state that ‘this work must seek to make more visible and transparent the “naturalization” of the gender order’ (Oliver and Kirk, 2016: 314). They view an activist approach as one that: ‘seeks to take small steps to improve the life situations of specific groups of girls in specific contexts’ (Oliver and Kirk, 2016: 314). Based on extensive empirical work, they suggest four elements for a critical activist approach to physical activity with girls: student-centred pedagogy; a focus on embodiment; inquiry-based PE centred-in-action; and listening and responding to girls over time.

The future of critical pedagogy in PE

I began this paper with a story about meeting an eminent critical scholar – Michelle Fine – in New York and her complete surprise that critical approaches to PE actually exist. If I had, instead, been talking to a critical scholar in Australia (say, Jane Kenway), New Zealand (Alison Jones) or in the UK (perhaps, Diane Reay) they may have been less surprised, or even able to engage in a discussion on the history of critical work in the discipline. This is an important point because the efficacy of critical approaches, along with the how, what, and why of critical practice are highly dependent on context. The work discussed in this paper is no different. Richard Tinning was writing from Australia in 2002 (based on his considerable work from the 1980s onwards). Australia is a country with a long history of critical scholarship in education and in PE more specifically. Dan’s practice in New Zealand emanates from a country where critically-oriented PE curriculum policy documents have been in place since the 1990s (for discussion of this elsewhere, see Burrows and Wright, 2004; Culpan, 1996/1997; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Tinning, 2000). The context of Azzarito’s (2010) argument, likewise, relies on particular media-driven articulations of body and race that, while increasingly global, also have specific affects in certain contexts. The work of Oliver and Kirk is also somewhat regionally distinct. The relationships in Oliver’s studies between young women and adults are inscribed in cultural contexts and also situated in the USA. These contexts are important because they determine both what is possible and what cultural conditions are necessarily engaged in, challenged, and exposed. In many ways, it is heartening that critical work in the field emanates from such different sites. This too is somewhat at odds with tendencies in some parts of the field for narrow nationally-bound approaches. This is particularly true of the bulk of the PE scholarship in the USA, much of which seems entirely ignorant of the long history of PE critical pedagogy in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, the work discussed above is, in line with the best of the critical tradition, reimagining practice, connecting with contemporary relations of power, and continuing to suggest alternatives. Hawkins’ (2008) observation that PE is currently experiencing a crisis of meaning brought about by philosophical pragmatism, cultural materialism and a focus on health remains sharply pertinent. The four approaches to critical PE discussed here – Tinning (2002), Azzarito (2010), Fitzpatrick (2013), and Oliver and Kirk (2016) – are all at odds with the dominant materialist view. Although Kirk and Oliver employ the health discourse, the others resist it. All four approaches suggest that the field of PE should engage with questions of meaning while also interrogating the workings of power. Part of the (on-going) crisis in the PE discipline concerns the issue that PE practices in schools seem to engender strong feelings, often of either love or hate. While many students find PE a welcome relief from the constraints of other classes (see Fitzpatrick, 2013; Robinson and Randall, 2016), others find it excruciating. According to international research, the latter are more likely to also experience exclusion on the basis of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, body size or ability (e.g. Dagkas and Armour, 2012; Denison and Kitchen, 2015). Student experiences notwithstanding, the field of PE is undoubtedly underpinned by the three discourses that Hawkins (2008: 345) named. I contend here that these driving forces, at least in part, create the conditions for exclusion, and ultimately the wider marginalisation of PE as a discipline, along with the disbelief that it can be a site of critical practice. Health-based approaches are more apparent in the field now than ever before and, I argue, critical approaches in PE are thus even more urgent. I hope I have demonstrated in this article that, despite presumptions to the contrary, there is a strong enough basis of and for critical pedagogy within the field of PE to mount such a challenge. However, I began with a concern that the field remains mired in apolitical research and practice that tends to reproduce rather than challenge power relations (Wright, 2004) . The reason for this is somewhat obvious and relates directly to the arguments I make in this article. Philosophical pragmatism is highly convenient for both researchers and practitioners. As Tinning noted in 2002, it is uncomfortable and perhaps even intolerable to face the challenge of critical thought. It involves questioning one’s own place in social and political hierarchies, and it involves embracing the margins in order to displace one’s own power. This is not a move that most scholars and teachers are drawn to make. We are all invested in the forms of power we are able to utilise. Power and status in contemporary times lie – at least in part – in work that promises to enhance health. There is more funding, more attention and greater prestige for PE if it promises to deliver better societal health. For a discipline that has grappled with marginal curriculum status from the beginning, this is understandably attractive. But what are the ends of this work? Where does such an orientation take PE? In a recent special issue of Sport, Education and Society, Fernández-Balboa (2017: 659) asks: ‘Why, despite the estimable efforts made by many critical scholars and pedagogues in the last decades, are HPE practices still predominantly dominated by a neoliberal agenda?’ Others have, likewise, lamented the lack of uptake of critical work in the field. While I lament this myself, it is worth remembering that critical work is intended to disrupt the status quo, engage in questioning and uncertainty and challenge power relations. In this sense, it will always be somewhat on the margins: challenging and exposing relations of power, rather than reproducing them. This work is always somewhat unpopular and uncomfortable. As critical scholars and practitioners expose power relations they necessarily, by resisting conformity, also risk their own status. In a recent article on populism, equity and inclusion, Evans and Davies (2017: 691) state that:

At its very best research should help illuminate and challenge corrosive and reductive elements of policies and governance that put at risk the democratic nation state. It should intentionally unsettle and disturb policies, policy makers and other professionals in government, Higher Education and schools in the process, while offering guidance on renewal, social progress and growth.