‘The good, the bad and the ugly’: primary school children’s visual representations and interpretations of PE teacher embodiments

Abstract

Physicality has been, and still is, an important part of the embodied identity of many physical education (PE) teachers. PE teachers’ understanding and representation of their bodies influence both their teaching and act as role models for their students. PE is therefore an important site for exploring how ideals of the body shape both understandings and practices within this school subject. In this study we employed participatory visual methodologies in the form of participant-produced drawings to explore primary school children’s experiences of PE teacher bodies and subjectivities. By drawing on poststructural and Foucauldian understandings of the body, we in this paper explore the construction and embodiment of PE teacher bodies as inextricably linked to students’ understandings and experiences of this school subject. The findings demonstrate how dominant discourses of fitness, health, sport and even consumerism shape expectations around PE teacher bodies. They also draw attention to how those bodies enable and restrict certain educational purposes and practices. We argue that the ongoing reproduction and perpetuation of idealized PE teacher bodies is responsible for (re)producing meanings around the normal versus the abnormal PE teacher body with significant impact on students’ bodily understandings and experiences in PE. We conclude by reasserting the need to challenge how dominant discourses of PE teacher bodies has the cumulative effect of restricting the possibilities for a multiplicity of bodies and physicalities to co-exist in PE.