Gender\u00a0stereotypes\u00a0continue\u00a0to shape how\u00a0women are\u00a0perceived\u00a0as authority figures\u00a0in physical education\u00a0(PE)\u00a0classrooms across Ontario according to the research of a recent Brock graduate.<\/p>\n
Emma Lewis (BPhEd\u00a0\u201923, MA\u00a0\u201926), who graduated with a master\u2019s in Applied Health Sciences during the University\u2019s 119th Convocation in June, was awarded the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) Graduate Student Research Scholarship from Physical and Health Education Canada (PHE Canada) for her graduate research.<\/p>\n
Her interest in the topic stems from her own experiences. While she was involved in sports growing up and loved PE classes, Lewis also recalls situations where girls were included only to meet\u00a0minimum\u00a0team requirements and moments when she felt pressured to participate while injured.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when I realized that girls were undervalued in the sports environment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She\u00a0encountered\u00a0similar dynamics in coaching and teaching roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt that my gender affected how much respect I experienced as an authoritative figure,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is not only happening to me \u2014 it\u2019s a societal issue that has been reproduced for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-supervised\u00a0by\u00a0Associate Professors of Kinesiology\u00a0Nathan Hall and Rob Millington, Lewis interviewed women teaching PE across the province.<\/p>\n
Using thematic analysis and participants’ own words, she\u00a0says she aimed to \u201cgive the participants a voice\u201d in the research.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all had some sort of experience where they felt that their gender has affected their experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Participants described facing\u00a0gender\u00a0discrimination from both students and parents,\u00a0sharing their\u00a0experiences\u00a0of being\u00a0treated differently than\u00a0men\u00a0as authority figures\u00a0in\u00a0PE.<\/p>\n
Her finding revealed both interpersonal challenges and systemic barriers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kind of have to deal with something and then start the next day fresh as if it didn\u2019t happen. Unless something is detrimental, sometimes they\u2019re taught to not speak up about it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Lewis says the onus is often on women to find solutions themselves, but she believes everyone has a role to play in dismantling these obstacles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to ask these questions because I refuse to accept that discrimination like this should continue to be normalized,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Her research highlighted teaching strategies already in use to help remove gender bias from the\u00a0PE\u00a0space,\u00a0such as\u00a0grouping students by their interests\u00a0rather than by gender.<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Lewis aims to broaden access to her findings beyond academic audiences by exploring ways to help teachers already working in the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gender\u00a0stereotypes\u00a0continue\u00a0to shape how\u00a0women are\u00a0perceived\u00a0as authority figures\u00a0in physical education\u00a0(PE)\u00a0classrooms across Ontario according to the research of a recent Brock graduate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":110673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,36,188,55,1,5],"tags":[28,996,7488,5541,3335,3330,3325,15174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110671"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110674,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110671\/revisions\/110674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}