The dynamics of human diversity in sport pedagogy scholarship

Prof. Paul Schempp

University of Georgia, USA

The notion of "rugged individualism" is a cultural slogan that has long been a part of the American psyche. Our heroes are those who challenge the odds, and through personal effort and ability achieve distinction over their contemporaries. The American vision of a pioneer is the individual who took a dream and a few belongings on a perilous journey through an unknown territory and reached his/her triumphant goal. This perspective fits as well with the founders of our country in the 1760s, as it does with our astronauts in the1960s. Our cultural fixation with the individual over the collective can also be seen as shaping our dominate perspective in pedagogical research.

In the early part of this century, Edward Thorndike ushered psychology into North American educational scholarship. The role of psychology in instructional studies has been powerful and pervasive. Setting the stage for "education as science", the work of B.F. Skinner proved particularly potent as behavioral studies became the standard for scholarship. Cognitive psychology has, in more recent years, also become a mainstay in North American educational scholarship. With years of work, and dedicated scholars, these traditions have spawned a rich, influential, and informative body of knowledge.

In North American physical education and sport pedagogy studies, the influence of psychological theories and perspectives has provided knowledge in areas of teacher/coach effectiveness, student behavior management, academic learning time, student cognition, and teacher decision making. The collected body of this work has been transformed into textbooks, and has proved instrumental in shaping programs of teacher preparation. There is much to celebrate in these traditions, and their continuance as scholarly endeavors promises future discoveries for enhancing the teaching-learning of sport and physical activity. The tight focus on the individual has offered multiple prescriptions for curing personal deficiencies, and provided a platform for launching programs that prepare individuals to undertake occupational duties.

With scholars' attention tightly focused on the psyche of teachers and students, something is missing. Forces that sculpt our culture have been overlooked in the search for the elements that shape the individual. The contested nature of culture, education, and knowledge has gone unexplored. The dynamics of human experience, and the constitution and construction of reality, are largely absent in the literature of sport pedagogy in North America. Again, considering the American fixation on rugged individualism, this absence is not surprising.

Absent too from the literature, and perhaps accounting for a lack of scholarly focus on those things communal, are the social theories underpinned with the assumption that a society is greater than the whole of its individual members. In other words, an individual cannot be seen as extractable from the culture, nor a culture as a mass of individuals. The identity of an individual is not the fixed property of the individual, but rather a culture commodity whose value and constitution fluctuates in the reality of the socially lived experience. The noted American philosopher John Dewey (1916) recognized this when he stated that:

A being whose activities are associated with others has a social environment. What he does, and what he can do, depend upon the expectations, demands, approvals, and condemnations of others. A being connected with other beings cannot perform his own activities without taking the activities of others into account. For they are the indispensable conditions of the realization of his tendencies. (p.12)

Our social worlds offer no immunity to sport fields and gymnasia. Actions, beliefs, traditions and perspectives that define how we live in the world also define how we live and learn in sport. It is stating the obvious to say that the socio-cultural categories within which we find ourselves, help define who we are and what we do in the world. Our identities as human beings are, in part, forged in whether we are male or female, rich or poor, African or Asian, capitalist or communist.

An extensive review of literature in sport pedagogy recently turned up an alarming finding: little or no scholarship is in evidence that addresses the critical concerns of culture in teaching or learning sport and human movement. In particular, the issues of gender, race or class have drawn little attention from those who study the transmission and transformation of sport knowledge (Chepyator-Thomson, Templeton, Spencer, You & St.Pierre, 1997). Few would argue that gender, race and class as social constructs, are fundamental elements in the definition and dynamics of any culture.

The reasons for the absence of these variables in the analysis of sport pedagogy can only be identified through speculation. A lack of precedent in considering the gender, race and social class of teachers and students of sport is clearly one deterrent to study. The slipperiness of defining and determining these social constructs must clearly stand as a reason for the lack of vigour scholars have shown in this regard. Reasons or excuses notwithstanding, the socio-cultural dynamics that shape our lives in a larger society must be considered and analyzed in the instructional activities within sport if a full, rich, and accurate picture of sport pedagogy is to emerge.

Weber (1964) theorized that social order was structured by the distinct groups of people. The social stratifications of these groups were based upon the similarities in their economic, political, and cultural positions. These groups of people together formed the basic units of a society and it was within these groups that individuals acquire their identity, values, and world views. It was in the major institutions of a society-- governments, churches, schools, businesses--that these groups were formed and reified. Forces that moved a society were, for Weber, found in the processes of social stratification and located in the institutions of that society.

The identities of social groups are, therefore, active social constructions. These groups are not formed as conscious acts of isolated, like-minded individuals, but as dynamic interplays between individual and group, as well as groups within and between groups. It is in the formation and reformation of these groups that one finds the pulse and lifeblood of a society. As these groups form and reform, they are labelled by the members of the society. The labels often reflect one or more of the characteristics endemic to the group. In North America, various groups are labelled within the larger social stratifications based on race, class, gender, ability, religion, ethnicity, and the like.

The limited regard for understanding socially stratified groups in North American sport and physical education scholarship was recently revealed. Chepyator-Thomson (1998) and her colleagues examined five mainstream physical education journals to ascertain the attention paid by scholars to diverse populations over the past 15 years. In this study, over 2,020 articles were reviewed from the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, the Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, Physical Educator, Quest and Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. Of the articles reviewed, less than 2% were related to race, less than 1% had any bearing on social class, disability was a focus of attention in approximately 1% of the articles, and less than 3% considered gender as a key construct. That which makes us different and that which unites us, the groups that build our culture, are clearly not in the field of scholarly vision in North America.

As individuals meet in educational social institutions, the identities those individuals hold can become reified or reshaped in the educational process. Precisely how, why, with whom, and to what effect those identities become reshaped is largely unknown in the world of sport and physical activity instruction. The fact that contemporary societies value the pedagogical enterprise in sport and physical activity, as evidenced by their predominance in North America, reveals that the educational enterprises of sport are socially significant sites. Sport pedagogy is, therefore, an important location for crafting the identities of both the individual and social groups. Yet, it remains unexplored territory. The question remains: how are the dialectic dynamics of individual and collective social identity detected and understood in sport pedagogy? The answer to that question is vital to the body of knowledge.

Clifford Gertz (1973), in his classic text, The Interpretation of Cultures, identifies a potentially plausible route by which scholars might identify and understand the social stratification process endemic in sport instruction. He wrote:

.... if you want to understand what a science is, you should look in the first instance not at theories or its findings, and certainly not at what its apologists say about it; you should look at what the practitioners of it do. In anthropology, or anyway social anthropology, what the practitioners do is ethnography. (p. 5)

Ethnography appears a particularly well suited endeavor for the sport pedagogy scholar in search of the forces of social change that reside within the teaching/learning process of sport. Ethnography is, according to Wolcott (1975), the science of cultural description. Academic attempts to describe the forces of social stratification and diversity are attempts at recognizing and understanding both our teaching and our society. If one, for example, were attempting to understand why the dominant social groups representing North American physical education teachers were: (a) Caucasian, (b) male and (c) middle class (Schempp, 1995), it would be necessary to understand the formational forces of those three social groups in order to fully understand the social classification: physical education teacher.

The object of investigation in an ethnography is the social discourse. In social discourse, one finds embedded the symbolic system that not only defines the culture, but allows it to function and change. The most obvious form of discourse is the language used (and not used) by those in the social site. The primacy of language in cultural construction and stratification compels the ethnographer to write as a means of recording, interpreting and reporting his or her investigation.

There are other symbols used in the social discourse as well; among these are symbolic behaviour (i.e. purposeful actions), symbolic objects (e.g., art, awards, pictures) and symbolic tools (e.g., lesson plans, learning aids, equipment). The use of these symbols reveals the process of stratification, the notions of power and the dynamics of resistance and change. It is through the manipulation of these cultural objects that groups are formed and individual identities are crafted. Analyzing the symbolic systems in sport pedagogy holds the promise for understanding the role of sport in society, and our role in sport. It remains a largely unexplored frontier, but a frontier necessary for comprehending the significance of the practices in sport pedagogy.

References

Chepyator-Thomson, R. J., Templeton, C., Spencer, R., You, J., & St. Pierre, P. (1998, January). Human diversity in physical education: Where do we stand. Symposium presented at the National Association of Physical Education in Higher Education annual conference, New Orleans, LA.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillian.

Gertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Schempp, P. G. (1995). In-coming physical education students' presocialization and preconceptions. In C. Par (Ed.). Better teaching in physical education? Think about it! (pp. 53-64). Trois Riv

Wolcott, H. (1975). Criteria for an ethnographic approach to research in schools. Human Organization, 34(2), 111-127.

Copyright sociology of sport online, 1998