Research
Our Perspectives
Drawing from a socio-cultural and pedagogical perspective, we carry out interdisciplinary research with and for young people at physical culture sites to address current issues of inequalities and inequities. We view sports not simply as games to play or fitness and health as something people have to do; rather, we conceptualize physical activity as a means of constructing the self in society. We explore how bodily practices can be pedagogically constructed as meaningful and culturally relevant to people’s lives in their communities.
Our work examines how sociocultural, political, and economic forces have an impact on the body, school PE, physical activity, fitness, and health. In today’s context of public health, we are particularly interested in understanding how health disparities, structural inequalities, and the materiality of the socio-educational and economic resources young people have access to in the local community contexts of their daily lives inform their physicality development and health.
Our Research
We interrogate critically how young people embody issues of gender, sexuality, race, ableism, and sizeism and the intersectionality of these social categories in physical activity and health and express them in their engagement with and/or disengagement from physical culture. Adopting critical and constructivist theories, we investigate PE classes, gyms, and other contexts of health, fitness, or recreation as sites of critical inquiries. We are thus committed to re-constructing PE curricula and other contexts of physical culture as sites of pedagogical resistance, social change, and transformation.
Our research employs qualitative methodologies that position children and young people as active agents, enabling them to voice, express, and represent their experiences in meaningful, creative, and contextualized ways. We adopt research methodologies that have the potential to make inequalities and inequities visible in order to create social change. In our visual research, we use community-based arts centers, schools, and art galleries as sites of public and critical pedagogy for social change, showcasing participants’ own visual representations of the significance of physical activity in their lives. We use art exhibitions as pedagogical spaces for youth’s expression in the attempt to legitimate, recognize, and communicate the ways in which they talk, feel, and represent their embodied experiences to the public, beyond the boundaries of academia.
Presenting at AERA in 2018
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Research for Social Change in Physical Education, Health, & Physical Culture
Graduate Students Presenting
Graduate Students and faculty members are committed to social justice
We shed light on hidden forms of discrimination among minority groups
We conduct research for social change in PE, health, and physical culture.
We ask critical questions in physical culture and education.
How do we raise awareness of critical issues related to race, gender, culture, socioeconomic status and (dis)ability in PE, health, and physical culture?
What are some everyday challenges, pitfalls, and possibilities that we have faced in research and practice?
