Socially just teaching in physical education – The teachers’ perspectives
Authors: Heidrich Franziska 
Published: September 2024

Diversity and the demand for social justice have become essential elements of modern societies (United Nations, 2015). Addressing students’ diversity and promoting social justice present both requirements and challenges for physical education (PE). Social justice pedagogies (SJP) try to address these needs by promoting inclusive education for all students, challenging heteronormative beliefs and unequal power dynamics, and encouraging critical thinking (Azzarito et al., 2017; Gerdin et al., 2022). SJP serve as the theoretical foundation for this study. However, while the concept of social justice is theoretically well-explored, specific teaching practices for this purpose are underrepresented in scientific literature. There is limited knowledge about the strategies PE teachers employ to address students’ diversity and promote social justice (Schenker et al., 2019).
This study examines how PE teachers in Austria implement SJP. An exploratory qualitative interview study was conducted to explore what PE teachers actually do to address students’ diversity and contribute to social justice. The objective is to gain a deeper understanding of teachers’ practices rather than focusing on best-practice examples. Interviews with 20 secondary school PE teachers focus on their teaching practices, including goals, content, didactic-methodical approaches, teacher-student interactions, and grading methods. To avoid socially desirable responses, participants were asked general questions about these aspects without knowing the analysis would focus on social justice. A qualitative content analysis was performed following Mayring (2014) to identify teaching practices aligned with SJP in the data material generated through the interviews.
The results show, that the data material describes various teaching practices aligned with SJP, including goals such as promoting social competences and fairness, selecting teaching content that considers students’ diversity, and making individualized adjustments to exercises. Overall, the findings indicate a wide range of teaching practices related to SJP that reflect the theoretical considerations of SJP, although some teaching practices remain somewhat vague and do not fully encompass these theoretical considerations. Finally, it is important to highlight that the data also reveals many teaching practices that are not aligned with SJP.
References
Azzarito, L., Macdonald, D., Dagkas, S., & Fisette, J. (2017). Revitalizing the physical education social-justice agenda in the global era: Where do we go from here? Quest, 69(2), 205–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2016.1176935
Gerdin, G., Smith, W., Philpot, R., Schenker, K., Moen, K. M., Linnér, S., Westlie, K., & Larsson, L. (2022). Social justice pedagogies in health and physical education (Routledge Studies in Physical Education and Youth Sport). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Mayring, P. (2014). Qualitative content analysis: theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-395173
Schenker, K., Linnér, S., Smith, W., Gerdin, G., Mordal Moen, K., Philpot, R., Larsson, L., Legge, M., & Westlie, K. (2019). Conceptualising social justice – What constitutes pedagogies for social justice in HPE across different contexts? Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education, 10(2), 126–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/25742981.2019.1609369
United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development: Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748902065-653