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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) What do we know about sport? What are common assumptions we make about sport and society?
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There are so many complicating factors to consider in whether sport reflects individual merit. Having the experience of organized sport in a small community, I can tell you that individual merit is not necessarily reflected. So much is based on who you are, who the coaches are, who has influence in the organization (generally, the adults have influence and the children/youth are the ones impacted). Individual merit can also be impacted by economic factors. Unfortunately, “looks” matter — if your equipment looks less than stellar, you are not considered as honestly for your actual merit, in this case your skill and talent. If you need things explained in a slightly different way so you can participate, your individual merit is also not celebrated. So, while your individual merit should be reflected, there are multiple complicating factors. |
Exercise 3: Notebook prompt
What are some other metanarratives about sport that you are familiar with? Find an image or video clip or draw something yourself that captures this idea…
Another metanarrative about sport that I can think of is that sport is absolutely necessary for your health. Not wrong, but still a metanarrative. Does it need to involve sport, or does it need to involve exercise? The video below talks about the benefits of sports for your body and brain.
So what? Why does any of this matter? Does it matter? As something we grow up with – live with – play through – we don’t often interrogate the meanings of sport, and perhaps we don’t want to.
But being aware of these assumptions and metanarratives is especially important, I would argue, because of the centrality of sport to our everyday lives, the role that sport plays in shaping our childhood and worldviews and….. [finish that thought]
| …the significant influence it has on culture. Often when we talk about influences on culture in this part of the world, we have a focus on western culture, but sports does transcend that because sport is everywhere. Different sports, to be sure, but they are everywhere. The metanarratives can be challenging, but they’re not wrong. People stop and watch the Olympics and talk about the Olympics, even if they don’t spend time paying attention to sports at any other time. True, that may be a western thing because the access to mass media, but I think it’s more widespread than that. There are lots of questions to be asked about the metanarratives – look at Fair Play and Sportsmanship, for example. Is it fair play if it is not accessible to everyone? Is it fair play if someone is relegated to the sidelines because they don’t understand the rules because no one paused long enough to explain them in a way that could be understood? Does that really show sportsmanship? How is it fair play when athletes are using performance enhancing drugs in the hopes of garnering national pride? Competition and victory are not bad things, as long as, along with the importance of winning, and the creation of winning teams, there are opportunities to just play for those who want to just play. Overcoming adversity does not need to include bullying. The adversity should be about the sport itself, not about prejudice based on race, ethnicity, ableism, for example. Sports are important, they do have the ability to bring people together with a common focus, and they are fun to watch and play. But, yes, we should be aware of the metanarratives and watch for the sinkholes they can case.
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B) What is social justice?
Exercise 4: Padlet Prompt
Think back to the last section and try to look at some of the ideas we discussed differently. How might sport and social justice actually co-exist?
Record any images, video clips, or gifs you added to the padlet and identify a point of intersection between sport and social justice (can be an issue or a barrier or a debate or something you would like to explore in more depth in this course) . Screenshot or paste in your response below.
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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0046958020935662 There are so many barriers to sport, many of which have been identified already. Barriers are a obvious intersection between sport and social justice. Along with the barriers of gender, race, disability, etc. is the barrier of location. Not just location in the world, but also location in Canada. The link above is an inquiry into access to physical activity itself, not just organized sports in rural, remote and northern communities. So often decisions about money are made based on the density of populations. Sporting facilities cost a lot and if the population density is not high enough to support the amount of money required to keep the facility running, the facility doesn’t exist, so access and opportunity do not exist. And access to what is available in rural and remote areas is also a challenge because of distances. I believe that there should be access to facilities, to sporting opportunities, regardless of location. That means distributing resources differently — that’s the intersection between sports and social justice.
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C) Social Justice Reading
(note: this activity is optional!)
D) KINESIOLOGY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Exercise 5:
Exercise 6:
What are the implications of bodies-at-risk discourse and the refusal to understand the health gap from a social justice perspective, according to the authors of this article?
| The bodies-at-risk discourse is a deficit model. The implications for that are significant. A deficit model places blame on marginalized groups for being judged against the majority. In the case of health, that means judging against White privilege. In North America being white and middle class gives one significant privilege and blaming others for not having that privilege is definitely not looking at health with a social justice perspective. The focus in the article on the importance of culturally relevant pedagogy in teaching phys. ed. is an interesting way of drawing a clear picture health being framed from a dominant culture perspective. Yes, the majority of teachers in schools are still white, still middle class, and often in phys. ed., they are male. That positionality makes it challenging to see things from the perspective of marginalized groups. Teachers need to be ready to acknowledge their privilege and check their own privilege, to pause and let the students lead if need be, to ensure their pedagogy is coming from a position of strength. The authors of the article emphasize strongly the need to understand the health gap from a position of strength. Otherness cannot continue to be seen as a deficit; addressing the health gap must be strength-based. And, the intersectionalities of marginalization must also be addressed. The health gap is only exacerbated for those who are in multiple marginalized groups, but if we stop measuring that health gap based on the deficit model, there will be more understanding. Back to the education model, teachers CAN make a difference, even if they are not in a marginalized group. They need to make a conscious effort to use culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, take the time to listen in an effort to understand, and change the discourse. That’s the social justice perspective and is the only way to enact longterm change.
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Section Two: Sport Feminism
Exercise 7: Notebook Prompt
What is feminism? What does it mean to you? Choose one of the images below and explain how it captures your understanding of feminism (or find one that does speak to you and paste this into your pressbook with an explanation of why it matters to you.
| Defining feminism is an interesting concept, coming from a family of strong, independent women. As far back as my mother’s memory of her grandmothers, but even the stories of her great grandmother. Women who would not be backed down, who broke down barriers in many different ways, even though they were often in traditional female roles. Feminism isn’t just about stepping outside traditional roles. From my great-great grandmother who negotiated her marriage and was paid a salary by her husband to run the household (no small feat with 12 children, the first six of whom were boys) to my great grandmother who was a teacher, as a married woman, when married women were not supposed to be allowed to teach, to my grandmother who was a community builder and activist in many different ways – they all demonstrated feminism in their own ways. There was never any question in our family that everyone would do what suited them, regardless of what it would be. That’s true of the women in the family, but also of the men. My dad is a librarian, a typically female role, because that is where he wants to be.
Choosing one of those pictures to represent feminism seems a bit limiting. They each have their own message. I understand the marches – they were very much needed to give women a voice. Without taking voice away from men. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about everyone have an equal voice, an important voice, a voice that needs to be heard. Without men also accepting the cloak of feminism, we are really getting nowhere, so yes, men need to be feminists too. As allies. Feminism for people of colour looks different than for those who are white, because of the intersectionalities. All the pictures capture different nuances of feminism.
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Exercise 8: Notes Prompt (optional)
NB: Cornell notes is a great resource that teaches effective notetaking. Unfortunately, our system can’t save notes taken in the H5P app, so this is fully optional.
Exercise 9: Crossword Activity
Exercise 10: Padlet Prompt
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There are changes happening, but maybe not as many as we would like. The PWHL, for example, started with only 50% of the teams with women in the head coach position. Women’s hockey has been strong enough in North America for long enough that there should be 6 women capable of leading those teams, so why were there still men in those leadership positions? It’s not just about women playing hockey; it also needs to be about women in leadership positions. Still looking at hockey, think about the media hype around the World Junior Championship. It was advertised for weeks ahead of time and the amount of broadcast time was significant for that tournament, and easy to see those games. But what about the women’s tournaments? Where were they televised and where was the ongoing reporting and the people glued to their televisions? Yes, we are moving, but I’m not convinced we have moved beyond the core group of people who are fans of women’s hockey. There continue to be misogynistic comments about the play. Having said that, we need to continue to celebrate the huge steps that have been taken in the last few years to get women’s professional leagues going, in basketball, in hockey and in soccer. The level of play is amazing; we just need to get the mainstream media onboard. Unfortunately, things could go backwards now with the political situation in the States, and what could follow in Canada. The kinesiology article comments on what was happening during the last Trump term were concerning enough, but now there’s a second chance to destroy what has been happening. |
