ABSTRACT
The role of schools as agencies in the social construction of gender has been well researched and the secondary school curriculum, in general, is known to perpetuate gender-stereotyped behaviour (Wrigley 1992, Rudduck 1994, Abraham 1995, Shaw 1995, Darling and Glendinning 1996). Physical Education (PE) is one aspect of the secondary school curriculum where content and grouping arrangements can contribute to stereotypical expectations and assumptions about gender appropriate role-play. This can, and does, influence pupils’ overall perceptions of sex differences and accentuates a broader, hidden, ‘gendered’ curriculum (Bain 1990, Kirk 1992a; Nutt and Clarke 2002; Ronholt 2002). Particular attention in this chapter is given to ways in which the PE curriculum, especially games, was and is constructed around gender distinctions. It critiques contemporary approaches that act to sustain notions of gender difference and perpetuate resistance to change across the primary and secondary school experience with particular reference to pupil grouping practices, staffing strategies, activity choices, and teacher, trainee and pupil perceptions.
