ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to encourage teachers and teacher developers to create physical education programmes where all students' interests are served and where all students have access to the rewards of the dominant social system. It defines constructs important in understanding several forms of oppression occurring in physical education, presents illustrative examples of problems teachers face in making their work more equitable, and provides selective instances of physical education pedagogy research in the US that addresses equity in the gym. Scholarship in the US educational community addressing reduction of the 'isms' has depended in large part on limited government funding for small special projects rather than being systematically infused into education. Equity in the gym means providing fair, sensitive, respectful treatment of all students, regardless of their personal characteristics. Physical educators should promote equity in the gym because educational rhetoric in the US holds that free public schooling for all children should create opportunities for each to maximize her/his individual potentials.
