ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the issues of gender and the French didactique research. Its aim is to give a literature overview of the scope, conceptual framework and findings of this body of academic knowledge in physical education (PE) referring to Margaret Talbot1 as a particularly significant researcher in the field. Through her research (Talbot, 1986, 1993, 2001) and her commitment as Chairwoman of the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women (IAPESGW) and as Vice-President for Education in the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE), Margaret Talbot fought continually to defend quality PE for girls (and boys) over diverse geographical and cultural areas. She inspired numerous scholars and I am greatly honoured to pay a tribute to her internationally renowned advocacy of inclusive opportunities for all children in PE. In the 1990s, at a time when not much attention was being given in France to gender issues except the seminal work of Annick Davisse and Catherine Louveau (1991), Margaret Talbot’s thoughts about gendered PE was an important contribution to the French reflection and my own research work which is rooted, for over 40 years, in the ‘French didactique’, a field of research that has a special focus on students learning through classroom interactions (Amade-Escot, 2006). In the early 2000s I initiated with a group of doctoral students a research program2 with the aim of investigating gender issues in day-to-day PE settings through a finegrained analysis of the gendered content taught and learned and how it emerges from the situated interactions. This research programme, which is reviewed here, has to owe a debt of gratitude for Margaret Talbot’s academic contribution to gender studies in PE. In this chapter I highlight how PE didactique research relies on Margaret Talbot’s advocacy for gender equality. Drawing on sociological and pedagogical research, this ethnographic approach focuses on classroom interactions and sheds light on how gendered content is co-constructed
through didactical transactions. The overarching findings provide a rich portrayal and in-depth understanding of how girls’ and boys’ engagement in PE interplays with teacher’s supervision in relation to the knowledge content at stake. Most of this research was presented at ARIS Congresses (French ‘Association for Research on Intervention in Sport and Physical Education’) or in French journals, and thus is little known in the Anglo-American PE research community. After a brief overview of gender research in PE at the end of the 1990s, the chapter presents the conceptual framework that undergirds the didactique research over the last 15 years. Attention, then, turns to its major findings which describe how gendered contents are developed within the enacted curriculum. Finally, the conclusion sketches some implications for research and teacher education.
