ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what we conventionally regard as ‘policy’ in physical education; ‘official texts’ produced by governments or curriculum agencies that provide the reference point for the development of physical education in schools. However, it locates these texts as part of the complex process of policy development that we described in chapter 2. The discussion therefore highlights a number of important points in relation to investigations of the ways in which gender issues are represented in policies for physical education. In particular I stress that we need to look at physical education policy developments in the context of political influences and agendas, and in the light of pragmatic concerns relating to education and to physical education. Not for the first time we see that policy making always involves compromises and that these reflect the positions that particular people and particular interests either have or are denied in the policy process. In pursuing the representation of gender issues in physical education policies I also direct attention to what can not be said in policy debates and what is excluded from policy texts relating to physical education. I argue that silences can certainly speak louder than words and that neither silence, nor the use of ‘neutral’ language, is in any way neutral. In policy developments in education decisions to retain silences or to use particular language are conscious and political decisions that have important implications for future practice. These characteristics will influence the degree to which policies serve to demand or encourage that established and inequitable practices and beliefs are rendered a thing of the past, and new practices developed that signal a conscious commitment to better representation of individuals who are currently marginalised in and by physical education.
