Young Women's Health and Physical

The “Missing Discourses of Desire:” Young Women’s Health and Physical Education Experiences in Toronto and Porto Alegre

Laura Leigh Elliott

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Exercise Sciences Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education University of Toronto

©Copyright by Laura Leigh Elliott (2018) The “Missing Discourses of Desire:” Young women’s Health and Physical Education Experiences in Toronto and Porto Alegre

Laura Leigh Elliott

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Exercise Sciences University of Toronto

2018

Abstract

Through a feminist poststructural lens, this dissertation explores: (a) the range of understandings about gendered and racialized bodies held by young women in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; (b) a comparison of the discourses embedded in health and physical education (HPE) policy with respect to gender, sexuality, and fitness in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; and (c) the effects that gendered and racialized narratives mediating HPE policy and media consumption have on young women in these cities. This study involved a policy analysis of HPE documents and 40 semi-structured interviews with young women 14-17 years of age (n=20 in Canada; and n=20 in Brazil) in order to investigate the myriad of ways in which the body is gendered, sexualized and racialized in HPE and media.

Interviews in Toronto and Porto Alegre reveal that students who took part in this study embody a form of healthism promoted in school and throughout the wide range of media platforms the young women consume. In Toronto, the consequence is what Michelle Fine (1988) calls a “missing discourse of desire” that tends to negate pleasure for students. Porto Alegre students taking part in this study also exhibit healthist biopedagogies, although self-acceptance and pleasure emerged as dominant themes. These latter themes emerging from the Porto Alegre responses, diverge from the Toronto youth responses; as the Porto Alegre youth celebrate more diverse visions of the female body, whereas Toronto students discuss a discourse of ‘moderation.’ This moderation discourse narrows positive embodied practices. Utilizing Fine’s argument about “missing discourses of ii

desire” in education, Ontario HPE is then examined and questioned in relation to embodied pleasures made possible for young people in HPE. Policy recommendations include: addressing the social determinants of health in policy, adding opportunities for joyful experiences in physical education, and including critical health literacy and social media literacy in future policy. Young women are encouraged to find embodied pleasure in their physical education experiences and to critically question media representations of the female form.

iii

Acknowledgements

I want to begin by thanking the 40 young people who participated in this study. Without your thoughtful and passionate contributions, this dissertation would not have been possible. I am inspired by the commitment of this generation to their education, and the education of those who follow in their footsteps. Though I cannot disclose the names of these participants, I am forever grateful for their time and insight into their physical education and media experiences.

My graduate school journey has been made possible by the village that surrounds me. I could not have accomplished this arduous task without the love and support from my family, supportive friends and colleagues over the past five years, and I want to use this opportunity to say thank you. It is hard to put into words the gratitude I have for the scholars at the University of Toronto who have shaped my perspectives about academia, education and research. Dr. Margaret MacNeill, I could not have completed this program without your unwavering positivity and expertise in our field. Not only did you offer invaluable insight about my research, but you have also supported me personally during a challenging and busy time in my life. You always make yourself available for a meeting, sometimes even bouncing one of my children on your knee while we discuss biopedagogy or Foucault! This is a testament to your caring nature and dedication to helping young scholars in our field. I am so grateful for your help in all of these areas, and I feel so fortunate to have had you not only as my advisor, but also as a mentor and friend throughout this journey.

To my international supervisor, Dr. Alex Branco Fraga; the international portion of this study would not have been possible without your unwavering support and dedication to my project. Yourself and the POLIFES team welcomed my work with passion and dedication. The hours of work you spent on the challenging logistics of this project, the multiple Skype interviews, and meetings in person in Toronto were invaluable to the integrity of this project, and I am forever indebted to your kindness and support. To the POLIFES team, Ana Paula, Priscilla, Fernando, Eduardo; your thoughtful work in interviews, translation and transcription touch

the pages of this dissertation and enrich the analysis of this project in ways I did not know were possible. I am grateful for your dedication to our field, your thoughtful questions throughout this process, and your skills as researchers. Abraços (!) to you all and I hope to meet you in person one day!

To my supervisory committee members, Dr. Mike Atkinson and Dr. Caroline Fusco, I am forever appreciative of your commitment to excellence in our field and your dedication to my project and progress as a young scholar. Mike, observing your lectures as both a student and teaching assistant have helped reinvigorate my own passion and dedication to teaching. Your passion for research and education are palpable as a teacher, researcher and supervisor. Thank you! Caroline, thank you for contributing your expertise to my intellectual journey. Your influence graces these pages, and I thank you for your time, energy and kindness while I have navigated graduate work.

To my mom, I thank you for instilling in me a work ethic and ‘grit’ that allowed me to complete this graduate school journey. Watching you go back to school as a single mother, reminds me that I can achieve any goal with dedication and hard work. Thank you for modeling this behavior for me from the beginning and giving me ‘tough love’ when I felt defeated for any number of reasons throughout this journey.

To my husband, Blair, thank you for your complete and unwavering support throughout this process. You have always shown genuine interest in my work and research and continually demonstrate your love and support. Whether it be through giving extra love and time to our children when while I was writing this dissertation or offering an ear or arms during the times that I did not think I could take on this task on top of the rest of ‘life,’ you have always been there for me. I love you, and I look forward to this next chapter of our life with our family.

To my daughters, Nora and Margot, I dedicate this dissertation to you. It is my hope that this work makes some small change in the way ‘girls’ take up and embody gender in school and

media and I hope I have made you proud. I love you both more than words can say, and I cannot wait to see you grow up into the strong and caring people I know you already are.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ...... iv

CHAPTER ONE: Introductions ...... 1 1.1 Study Background ...... 1 1.2 Research Questions and Purpose ...... 6 1.3 The Importance of Cross-Cultural Education Research ...... 7 1.4 Thesis Organization ...... 9

CHAPTER TWO: Review of Literature ...... 11 2.2 The History of HPE in Canada & Brazil ...... 12 2.2.1 – The History/Political Context of PE Curriculum in Canada ...... 12 2.2.2 History/Political Context of Sexuality Curriculum in Canada ...... 19 2.2.3 Historical/Political Context of HPE Curriculum in Brazil ...... 24 2.2.4 Historical/Political Context of Sexuality Curriculum in Brazil ...... 28 2.3.1 Governmentality in HPE ...... 32 2.4 Biopedagogies in Cross-Cultural Education ...... 34 2.4.1 Biopedagogy and Public Pedagogies: Canadian and Brazilian Perspectives ...... 38 2.5 Critical Media Literacy in HPE: A Tool for Contesting Gendered Norms ...... 41 2.6 Thick Desire & Pleasure: Extending Biopedagogies of the Body ...... 44 2.7 Theorizing Pleasure and Play...... 46 2.8 Conclusions ...... 48

CHAPTER THREE: Methodolgy ...... 49 3.1 Overview and Epistemological Underpinnings of Inquiry ...... 50 3.1.1 Reflexivity and Positionality in Cross-Cultural Research ...... 53 3.1.2 “Crossing Borders” in Qualitative Data Collection ...... 56 3.2 Theoretical Framework ...... 58 3.2.1 Feminist Poststructural Theory ...... 59 3.2.4 Demographic Information in Toronto and Porto Alegre ...... 62 3.3 Methodology: Introduction ...... 63 3.4 Gender & Critical Discourse Analysis ...... 63 3.4 Ethical Considerations ...... 66 3.5 Recruitment of Participants...... 66 3.6 Photo-Elicitation ...... 69 3.6 Semi Structured Interviews ...... 70 3.7 Treatment of the Data ...... 71 3.8 Conclusions ...... 71

vii

CHAPTER FOUR: Cross-cultural Policy Analysis ...... 73 4. 1 History of Policy Analysis in Education ...... 74 4.2 Conceptual Framework for Cross-Cultural Critical Policy Analysis ...... 76 4.3 - Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ...... 78 4.4 - Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) ...... 79 4.5 – Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum: An Overview ...... 81 4.6 - The Ontario HPE Curriculum: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis ...... 85 4.6.1 Biopedagogies of the Fit and Healthy Body ...... 85 4.6.2 Biopedagogies of the Sexual Self ...... 88 4.7 The Parametros Curriculares Nacionais (PCN): An Overview and CFDA ...... 95 4.8 Moving Forward: Suggestions for Future HPE Policy Development and Cross-Cultural Lessons ...... 98 4.9 Conclusions ...... 102

CHAPTER FIVE: The Shaping of the Female Student Subject in HPE: ...... 104 5.1 Process of Data Analysis ...... 106 5.2 Missing Discourses of Desire in HPE ...... 107 5.2.1 Healthism in Toronto and Porto Alegre HPE: Personal Responsibility – Pushing Limits and Embodied Perspectives ...... 108 5.2.2 The Moral Imperatives of the Healthy Student in HPE ...... 115 5.2.3 Not Too Fat, Not Too Thin: The New Global Biopedagogy in HPE and the Masking of Healthism ...... 117 5.3 The Gendering of the Body in Media ...... 122 5.4 Cultural & Racial Representations in the Media ...... 125 5.5 Self-Acceptance and Intrinsic Joy in Porto Alegre HPE Experiences ...... 130 5.6 “You Do You:” Locating Student Resistance and Agency in HPE ...... 133 5.6.1 - A note on Boys and the “Double Bind of Masculinity” ...... 136 5.7 Conclusions ...... 137

CHAPTER 6: Conclusions ...... 139 6.1 Study Purpose and Research Questions ...... 139 6.2 Overview of Study Findings ...... 140 6.3 Chapter Summaries ...... 144 6.4 Recommendations ...... 146 6.5 Limitations of Study ...... 149 6.6 Practical Contributions...... 150 6.7 Future Research Directions ...... 152 6.8 Concluding Remarks ...... 154

REFERENCES ...... 155

Appendix A – Combined Letter of Recruitment and Parental/Guardian Consent Form ...... 170 Appendix B – Combined Letter of Recruitment and Student Assent ...... 175 Appendix C – Semi-Structured Interview Questions...... 179

viii

Appendix D – Oral Recruitment Script ...... 181 Appendix E – UFRGS Ethics Approval ...... 182 Appendix F – University of Toronto Ethics Approval ...... 183 Appendix G – TDSB Ethics Approval...... 183

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTIONS

1.1 Study Background

Across developed nations, educational systems distribute a culture’s respective allocation of values that get filtered down to the next generation of school-aged children in order to achieve these goals (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Educational systems are thereby normalizing agencies; it is an unspoken understanding that something worthwhile and valuable is being delivered to young people. These education systems are value laden, and serve the moral, social, and economic needs of governments, parents and school boards and medical institutions. Through formal policy, informal teacher practices and messaging from media, the value systems of young people are shaped, refined and maintained through their education. The values inherent in the maintenance of the health of a nation are often interpreted through the health of that nations’ young people; therefore, the values instilled and practiced through health and physical education (HPE) have become of central importance to provincial governments (Petherick, 2013).1

Governments have placed undue emphasis on obesity and on an individuating view of the inactive, unhealthy individual to be remediated by a corrective physical education program and public health media campaigns. Proponents of the obesity epidemic claim that we are dealing with a sedentary generation of youth preoccupied with cell phones, Internet, and television, leaving rarely a moment to ‘work’ on the body (Gard & Wright, 2001, p. 535). It has become the ‘job’ of HPE to provide this brand of healthy living to students: a belief prefaced by a history of control and power now fuelled by the urgency of combating this assumed obesity epidemic.2

1 In Canada, education is the responsibility of the provincial government. Policies, therefore, are created, implemented and evaluated at the provincial level.

2 In Canada, a number of publications (Tremblay, 2004; Tremblay & Willms, 2001) call for remedial public health action and surveillance of Canadian bodies to combat this assumed obesity epidemic. These scholars use statistical data derived from out-Out-of-date measures 1

The health messages that students receive about being ‘good’ citizens with respect to their physical fitness and well-being represents a form of value distribution delivered by governments through education (Rail & Jette, 2014). These neoliberal discourses constitute specific gendered, racialized, and sexualized discourses that seek to create citizens who abandon their unruly bodies and participate in self-surveillance that insure ‘healthy’ lives. Not only are these discourses of a healthy life delivered in the HPE classroom, but they are also embedded in North America’s health-obsessed psyche. Walk down the aisle of most grocery stores and you will find low fat, high nutrient, non-toxic, ‘organic’ products that ensure consumers prescribe to said ‘healthy’ lifestyle. Another example can be observed in the health technology that occupies one’s daily life. The ‘Fitbit’ and ‘Apple Watch,’ for example, allow individuals to track down to the last step, the last calorie and the last nutrient. What one does or ought to do with one’s body can now be controlled down to the very miniscule scale of real time, minute by minute tracking. The HPE classroom and gymnasium, thus, represents an important and conducive space to unpack perspectives of youth as they negotiate this health-obsessed culture, delivered through HPE in their daily lives, though these are not the only spaces where the body is ‘schooled.’

MediaSmarts, a media literacy organization, reports 99% of Canadian youth are connected to the Internet outside of school, and 39% of young people sleep with their cellphones (MediaSmarts, 2015). Girls are more likely to access the Internet for information on the body, health and relationships, and they face stricter parental rules (MediaSmarts, 2015). To apply the work of Rich, Evans and De Pian (2011), media and online social networking are a

such as the Body Mass Index (BMI) Scale and self-reported questionnaires that leave room for personal error in height/weight estimates. Scholars such as Wright & Gard (2005) present a counter-argument that this type of obesity surveillance constructs the fat body as the immoral body (LeBesco, 2011; Rich, Evans & De Pian, 2011) that does not conform to the ‘ethical care of the self’ (Norman, 2013). The result is the shaming of the fat body and an ‘exclusionary matrix’ (Butler, 1993) that creates the opposite intended effect (becoming healthy) on those considered the ‘fat-other’ (Norman, 2013).

form of public pedagogy that provides instructions about gendered, racialized, and sexualized bodies. These online spaces of young women’s lives deserve attention from teachers and public health, since young people potentially spend more time in their virtual worlds than they do in the classroom.

The HPE classroom and media, thus, are replete with values that instruct young people about how they should know, behave, and monitor their bodies (Giroux; 2010; Kellner, 1995; Rich, Evans & De Pian, 2011). These discourses are gender specific and revolve around a range of preferred femininities and masculinities that alienate many young people who do not conform to these norms (Beausoleil, 2009; Cliff & Wright, 2010). These values become so ingrained in young people’s lives that they may be unable to comprehend the social constructions that subtly guide the presentation as fit, healthy, and sexually competent boy or girl. Thus, education and media represent spaces where subtle and powerful discourses about gender and health mould and produce particular citizens. These pedagogical spaces, thus, represent a microcosm of larger, institutional forces that guide one’s prescriptions to the ‘healthy’ life. These gendered and racialized norms will be explored in fulsome within this study through biopedagogies (in the classroom) and public pedagogies (in the media).

Gender is not “something that we are, but something we become and do through these recursive delivery of values” (Garcia Selgas, 2014, p. 189). Gender, then, can be theorized as an embodied social and cultural process that activates a specific corporality and shapes its agency, becoming an important ingredient in the materialization of subjectivities, agencies, and practices involved in gender identities (Garcia Selgas, 2014, p. 189). How young people embody gender entails a sort of emotional and physical training that shapes the body schema, our capabilities, dispositions, and our relations with the world, until the body leads and we do not think but act (Young, 1990, p. 38). This process can alienate young persons from the processes most intimate to their existence, including how the body moves in exercise.

HPE policy and media provide a rich backdrop for exploring the embodied perspectives of gender and the values that guide young people to construct such perspectives. As research for 3

this project began, it was my intention to foreground intersectionality theory with a focus on gender and race. As data collection continued, it became clear that the primary focus of questioning and student responses were tailored towards gender. The students participating in this study did make reference to race, but mostly with respect to media consumption. Racialized identities did not represent a dominant theme in the interviews conducted, potentially because meaning was lost in translation (in Brazil) or because interview questions prodded more for gender. I will also take up the lack of attention to race in student responses, especially in Toronto, as a potential call to action for policy writers to infuse conversations about racialized gender in HPE curriculum in the future.

Little research has been undertaken to unpack gendered and racialized discourses that contribute to embodied practices within HPE and media, especially with regard to cross- cultural comparisons of gendered and racialized identities. Exploring these discourses is important, as previous research about youth and physical education suggests that constructions of gender and race contribute to body dis/satisfaction and body awareness for young people (Jones, 2009; McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2003). Despite numerous health and fitness campaigns delivered by the Canadian government, such as campaigns by “ParticipACTION,” “Bring Back Play” by Canadian Tire, and the Annual Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth developed and delivered to the public by ParticipACTION, youth continue to be considered unhealthy by medical standards in North America (ParticipACTION Report Card, 2016).

These unhealthy lifestyles have been attributed to a wide variety of factors including screen time, less outdoor play, protective attitudes of parents towards independent play, amongst others (ParticipACTION Report Card, 2016). It should be noted here, however, that Canadian broadcasting during the 1990s included programming introduced by ParticipACTION, such as BodyBreak, where Hal Johnson and Joanne Macleod delivered accessible, quick and fun ways to get involved in physical fitness whatever one’s age or stage. This is an example of a more inclusive brand of physical fitness that is a good benchmark for media programming today. 4

Though numerous recommendations and changes to policy and practice in HPE have been implemented, little change has occurred in the physical activity patterns of young people in North America. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that the prevalence of obesity amongst adolescents aged 12-19 in North America has increased from 5% to 18.1% in the past 30 years (WHO, 2015). The debate around these statistics forms part of the rationale for this study. The fit body has become synonymous with a powerful form of social capital (Shilling, 2008) and a moral responsibility that work together to create a “cult of the body” (Gard & Wright, 2001). I argue that school policy and media discourses contribute to and maintain this physical culture, reinforcing the slim (‘feminine’) or muscular (‘masculine’) body as a signifier of worthiness by a focus on particular ways of ‘doing’ fitness, sexuality and healthy eating practices that differ with respect to gender. This may deter students from participating in daily activity if they do not feel they conform to the range of suggested norms for their gender (Cliff & Wright, 2010; Gard & Wright, 2001; Rail et al., 2010).

These gendered, neoliberal discourses are taken up in HPE and media with respect to the effects such discourses have on the group of young women who contribute valuable insights to this study. It must be noted that such discourses get delivered to these young women through a myriad of other institutions in their lives such as public health institutions, the home environment, the community, and friendship groups. This study is not meant to provide a grand narrative of HPE as the primary driver of body perception concerns, but rather, it explores HPE and media as two specific sites where important body work gets taken up and internalized by 40 young women in two distinct cultures. Taking up the discourses that are embedded in policy and student perspectives provides an opportunity to consider areas of improvement with respect to student experiences.

It is my hope that this dissertation increases awareness of missing discourses of pleasure in HPE and media as a microcosm of larger institutional structures that enable and constrain the body. This is not to say that HPE is not an enjoyable and inclusive experience for some youth; however, there were a number of young people participating in this study whom do

not consume and act on HPE and media discourses in pleasurable ways. These student perspectives coincide with my observations teaching HPE over the past decade.

Movement, play and sexuality are meant to be pleasurable aspects of an individual’s life. I undertook this study to uncover students’ perspectives on how health educators, researchers and policy writers might better meet the needs of the diverse set of students that compose our HPE classes today. The following section overviews the specific research purpose and questions created to address the aforementioned issues.

1.2 Research Questions and Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how 14-18 year-old students in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil conceptualize, experience and embody gendered and racialized identities and relationships within health and physical education (HPE) and media. 3 This study is guided by the following research questions. 1. What range of understandings about gendered bodies are held by young women in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil? 2. What range of gendered identities are constructed by students in gym and health classes? 3. What values and discourses are embedded in HPE policy and curricula with respect to gender, sexuality and fitness in Canada and Brazil? 4. What insights can be gleaned from doing globally conscious policy analysis on a north/south axis? 5. How do media narratives influence gendered embodiment? 6. What effects do gendered and sexualized narratives delivered by HPE policy and media have on young women taking part in this study?

3 All students participating in this study are self-declared female and/or positioned this way by the school systems they belong to in Canada and Brazil.

In the following section, I would like to engage in a brief rationale for my decision to undertake the labour-intensive project of cross-cultural education work in two distinct cultures, and why I choose Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. While this work proved messy and arduous at times, I believe that the results were well worth the struggles in this contribution to the global educational community.

1.3 The Importance of Cross-Cultural Education Research Cross-cultural research is described as a means to explore and navigate patterns of behaviours and belief across cultures (Ember & Ember, 2009). This dissertation takes up education as a cultural transmission of values that includes intentional and unintentional influences on a young person’s behaviours and embodied practices (Ember & Ember, 2009). In this way, culture is not outside of education; it composes it through value systems that get taken up and reworked in policy, curricula and practice. Organizing this study as a north/south cross-cultural comparison reveals relevant and novel phenomena in education and gender studies. In addition, several divergences in policy and student perspectives mark an important moment and opportunity to learn from our southern counterparts with respect to inclusive and equitable HPE practices.

Educational policies are reflections of social and cultural norms in a given society. For this reason, Chapter Three is dedicated to an analysis of policy and practice in HPE education and will be followed up two chapters later in Chapter Five with student perspectives of these documents with relation to their gendered identities. Rizvi and Lingard (2010) suggest that over the past 20 years there have been major shifts in the ways that educational policies are developed and implemented within developed nations.4 They argue that the values of nation systems of education are no longer determined within countries’ boundaries and, instead, are “forged through a range of complex processes that occur in transnational and globally networked spaces” (p. 35). Further, the rise in globalization has created a reconfiguration of

4 ‘Developed’ nations refer to those nations that have a highly developed economic structure and advanced technological infrastructure in comparison to less industrialized nations.

state-level authority structures that have been altered by revolutionized patterns of technology, cooperation, and competition amongst nations. Due to these changes in structure, the values inherent in educational policy have become a dominant concern of governments around the world in a neoliberal project to create citizens that embody the values of the government (Petherick, 2013). In Brazil, competitive sport-based models that project the country as prosperous on the sporting world stage have historically exemplified this. In Canada, the focus has revolved on the neoliberal notion of personal responsibility to achieve and maintain ‘good health’ (Petherick, 2013).

This dissertation investigates the discourses negotiated and circulated by the Ontario and Brazilian governments through policy implementation and practice in HPE. Recognizing shifts in these values as a result of globalized practices, such as standardized fitness testing, performance-based policy and discourses of personal responsibility, is important for sound policy analysis and reform. The processes of globalization have profound effects on local governments, as global discourses circulate and become rearticulated at the regional, provincial, and local levels (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 57). Paul (2005) refers to these effects as the “rescaling of politics” that have profoundly transformed how governments develop, deliver, and implement policy at the local level.

Rizvi and Lingard (2010) assert that these changes associated with globalized processes raise a range of new theoretical, methodological, and political issues that demand a rearticulation of how we ought to conduct policy analysis. This study contributes to this global education community by strengthening connections between North and South American HPE policy, while also taking up some of these more complex considerations raised by cultural transmissions of education in transnational settings. There is much to be learned through developing and exploring these connections in the current, intimately connected educational community on the global level. At no other time have our young people been more connected than they are today; MediaSmarts (2014) reports that 99% of Canadian youth have access to the Internet, and from grades 4-11, social media use (checking other people’s profiles) increases from 18-72%. In 2014, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics revealed 8

that over 75% of youth aged 14 – 17 access the Internet at least once a day (IBGE Census, 2015). Accessing social networks was the second most popular destination for this group (IBGE Census, 2015.) Exploring the interconnectedness of such a central part of the Canadian and Brazilian participants lives, then, is a rational approach to policy analysis.

To date, very little attention has been given to cross-cultural comparisons of policy and practice in HPE. Thus, this study will fill gaps in the field and contribute valuable data to the global education community. Further, this study will contribute data to current policy studies in Ontario through providing a feminist critical discourse analysis of the 2015 health and physical education (HPE) documents. This dissertation critically examines these updated Ontario curriculum documents through a cross-cultural study of embodied student perspectives and beliefs surrounding gender, race and the body.

1.4 Thesis Organization This study is separated into six chapters. Chapter One describes a platform and rationale for conducting this research and situates the philosophical foundations of education and the importance of cross-cultural education in the current global context. Chapter Two provides a brief history of past policy and practices in Canada and Brazil. This chapter pays particular attention to the historical and political contexts that have shaped both countries over the past half century. A specific focus on the enabling and constraining factors of education is explored through a history of policy and practice. This is followed by a discussion of the theoretical concepts that guide subsequent chapters, including biopower, governmentality, and biopedagogy. These concepts will be utilized to do critical policy analysis work and to analyze student responses in Chapter Five.

Chapter Three provides an overview of methodology and research design and the increased importance of reflexivity and positionality of the researcher in cross-cultural analysis. I draw on feminist poststructural theory to explore student perceptions of gender, race, sexuality and their intersections. Gender and critical discourse analysis are overviewed and presented as the key tools for data collection and critical investigation. This is followed by ethical 9

considerations we faced when conducting cross-cultural analysis with youth, followed by the procedures for recruitment and protection of participants, the treatment of the data, and conclusions.

Chapter Four offers a critical policy analysis of Ontario and Brazilian HPE curriculum documents with a particular focus on the history of these documents explored through the enabling and constraining forces that guide policy creation and resistance. This is accomplished through critical discourse analysis and critical feminist discourse analysis. Biopedagogies of the ‘fit’ and ‘healthy’ body are further unpacked through an analysis of Ontario and Brazilian policy. Media messages are explored through the concept of public pedagogy and is differentiated from biopedagogy work taken up in HPE. Chapter Four concludes with suggestions for future HPE policy development and cross-cultural lessons.

Chapter Five unpacks perspectives of student’s HPE experiences and their articulations of the gendered and racialized body in HPE and media. Themes that have emerged include: missing discourses of desire in Toronto HPE experiences, personal responsibility, biopedagogies of moderation, moral imperatives of individual effort, the gendering of the body in HPE and media in both Toronto and Porto Alegre, racialized mediation of gender in the media and self-acceptance and intrinsic joy in Porto Alegre youth’s HPE experiences. These perspectives in conjunction with policy analysis provide a thorough glimpse into the current issues inherent in HPE policy on a transnational scale with respect to gender and race.

Chapter Six offers conclusions and recommendations based on the policy and data analysis in Chapters Four and Five and discusses further directions and the limitations of the project. The following chapter provides a literature review and sets the foundation for analysis for the remainder of this dissertation.

CHAPTER TWO REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter provides a review of literature that informs this dissertation. A detailed political history of HPE policy is included for physical education and sexuality education in Canada and Brazil to contextualize key shifts and debates in the field over the last century. These shifts and the current state of HPE in Canada and Brazil are then theorized through a poststructural literature review about the gendered and racialized body, examined through discourses of power, agency, governmentality, biopower, and public pedagogies. The last section of this chapter moves into a discussion on thick desire and critical media literacy in HPE as both offer theoretical and practical means to move outside of structured and limiting definitions of gender in the media. This section is included as a preliminary theoretical discussion of recommendations for the field of HPE in Canada and Brazil. An extension of these recommendations is offered throughout Chapter Five and Six.

More specifically, this review of literature is separated into seven sections and five subsections. The first section of this chapter provides a history of HPE curriculum in Canada and Brazil. This section is separated into the history of physical education and the history of sexuality education for each country. Taking up these histories provides context for exploring current pedagogical shifts and themes in Canada and Brazil in the policy analysis chapter of this dissertation. I then turn to Foucault’s concept of biopower to set a foundation for theorizing biopedagogies in HPE and public pedagogies delivered through media.

Foucault’s concept of governmentality is further discussed to theorize power in schools and in the lives of the young women taking part in this study. The final section of this chapter considers possibilities for change through the concept of critical media literacy and ‘thick desire’ as means to locate pleasure and agency in HPE. This concept of thick desire locates biopedagogy literature in sexuality education and offers possibilities for reconsidering how

HPE is delivered, taken up and embodied by students. The history of HPE in Canada and Brazil is now discussed to set political and historical context to current policy.

2.2 The History of HPE in Canada & Brazil 2.2.1 – The History/Political Context of PE Curriculum in Canada

In the 19th century, mandatory HPE was introduced in Canada as a response to industrial capitalism when there existed a need for a population of fit, able-bodied individuals to meet the needs of production (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 42). This “physical repression of the masses,” according to Cosentino and Howell (1971, p. 43), was quasi-militaristic in nature and focused on the physical capabilities of the population. Kidd (1996) notes that this type of training was also meant to prepare boys for careers in business, government, and colonial administration by instilling mental as well as physical “toughness” and a respect for authority and class (p. 57). These types of ‘manly’ sports were vigorous in nature and promoted the celebration of male power. By the mid-nineteenth century, the ‘character-building’ ideology of sport and activity came to represent a form of social Darwinism known as Muscular Christianity.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, middle class reformers attempted to have schools at sites that fostered self-discipline, health, and respect for authority and a national “community of feeling” through physical training (Kidd, 1996, p.58). Egerton Ryerson, superintendent of education, was drawn to the rigour of physical education in Prussia and implemented its military and gymnastics drill in Ontario (Kidd, 1996). Gender division was quite fixed during this formative period, and females were expected to pursue careers in domestic service; therefore, their training included posture, personal hygiene, and calisthenics (Kidd, 1996). Sport and physical education were quite different for boys during this period. Sports were used as a means to maintain the masculine mystique and superiority during the first wave feminist movement, and boys were expected to display physical strength, courage, and stamina in their sporting endeavours (Kidd, 1996). Physical education and sport were also used to combat the

“feminization” of boys that spent the majority of their time at home with mothers and sisters and at school with female teachers while fathers went to work (Kidd, 1996).

At the turn of the twentieth century, sport in PE classrooms was primarily reserved for boys (Kidd, 1996). Girls at this time were denied opportunities for sport and PE, and their participation in any strenuous activity was met with scientific ‘facts’ about ill health, encapsulated in a “moral physiology” (Lenskyj, 2008). Despite public and scientific outcry, middle and upper-class women continued to lobby for their participation in sport and physical activity at the turn of the century. Their efforts resulted in dress reform, a growing advocacy for physical fitness by doctors, and the invention of the “safety bike” for women (Kidd, 1996).

As the First World War commenced, military type training continued in PE classes for boys in order to produce able-bodied young men for battle. This training was delivered in the form of drills and gymnastics. The implementation of The Strathcona Trust, an act introduced by the Minister of Militia, Robert Borden, encouraged schools to adopt a PE curriculum focused on military training. Although experts in the field originally rejected the trust, most embraced it once war was declared (Kidd, 1996).

In the interwar years, militaristic training declined, possibly due to the horrific events of the First World War (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 43). This model was replaced by a para- military training where the language and organization of the military remained in use but was not the focus. In the late 1920’s, the Ontario College of Education introduced a certificate in physical education for teachers that would recognize,

the value of well conducted physical exercises, gymnastics and games [that] are universally conceded, not only as a means of keeping the body fit, but also as a means of training the characteristics essential to virile manhood and womanhood (Department of Education, 1929).

The aim of this program was, again, the promotion of Muscular Christianity, and fitness and game were replacing drill (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 52).5 Dr. Stanley E. Ryerson was the first medical practitioner to recognize the importance of preventative medicine courses for the overall health of the population in Canada. This was the first time that physical education would be utilized for preventative medical health measures. These recommendations were made during the Second World War when fitness became a government concern to produce fit and healthy young men to fight during conscription. In 1943, the federal government passed the National Fitness Act (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 54), which had a profound effect on the organization and delivery of physical education in schools across the country.

The National Fitness Act extended physical education into all educational institutes across Canada. Funds were provided by the government to encourage sports, athletics, and the preparation of teachers on the fundamentals of physical fitness, and a national council was established to guide these activities. The council developed a mission to “bring to the attention of Canadian people, measures designed for the improvement of national physical fitness” (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 62). By the end of the war, the National Fitness Act was abolished due to lack of organization and direction on part of the council; PE, once again, became the responsibility of individual provinces. However, the momentum and attention garnered from this act carried PE initiatives forward, and in the mid 1940s the Premier of Ontario appointed a Director of Physical Education. In the 1950s, a study was conducted in the United States that asserted U.S children were less ‘fit’ than European children (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 63). The results from this study spilled over into the Canadian consciousness, and over the next 15 years, PE and the fitness level of the nation received greater attention and funding.

5 The basic premise of Muscular Christianity was that participation in athletics could contribute to the development of Christian morality, physical fitness and ‘manly’ character (Kidd, 1996).

This attention resulted in Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s Bill C-131 which sought to “encourage, promote and develop fitness and amateur sport in Canada” (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 42). The programming established under Bill C-131 also boosted success for Canadian athletes on the international stage. This, combined with increased viewership of these sporting activities with the advent of the television, had Canadian youth lined up outside of recreational facilities to register for sports they had watched during the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal (Costenino & Howell, 1971, p. 52).

In 1961, the health-related fitness model emerged as a result of The Fitness and Amateur Sport Act (Bill C-131). This model was predicated on the notion that a lack of physical activity and proper eating habits were contributing to a generation of unhealthy youth (Cosentino & Howell, 1971, p. 42). Within this model, it was the HPE teacher’s responsibility to provide rigorous activity opportunities to combat the threat of increased rates of cardiovascular disease in the population. This was policy created out of current biomedical research at the time, and a biomedical model that placed blame on a sedentary life for a range of lifestyle diseases in industrialized nations (Gard & Wright, 2001, p. 536). Policy makers and governments were focused on the association between risk factors associated with lifestyle and sedentary behaviours that resulted in new monitoring procedures such as body mass index (BMI) measurements and standardized fitness testing (Kidd, 1997).

The proliferation of these “one-size-fits-all” tests exhibited little tolerance for physical diversity and demonstrated differences in terms of “acceptable” scores and measurements. These measures to control the health of the population carried with them economic gains in health care expenditures for the government. Lenskyj (2008) argues:

If the emphasis is solely on the economic costs of inactivity, there is a danger of reducing the full humanity of women and men, so that they become cogs in an economic machine rather than citizens in a democratic country with well-founded expectations that social justice … should prevail (p. 108).

Illich (1975) was the first to recognize the hidden mechanisms of biopower present in the ‘health for all’ discourses implemented by the Canadian government and delivered in HPE classes. An example of such government initiatives was a 1974 document entitled A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians (Skrabanek, 1994, p. 16). This document posited that unhealthy lifestyles were the cause of the majority of illness and death resulting in increased health care costs in Canada (Skrabanek, 1994, p. 16). This perspective reiterated a heavily politicalized and medicalized discourse aimed at individual responsibility for health.

This individual responsibility for the body is best summarized in Crawford’s (1980) concept of healthism, or the” belief that health can be achieved unproblematically through individual effort and discipline, directed mainly at regulating the size and shape of the body” (p. 551). Though this report contains healthist undertones, it was also the first of its kind in Canada to include social determinants of health and marks a pivotal turn in health documents recognizing a societal contribution to the health of a population. This document set a foundation for the inclusion of the social determinants of health in the 2015 HPE curriculum.

Nevertheless, concepts of personal responsibility are still encapsulated within very narrow discourses that set up particular subjectivities and ways of knowing. MacNeill and Rail (2010) notes “obesity science” deployed by governments and the medical community functions as a fascist structure as it “relies on a process that is saturated by ideology and intolerance regarding certain types of evidence, alternative discourse and non-normative knowledge and ways of knowing” (p. 262).

In the 1980s, neoliberal reform in many Western nations was pushed to the forefront of political and economic ideology, and thus health policy shifted to focus on health promotion (Burrows & Wright, 2007). Neoliberalism is commonly understood as an economic and political approach that favours the expansion of the free-market, while simultaneously limiting the government interventions (Ayo, 2012, p. 101). Neoliberalism also carries philosophical meaning making and, therefore, it can be applied to how societal understanding about health are shaped.

Popular neoliberal concepts demonstrated in the 1980s and 1990s, such as minimal government intervention and individual responsibility, are intimately connected to health policy. In 1986, for example, the Ontario Charter for Health Promotion called for an investment in the prerequisite of health such as shelter, food and income. The framework for health was quickly reverted back to a model of individual responsibility by government officials in the Lalonde Report (Ayo, 2012, p. 100). This report was considered a movement away from government responsibility and larger societal issues attached to poor health, and onus was placed directly upon the individual to achieve good health (Ayo, 2012, p. 103). As Ayo (2012) asserts, “unemployment, poverty, lack of education, all major established social determinants of healthcare rendered as poor choices made by freely choosing citizens” (p. 102). A major boom in commercial fitness also swept across many Western nations in the 1970’s. This boom was created in concert with and caused in large part by the healthist rhetoric attached to neoliberal reforms.

In addition to these health promotion policies during the 1980s, North American media experienced an increase in healthist rhetoric. These healthist notions were buttressed by the free market economic ideologies of neoliberalism. The fitness movement, fronted by actress Jane Fonda in aerobics and Jim Fixx in marathon running, took hold of the collective consciousness of the nation and shaped the healthist assumptions reinforced by neoliberal notions of personal responsibility for health (Crawford, 1980). Within this time period, the corporatization and commodification of health was in its infancy. This movement facilitated the process of assisting citizens in becoming healthy through prescriptions of do’s and don’ts for obtaining and maintaining health. At the same time, exercise physiologists introduced and pushed the ‘FITT’ formula and ‘target heart rate’ approaches to prevent heart disease caused by a sedentary lifestyle.

In contrast to the capitalist ideologies prior to the 1980s, which encouraged the self-indulgence of convenient, unhealthy food, modern neoliberal states promote a new kind of self-indulgence that realigns with the healthy individual. The low-fat, organic, fitness-obsessed culture in which the Canadian free market economy operates has roots in the shift to neoliberal capitalism of the 17

1980s (Ayo, 2012). This culture of health has generally continued on, unchecked, for several decades and cascaded into a market of high performance fitness gear and technology that over monitor the body, such as the Apple Watch and ‘Fit Bit’ (Millington, 2017).

More recently, HPE policy in Canada has undergone a “disciplinary movement towards specialization [that] has led physical and health educators to lose their collective study of physical education within other disciplines” (Forbes & Livingston, 2012, p. 55). A movement away from physical education within university programs to a focus on science-based kinesiology programs has emerged to maintain and legitimize such programs in the face of social and political pressures towards science-based degrees (Forbes & Livingston, 2012, p. 55). Forbes and Livingston (2012) argue that this movement has produced HPE educators that are highly specialized and over dependent on scientific disciplines as a means to legitimize their work. This focus has, therefore, fragmented the field of HPE and caused the field to lose touch with its core philosophies developed in previous years.

In addition to current preservice programs, neoliberal discourses of the gendered and sexualized body remain deeply embedded in current HPE curriculum and place the young person under self-surveillance through draw[ing] on neoliberal notions of individualism that position the individuals as primarily responsible for changing their lifestyle via range of disciplinary measures and control techniques (Campos, 2004; Gard & Wright, 2001; Beausoleil, 2009). The 1999 and 2015 Ontario high school HPE curriculum will be further analyzed in Chapter 4 to highlight one provincial government’s production and reproduction of such narratives.

Singleton and Varpalotai’s (2012) collection of essays alludes to this fragmentation and challenges HPE professionals and researchers to renegotiate the theories, practices and methods of holistic education movement. 6 They argue for a holistic, student centered

6 The holistic education movement consists of values that promote open, honest and respectful communication between the young person and the authority figure; where differences between people are appreciated and where interaction is based on mutual support, and where the decision-making process is accepted by everyone. 18

approach to HPE and a movement away from skill-based, standardized practices. This dissertation contributes to this community of inquiry in the field and offers valuable and current insight from young women on the current state of HPE in a cross-cultural context. The following section takes up the historical and political context of sexuality education in Canada.7

2.2.2 History/Political Context of Sexuality Curriculum in Canada

The goal of this section is to provide a brief history of the movements and ideas that have influenced Canadian and Brazilian policy over the past century. This section is not intended to provide a genealogical account of these histories, but rather, to give political and historical context to the forces that have shaped policy in HPE in each country.

From the 1800s until the turn of the 19th century, sexuality curriculum in Canada was practiced within a conservative framework (Jones, 2011, p. 132). Teachers were the authorities of knowledge and students were the passive recipients in a “banking” style of sexuality education (Freire, 1970). Dominant sexualities delivered during this time were focused around sexual expression as strictly procreative in nature and always existing within a heterosexual marriage. Gender was viewed as a fixed, bipolar opposition, where one was strictly male or female, and diversity was negated and demonized by those in power (Jones, 2011, p. 136). Classroom instruction was focused exclusively on subjects such as physical hygiene, sexual morality, abstinence education, and Christian/Ex-Gay Redemption (Jones, 2011, p. 136).

In Ontario, sexual health education was implemented within this conservative framework long before it was officially introduced in policy. In the early 1900s, in partnership with

7 I felt it was important to include sexuality education in Canada and Brazil as separate subsections within this chapter as each history diverges from PE policy at several points in the brief history I outline. Sexuality curriculum is also historically tied to political unrest and public protests more so than physical education and these instances were owed a greater attention in this analysis.

organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, sexuality education was formalized to promote sexual hygiene and the dangers of sexual activity (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016, p. 3). These curricula were strongly tied to the Judeo-Christian concepts of ‘sin’ and ‘goodness’ due to the historic power structures of the settler Canadian government.

Sexuality curriculum was proposed in the interwar years due to an increase in venereal disease and perceived juvenile delinquency. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) endorsed testing for STI’s at the high school level, which would eventually lead to a curriculum focused on communicable disease. The curriculum was delivered in single- gendered classes labeled as a ‘social hygiene’ and covered STI’s, chastity, marriage and sexual morality (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016, p. 3). It wasn’t until 1944, however, that “venereal disease” was approved as a topic for inclusion in the Ontario sexuality curriculum for grades 10 to 12 (Adams, 1997, p. 113.)8 It would be another two years before students would actually receive instruction in the classroom. The provincial guidelines for this curriculum stressed the importance of a variety of cautionary measures that were designed to “drain the topic of controversy” (Adams, 1997, p. 113). These curricular documents were produced under a “shadow of bureaucratic anxiety”, and carried little authority, in the end (Adams, 1997, p. 114).

The introduction of sexual education into the classroom put the school in direct competition with the church and home environment as the sites where young people learned about morals and the body. Introducing these concepts in schools disrupted notions of family privacy and of the division of labour between the church and school (Adams, 1997, p. 14). Such debates continued throughout the 1950’s, and the ‘case against obscenity’ became an additional topic to be taken up in sexuality education classes. Parents and concerned citizens were voicing complaints about the availability 9 of obscene content available in paperback books. These

8 ‘Venereal disease’ was later called ‘sexually transmitted diseases’ (STDs) and then more recently sexually transmitted infections’ (STIs).

9 It is interesting to note the parallels with the current political climate surrounding debates in sexual education today. A quick look at the signage created at the recent protests at Ontario’s Parliament shows that parents are still upset by the disruption of the public/private sphere 20

books became more readily available to youth in the post-war years as restrictions on trade lifted, and content from United States publishing houses filled Canadian newsstands (Adams, 1997, p. 136).

The result was ‘pulp novel,’ fifteen-cent magazines, 10 cent comics and ‘girlie’ magazines, such as Playboy, being sold in local drug stores. It became the ‘job’ of sexuality education to combat the effects of this literature on ensure that the youth of the 1950’s did not become ‘sexual deviants’ (Adams, 1997, p. 137). Post-war discourses about the ‘corruptibility’ of youth, the role of schools in protecting young people from sex, positioning them as innocent citizens and consumers in need of protection. These public sentiments resulted in the 1952 Senate Special Committee on Salacious and Indecent Literature. This committee brought to the forefront the way that ‘youth’ were used as a ‘rhetoric trope’ in attempts to maintain dominant sexual standards of purity (Adams, 1997, p. 138).

During the 1960s and 1970s much of the same discourses of protection were maintained and reinforced in Canadian primary and secondary schools. “Comprehensive sexuality education” was adopted by the education sector, including policy that promoted abstinence-only campaigns assured to be able to inoculate the passive student against the perceived threat of sexual deviance and a

fixed bipolar opposition (one is either a feminine heterosexual female or a masculine, heterosexual male); diversity beyond what was acceptable to this model was “rendered invisible, pathologized, demonized or declared a fallacy or mistaken choice” (Jones, 2011, p. 374).

debates in sexuality education (see, for example, the Toronto Star, May 9th, 2015). As is evident today, arguments both for and against sexuality education are centered on parents’ obligations, rights and capabilities (Adams, 1997, p. 115).

Young people were considered the “romantic child;” innocent and in need of protection from their own sexuality. By denying the child information on their own sexuality through education, governments were imagining that students remained pure through a form of physical censorship of the sexual being. This type of sexuality education also ensured that governments’ own agendas were supported and controlled (Jones, 2011, p. 381). In 1966, the Ontario Ministry recommended that schools teach sexual health topics, though the school board had the choice if it would be included in teacher instruction. Several schools took on this task and created individual curricula that addressed altered gender norms influenced by the gay and feminist rights movements, though the majority avoided the topic. By the late 1970’s, only 39 school boards (a sixth of Ontario’s boards) addressed birth control and family planning instruction (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016).

The era of second wave feminism and the postsexual revolution urged more drastic changes to sexuality policy in Canada (Jones, 2011). Curriculum guidelines underwent a substantial shift from morality focused to anatomy and biology focused. During the 1970s and 1980s, according to Hutchinson Grodin (2016) there was an increase in sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates and teenage pregnancy, and government agencies, educators, and school boards were placed under surveillance to address such concerns in schools (p. 4). In the 1980s, the AIDS outbreak in North America was a major cause of concern for health educators and the general public. The disease has often been positioned as the “scapegoat” for the negative consequences of the sexual revolution and loose sexual morality of the 1960s and 1970s (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016, p. 4).

A common theme in the history of sexuality curriculum, is concerns about the consequences of a generation of poor sexual decision making by the education sector. This has typically led to calls for education to prevent such diseases. For example, in 1987, Education Minister Sean Conway told news reporters that schools in Ontario were expected to instruct on AIDS prevention and education, although it “would be up to the local boards to determine how they want to teach it, and up to the individual parents to decide if they want their children to participate” (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016, p. 3). This mandate received opposition from 22

concerned parents and religious groups, who argued implementing sexual education of this kind presumes students would be participating in sexual activities that would lead to such consequences (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016, p. 3). This public unrest resulted in the Ontario Ministry of Education postponing the mandatory sexual health programs until 1987, when the moral panic of the AIDS virus reached its peak (Hutchinson Grondin, 2016, p. 3).

Many parallels can be observed between the tensions that took place during the 1960s to 1980s in Canada and current struggles in Ontario’s sexuality education reform. The recently updated 2015 HPE curriculum includes the topics of consent, sexual assault, and issues with technology with respect to bullying and social media. The call for the inclusion of these topics resulted from an increase in the rate of young people committing suicide as a result of bullying. In 2004, 294 youth committed suicide according to the Canadian Children’s Right Council (Auger & Krug, 2013, p. 197). This is the second most common cause of death in young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in Canada, with LGTBQ2 and Indigenous youth at an elevated risk (Auger & Krug, 2013, p. 197).

The call to action escalated when four boys raped a Nova Scotia youth, Rehteah Parsons, and the incident was posted to social media. Parsons was mercilessly bullied by classmates, and by online ‘trolls’ after this incident; she took her own life in 2013.10 The 2015 curriculum updated discussions on consent and sexual assault in an attempt to prevent similar horrific events and reduce rates of gender-based violence and bullying and provide relevant and up-to-date information for the next generation.

The government of Ontario has responded to these staggering statistics with a progressive document aimed at both the high school and elementary school levels to help students make responsible sexual decisions in a technologically advanced era. These changes will be taken up in greater detail in the policy analysis chapter of this dissertation. Tracing the historical and

10 Urban dictionary defines ‘trolling’ as “typically unleashing one of more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander.”

political history of HPE policy illuminates consistent motivations for the inclusion of sexuality education in schools and have been guided by government responses to social concern ranging from STIs to consent and suicide rates. Guided by this fear and desire to protect youth, sexuality curriculum carries a heavy burden to control and monitor the bodies of young people to prevent disease and unwanted sexual situations.

Though sexuality education has existed in Ontario public schools for more than a century, little to no conversation about desire or pleasure is typically discussed in HPE, leading young people to believe their sexuality should be concealed, protected, and controlled by those in power (Fine & McClelland, 2006). Though educating on the dangers of unsafe sexual practices is important, discussing sex and physical education from a place of pleasure is missing in this history. This theory of missing discourses of desire will be taken up in subsequent chapters. The following section explores the historical and political context of HPE curriculum in Brazil. Interesting parallels and divergences emerge as these histories unfold. These will be taken into consideration in the subsequent analysis of student responses in Chapter Five.

2.2.3 Historical/Political Context of HPE Curriculum in Brazil

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Brazil was primarily agrarian with few options for industrial growth and a plethora of internal issues that resulted in military and civil rebellions (Schneider, Neto, Dos Santos, da Silva & Votre, 2016, p. 1056). In the subsequent four decades, a health-oriented ‘hygienism’ model dominated HPE curriculum in Brazil. The concept of hygienism proposed PE as a space to take up issues of public sanitation and the organic strengthening of Brazilian youth (Schneider, et al., 2016, p. 1056). Military officials believed the Brazilian public to be weak, and therefore, more likely to become ill.11

11 I was limited by the articles I could access in English for the history of Brazilian HPE policy. Therefore, caution was exercised when developing this historical analysis. Dr. Branco Fraga provided valuable feedback and direction with respect articles and resources for this section of the dissertation.

Similar to Canada, hygienism was taught to develop qualities such as discipline and patriotism that would develop the ‘soldier-citizen’ (Schneider, et al, 2016, p. 1056). Military exercises and the influence of the army dominated PE pedagogy until the 1940s. Intellectuals of this era advocated for PE that would give individuals personal motivation to adopt healthy attitudes and habits to improve vigor, health, and mental energy to improve the race for military gains (Goellner, Votre & Pinheiro, 2012). Anxiety about modernization was also a significant contributing factor to education during this period, and scholars looked to foreign ideas to assist in elevating physical culture. In a response to modernize as a country, Americanism was adopted in PE and spread throughout sporting culture in the 1930s (Goellner, et al., 2012).

In the postwar years, liberal democracies were ushered in, and Brazilians felt foreign pressure to elect a democratic government (Del Priore & Melo, 2009). This newfound political structure brought about the “New School” movement, a concept developed by scholar and educator John Dewey (Del Priore & Melo, 2009). Military drills and gymnastics training were replaced by social and interactive sports and games. Engaging in sport and game was thought to engage the social body beyond biological and physical development in a more holistic approach to HPE, replacing the one-dimensional model of hygienism. This movement was short lived, however, and in the 1960s a military dictatorship took hold, as did an increase in social and political control by government institutions. The democratic influence in PE was replaced with an elite sports model that sought to produce student athletes to project Brazil’s achievements on the world stage (Del Priore & Melo, 2009).12 This military dictatorship remained in place until the late 1980s.

The last years of the 1980s ushered in an age of democracy in Brazil. PE curriculum became focused on amusement and cooperation, with an objective of promoting the organization and mobilization of workers in a “working class solidarity” (Betti, 1991, p. 34). Mauro Bettie

12 This history of Brazilian HPE was written using only English books and articles. This section, therefore, is only intended to provide a brief history of HPE in Brazil, as Portuguese documents were not able to be included in this chapter.

(1991) in his book entitled, Educação física e sociedade: a educação física na escola brasileira de 1º e 2º graus, labeled this Popular PE. During this time, Brazilian politics underwent a mass democratization, culminating in the election of a civil president, Fernando Collor de Melo, in 1989, and this was reflected in curriculum changes in PE.

Prior to the 1989 election, Brazilian congress elected civil president, Tancredo Neves. Neves passed away shortly after his victory, however, and was succeeded by Vice President, José Sarney. The 1985 Sarney presidency was the last to be decided by an Electoral College system controlled by the military elite in congress. Unlike previous election years, however, the 1985 elections marked a significant shift in power, as a no coercion rule was put into place for the politicians in the Electoral College, allowing them to choose the president of their choice. Though this election was moving towards the democratic process, it was still confined within the walls of the senate. Under Sarney’s government, a gradual redemocratization process took place in Brazil that culminated in an election held in 1986 which resulted in the National Constituent Assembly. This assembly was tasked with creating a new Constitution, which was instituted in 1988. This Constitution called for direct elections of Presidents in the following year. What followed in 1989 was the first election in almost 30 years in which Brazilian citizens were able to vote for their President directly (Dieter, 2005).

This democratization process invited humanistic theories into Brazilian classrooms. Methods such as ethnography and theories of phenomenology and systematic sociology informed significant change in PE policy and the body in movement.13 Overall, these methods attributed value to and celebrated cultural diversity and individual difference based on the notion of alterity (Betti, et al., 2015). Owed to these influences, PE curriculum in Brazil has shifted towards critical and emancipatory theories that refute the once ingrained notion of the physically educated person and recognize and celebrate difference.

13 Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s approach to phenomenology, concepts of the body and movement in Brazilian HPE curriculum are further developed by Kunz (1991, 1994) and Trebels (2003).

The current curriculum guidelines for PE in Brazil are called the Parametros Curruculares Nacionais (the National Curriculum Guidelines; PCN). The PCN represent a significant shift in PE policy in Brazil as the document takes up issues such as sexuality, ethics, cultural diversity, and the environment. These documents incorporate several pillars of the critical pedagogical theoretical framework that had been developed within the academic community over the late 1980s and early 1990s. The PCN focuses on movement culture and inclusion/diversity with an aim of reversing past practices that champion hygienism and the elite sports model.

The PCN seek to recognize the learning possibilities of all students to correct years of less physically capable students being ostracized in the Brazilian PE classroom with the elite sport model. The PCN parameters grant autonomy to cities and states to develop pedagogy based on these general guidelines. Though several Brazilian states have developed inclusive pedagogy based on this model, the majority of schools still practice a biological and behavioural approach to PE. Furthermore, the competitive or sport-based model remains popular in Brazilian classrooms today.

The lack of adoption of the PCN for HPE teachers in Brazil may be partially attributed to the inaccessible nature of the document in practice. Rodrigues (2002) notes the eclecticism of the PCN’s in defining the object of study in HPE, locating the confusing and superficial nature in which academics take up constructivist, developmental, and critical approaches to education. Rodrigues claims that “there is no thorough discussion of what each approach is politically and pedagogically (Rodrigues, 2002, p. 201). Capparroz (2003) reminds us that the Ministry of Education did not include practitioners in the HPE field to contribute to the PCN. He goes on to ask, “what conditions does the school faculty have to critically appropriate and master what is produced academically?” (p. 327). This question marks one of the most significant challenges in the full implementation of the PCN in HPE classes in Brazil today.

Currently, the Brazilian government is preparing to adopt the National Common Curriculum Base (BNCC). The Ministry of Education has begun preparations for the BCNN development 27

and implementation, announcing the creation of a group to study changes in teacher training and technical support for states and municipalities (Takahashi, 2017, p.1). The National Board of Education will also hold public hearings and will present suggestions in December, 2017. The government plans for this document to be implemented with the next two years following a final approval by the Minster of Education, Mendoça Filho. Former Secretary of Education in Rio, Claudia Costin, believes the BNCC will be successfully implemented in 2019. She states,

There's a reasonable consensus about the need for the base, people from different ideological positions agree, it's a legal requirement. However, there will certainly be difficulties in aligning teaching materials, changing teacher training. These are challenges that we've had for years (Takahashi, 2017, p. 3).

Brazilian education experts predict that positive results from the BCNN will take some time to become apparent in schools (Takahashi, 2017, p. 4) Implementing a core curriculum, such as the PCN and BCNN is a massive undertaking for any government and requires a significant amount of time and money for teacher training and implementation.

2.2.4 Historical/Political Context of Sexuality Curriculum in Brazil

The PCN also mandate sexuality education to be regulated by school year and delivered across all subjects. Teaching about sexuality is not intended to be a specific subject under the PCN. The goals are twofold: (a) to teach sexuality through scheduled classroom and extracurricular activities, conferences, and workshops; and (b) to teach sexuality whenever a situation arose related to sexuality (Betti, Knijnik, Venancio & Neto, 2015, p. 435). The curriculum stresses the importance of abandoning models of sexuality education that reproduce exclusionary and discriminatory dialogues in an attempt to create inclusive spaces that favour sexual diversity and acceptance (Betti, et al., 2015, p. 435).

The introduction of the PCN is significant for sexuality education in Brazil, not only because they formalize the topic in schools, but also because the objectives conform to the vision of the Brazilian LGTB movement. This group has denounced regulations and exclusionary 28

practices that have been reproduced in sexual education classes in the past. In 1998, the Ministry and Health and Education introduced a project entitled Escola Seem Homofobia (translates to (“School Without Homophobia;” Betti, et al., 2015, p. 450). These documents were created to assist teachers in dispelling hatred and intolerance of homophobia in schools. This was an important task, as previous data showed that 99% of Brazilian students acknowledged some degree of rejection towards the LGBTQ community, and it was estimated that one person every two days was murdered in Brazil due to homophobia (da Silva, 2013, p. 116). This program included films that were leaked online before they were presented in schools and were criticized by the Evangelical Parliamentary Front of the National Congress. This group threatened to vote against any measures tabled in National Congress by the government until these documents were removed from circulation. They referred to these supplementary materials as a “Gay Kit” and accused the government of creating a preparatory school for homosexuality that abolished family values and promoted bisexuality (da Silva, 2013, p. 116). Brazil’s president at the time, Dilma Rousseff, cancelled the project.

These tensions expose sexuality education as socially disputed space across different culture landscapes, where identities and sexual practices are legitimated or refuted by public discourse. PE and sexuality curricula are socially significant and require analysis because of the messages that get dispersed to young people about their sexual, gendered, and racialized identities, the consequences of sexual decision-making, and acceptance/discrimination in greater society. These messages can have profound positive or negative influences on youth. The next section of this chapter provides the theoretical foundation that will assist in deconstructing these societal narratives of inclusion and acceptance. Foucauldian concepts of power, biopower, governmentality and appropriations of this theory in the concept of biopedagogy, provide critical lenses through which to theorize normalizing mechanisms delivered blatantly, and sometimes very subtly through HPE policy.

To conclude, at the turn of the 20th century, both Canadian and Brazilian HPE classrooms functioned under militaristic-style training. This type of training included instruction concept 29

of ‘hygienism’ in both countries. In post-war Canada, ‘muscular Christianity’ was adopted and fitness and games were replaced with drill. Over time, drill was replaced by an imperative to education youth against sedentary lifestyle and ‘ill health.’ Though messaging and policy on how to accomplish this end has been tweaked over the past several decades, the enduring message remains clear; it is HPE’s ‘job’ to educate against and reverse the outcomes of a sedentary lifestyle.

While muscular Christianity dominated HPE policy in Canada in the 1950s, Brazilian classrooms were being influenced by the ‘New School’ movement, and social and interactive games were introduced in an attempt to engage the body beyond biological development in a more holistic approach to PE. This type of humanistic curriculum remains in place today in Brazil, taken up in the PCNs. The PCN focuses on inclusion and diversity with an aim of reversing past practices that champion hygienism and the elite sports model. The PCNs calls for the teaching of these subjects across all disciplines.

In Canada, the Ontario HPE curriculum explores gender identities, consent and inclusion, though these documents come almost 20 years after the introductions of such themes in the PCNs in Brazil, and do not span cross-curricularly. The following section explores Foucault’s concept of biopower and sets a foundation for using the sensitizing concept of biopedagogy in a cross-cultural context in Chapter Four and Chapter Five.

2.3 Biopower: Background and Context Michel Foucault is known for his work surrounding theories of power, such as sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower. This dissertation provides an extended, modern application of biopower, organized around schooled bodies within a biopedagogy mode. Foucault posits that biopower emerged at the beginning of the 17th century. Prior to this period, he argued that citizens of a given society were sovereign subjects. This concept shifted and citizens began to be seen as resources that ensured the state’s development and viability (Allen, 2005, p. 180). With this shift, governments took on a policing of the citizen body to ensure it was healthy and fit through a new form of social control and monitoring. 30

This policing of the body forms the foundation for biopower and discipline and is marked by the shift from the sovereign’s right of death to a power over life: In the classical theory of sovereignty, the right of life and death is one of sovereignty’s basic attributes … the right of sovereignty was the right to take life or let live. And then this new right is established: the right to make live and to let die (Foucault, 1978, p. 240).

Sovereign power represents the power over life, to seize that life, end it, impoverish it, or enslave it. In contrast to sovereign power that could “take life or let live,” biopower is the power to foster life. Foucault elaborates,

Power would no longer simply be dealing with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself: it was taking charge of life more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body. (1978, p. 142)

This movement away from the sovereign’s control over the death of a population marks Foucault’s divergence from the concept that the body is essentially free in daily life occurrences (Taylor, 2014, p. 42). Philosophers such as Hobbes deemed this everyday control of the body to be out of the realm and interest of the monarchy or equivalent power structure in a society; hence, the body was free (Taylor, 2014, p. 42). For Foucault these everyday aspects of life, such as education, and care of the body (diet, sexuality, physical fitness, etc.) became loci of control in the mechanisms of biopower, indicating a type of power Hobbes would have deemed “a thing impossible” (Taylor, 2014, p. 43).

Biopower functions in a very subtle way to control a population through norms as opposed to laws or force (Foucault, 1980). Rather than being controlled by power structures, individuals internalize power delivered through this mode. Functioning in this way, power is subtly, yet powerfully, dispersed throughout a society through each and every individual as opposed to a 31

government or body of control (Taylor, 2014, p. 43). While sovereign power was capable only of seizing life or killing, Foucault describes biopower as a profound transformation in control, one that “worked to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them” (Foucault, 1980, p. 136). This second divergence in power, taking place around the 18th century, showed a movement away from the individual and towards the population as a whole.

Biopower represents a seizure, then, over the bios, or life of the individual that can be managed through the individual (through internal control mechanism, such as diet) and the population. Schools represent one of the disciplinary institutions that control and monitor the individual. Schools are also sites where the population is monitored as governments become concerned with administering particular norms over young people as a group. The organization of bodies around particular discourses delivered by those in power marks an important aspect of biopower. Disciplinary power works in and through these institutions, though governments are intimately involved in the daily activities of schools, through policy, various health promotion campaigns, and funding.

Denise Gastaldo’s (1997) seminal work brings biopower into health education inspiring scholars such as Jan Wright (2009) to theorize HPE through the concept of biopedagogy. Biopedagogy research emerged out of these formulations of biopower, discipline, and monitoring of the body in schools and health care. I will take a brief turn towards a discussion of governmentality to further reflect on schools as sites of disciplinary powers.

2.3.1 Governmentality in HPE

In the late 1970s, Foucault shifted his theoretical orientations to governmentality or the idea that “power relations have been progressively governmentalized … elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in form of, or under the auspices of, state institutions” (Foucault, 1978, p. 220). This concept allowed him to provide a perspective of power relations from the 32

“conduct of conduct,” while simultaneously navigating how techniques of rule were tied to technologies of the self (Foucault, 1991) and how forms of political government have recourse to processes by which the individual acts upon himself (Foucault, 1978, p. 203).

Foucault speaks specifically to the governance of young people emerging in the 16th century, when self-regulation became prominent (Foucault, 1980). As previously discussed, within the biopower mode, the health of a population, especially the younger generations, becomes a central focus of the ruling class or government. This project focuses specifically on this government involvement in the control of the young person’s life and the biopolitics that dominate school policy and initiatives in very specific ways. Biopolitics represent one of the forms of biopower in which Foucault theorizes, and encapsulates the ways in which governments regulate populations through individual control. This research draws specifically on the concept of biopower to examine how biopolitics mediate school policy, are controlled by government as a form of discipline, and play out in student’s discussions of their experiences in HPE. The tracing of Canadian and Brazilian HPE policy displays these biopolitics quite explicitly over the years.

Governmentality, and the disciplinary techniques exercised by those in power, differs from other forms of power in its endeavor to exhaustively, meticulously, and continuously control the activities of bodies and “constitutes them as bearers of a highly particular relationship between utility and docility, whereby increases in utility correspond to increases in docility and vice versa” (Foucault, 1979, p. 138). As Foucault claims, disciplinary power strives to produce a body that is “more obedient as it becomes more useful” (Foucault, 1979, p. 138). Furthermore, this continuous monitoring of the body on the part of governments eventually produces a kind of individuality of the body that lends itself to these disciplinary practices all on its own, as if spontaneously, and naturally (Foucault, 1979, p. 139).

With this control in check, disciplinary power creates a specific form of individuality by subjecting the body towards a perpetual progress and an optimal end (Foucault, 1979, p. 138). In contrast to government control of the individual, exercised through direct regulation 33

and control, governmentality, then, functions through social control that on a surface inspection is not overtly forceful or coercive, and operates through autonomous individuals who willfully regulate themselves in the best interest of the state (Lupton, 1999).

This project examines governmentality and disciplinary power exercised through HPE policy delivered in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. These concepts are used to theorize student responses, particularly with respect to the embodied practices that shape gendered and racialized bodies and the subtle mechanism of control that lead to body modification beliefs and practices. Uncovering these processes is important, as they have become so normalized they are often left unquestioned, as the autonomous individuals shape their bodies and lives around these subtle practices of control. The Canadian education system is deeply intertwined and supported by formal health education policy that demands students become responsible for maintaining a ‘healthy’ citizen status in an effort to reduce health care costs (MacNeill & Rail, 2010, p. 178). As shared above, there are many public health campaigns that highlight this point well, and the policy analysis chapter of this dissertation will go into greater detail on this point.

2.4 Biopedagogies in Cross-Cultural Education This dissertation uses two areas of Foucault’s work as an analytic lens. Biopower and governmentality will be discussed within a cross-cultural education perspective to compare the self-regulation of young people controlled through policy and government initiatives. In this section, biopedagogy literature, inspired by Foucault, is discussed to further develop a connection to HPE. Biopedagogy is a sensitizing concept that unearths important conjectures for theorizing how schools produce pedagogical knowledge about the healthy, fit, and (de)sexualized body through subtle, yet effective means. This concept represents a control that conveys numerous messages about the healthy body. Last, I discuss critical media literacy and the concept of thick desire and its application to current biopedagogy/public pedagogy literature. Considering critical media literacy education and thick desire promotes a

shift in pedagogical policy that counteracts biopedagogies of control and promotes pleasure- seeking through freedom and personal control in physical activity and healthy sexuality. I turn now to a theorization of biopower as it is taken up in health and HPE research to set the foundation for subsequent conversations of biopedagogy.

Biopower provides a powerful analytic concept for unpacking the most recent discourses that instruct young women on how they know, define, and embody gender, race, and sexuality in HPE. Denise Gastaldo has reimagined health education through the concept of biopower, inviting a new way for health scholars to explore power and control delivered in subtle ways through prevention and health promotion. Gastaldo’s work is the first to utilize the concept of biopower to investigate the political dimensions of health education in the arena of health (Gastaldo, 1997, p. 114). Her work traces the emergence of human rights and citizenship practices as a pivotal turning point. These practices marked a divergence in law protecting the rights of the individual, so governments were forced to utilize their coercive control over the population through other refined strategies, such as health education (Gastaldo, 1997, p. 114). For this reason, biopower offers an applicable lens to understand the norms of healthy behavior that governments turn to in the control of large populations through the promotion of discipline for the achievement of good health (Gastaldo, 1997, p. 116).

Gastaldo (1997) recognizes a shift in the medical community from “hospital medicine,” concentrating on symptoms, to “surveillance medicine,” moving away from focus on the pathological body towards each and every individual within a population (p. 117). It is during this shift that categories of health and illness give way to the notion of risk. Within this new risk model, a significant portion of health is redefined as in an “at-risk” state (Armstrong, 1993, p. 400). This ‘risk’ society to which Gastaldo eludes figures prominently in biopedagogy literature. The assumption within risk culture is that “healthy people can be even healthier” and that it is the individual’s personal responsibility to achieve a healthier self, though the public health field shapes what defines healthy. This idea of health achieved through personal means has roots in Crawford’s (1980) formulation of the term healthism. To reiterate, healthism is the “belief that health can be achieved unproblematically through 35

individual effort and discipline, directed mainly at regulating the size and shape of the body” (p. 551).

Surveillance health promotion has diffused into the subtle language of HPE curriculum in Ontario, such as through the focus on personal responsibility; another display of policy delivered by government in an attempt to control the life of a population through well intentioned, but potentially ineffective ways. This dissertation provides an extension of Gastaldo’s work through examining Ontario and Brazilian HPE curriculum as a form of surveillance medicine14 delivered through formal policy with the objective of questioning whether or not “healthy, sexually-conscious,” bio-citizens can be produced.

Biopedagogy is a concept articulated by Jan Wright (2009) as the “idea that biopower and pedagogy can be brought together in ways that assist in understanding the body as a political space … through the art and practice of teaching of ‘life’ or bios in the biopower mode” (p. 7). It describes the values and practices that are disseminated through informal education (e.g. media and the Internet) and practices that are disseminated through formal education (e.g. schools) which work to instruct, regulate, normalize and construct understandings of the physical body and the virtuous biocitizen” (Wright & Halse, 2015, p. 838).

Attention to life in terms of biopower’s two poles demands a pedagogical concern both with the individualized body and with the species (Harwood, 2009, p. 21). In Harwood’s (2009) research of high school students, conversations surrounding biopower are found to be

14 Surveillance medicine is a term originally used by Armstrong (1993). Armstrong drew on Foucault’s analysis of ‘political economy,’ and noted the shift of political and medical focus from the interior of the body to the exterior and collective body. Illich (1975) described this same concept as ‘medicalization’ and Crawford (1980) called it ‘healthism.’ All concepts contribute to a similar regime of control dedicated to total health, where one is to engage in the practice of self-surveillance to achieve this end.

interwoven with discourse, as both are centered on the rejection of absolute truths inherent in the promotion of discourses inherent in the ‘obesity epidemic.’ These truths are practiced in neoliberal “totally pedagogized societies” (Bernstein, 2001, p.76) where methods to “evaluate, monitor, and survey the body are encouraged across a range of contemporary cultural practices” (Burrows & Wright, 2007, p. 46). It is here that gender, race, and biopedagogy discourses overlap and where important work is accomplished in my dissertation: through the rejection of absolute truths, and the range of acceptable femininities/masculinities that remain in place in school policy and practice. Surveillance of the body happens in all spaces of a young person’s life, including their homes, communities, and more recently in and through transnational media flows.

Biopedagogy work is focused on the creation and coercion of the young person into this healthy biocitizen; deconstructing pedagogical strategies that persuade young people to monitor themselves by understanding the connections between food and health and how they better themselves by eating healthily and staying active (Wright, 2009). I agree with Gard and Wright’s (2001) contention that biopedagogies in HPE are deeply gendered and intertwined with the ‘healthy body’ to create a regimented dialogue about how young people should look, behave, and monitor themselves, creating a ‘cult of the body’ that extends beyond healthism into gendered norms. This dissertation, then, is the first of its kind to employ biopedagogy work in a cross-cultural analysis of gender and media narratives in HPE, complicating articulations of fitness and health through infusing conversations about gendered and racialized norms.

This task is accomplished through deploying the concept of biopedagogies to critically analyze Ontario and Brazilian HPE policies and student perspectives about these policies and the media they consume with particular attention to fitness messaging and representations of gender and race. In Chapter Four, public health campaigns and HPE curriculum will be deconstructed through the lens of biopedagogy and healthism. Drawing upon the work of Michelle Fine (1988), dominant themes of gender, race, and sexuality are analyzed extending biopedagogy studies of fit and healthy bodies to quieter discourses of missing desire. This 37

analysis weaves together the work of thick desire and biopedagogies to formulate student subjectivities surrounding gender, race, and sexuality in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Exploring how policy attempts to produce particular subjectivities by deploying the concept of biopedagogy offers important possibilities for developing a more inclusive HPE curriculum that infuses pleasure into conversations about gender, race, sexuality, and active lifestyles.

Including pleasure in future HPE policy as an area of curriculum discussion aligns to embodied realities made possible for young women. I now turn to the related theoretical foundations of public pedagogies, which is utilized in this dissertation to unpack media influences on the embodied experiences of gender and race for the young women taking part in this study. Media influences in young women’s lives are taken up through a brief discussion of reality-based media and social media influences in Toronto and Porto Alegre.

2.4.1 Biopedagogy and Public Pedagogies: Canadian and Brazilian Perspectives

The HPE classroom is but one of the many spaces where young women are exposed to messaging about the gendered and racialized body. Numerous theorists have discussed the notion of a public pedagogy (Giroux, 2010; Kellner, 1995; Rich, Evans & De Pian, 2011). Giroux (2010) argues that learning extends beyond the classroom and

operate[s] within a wide variety of social institutions and formats including sports and entertainment media, cable television networks, churches ... profound transformations have taken place in the public space, producing new sites of pedagogy marked by a distinctive confluence of new digital and media technologies. (p. 497)

This dissertation includes an exploration of how students deploy new digital and media technologies in the young woman’s life through the concept of public pedagogies. Following in Rich et al.’s (2011) formulations of Giroux’s public pedagogy, this analysis recognizes that physical activity, health and the body are explored across myriad sites, that are “outside

of official curricular spaces” (p. 69). Thus, public pedagogy is a concept that will be utilized to explore how media discourses circulate in the lives of young women.

Rich et al. (2011) discuss a proliferation of reality-based media that focuses on the body, diet, and exercise have sought not only to “entertain audiences, but to operate as public pedagogical sites to encourage populations to undertake surveillance of their own and others bodies in order to address a so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ sweeping across western society” (p. 42). Mainstream North American media imagery has adversely contributed to body dissatisfaction for young people perpetuating images of particular femininities and masculinities (Rich et al., 2011). Traditional media imagery has also narrowed the dominant frames of heteronormativity and White bodies, as discussed by the young women taking part in this study. Thus, media have been consistently connected with young women’s body dissatisfaction, namely due to the homogeneity of the media’s depiction of the female body and its emphasis a “thin is best” discourse (Bordo, 1993), and unrealistic images of female beauty (Perloff, 2014). The internalization of these distorted images is cause for concern as it can lead to body dissatisfaction which is a key predictor for disordered eating (Perloff, 2014).

It must be noted that a traditional limitation of media research with youth is its focus on White, college-aged women who are considered most at risk for developing disordered eating and exercise behaviours (Perloff, 2014). This presents a limitation, as class, race, and gender are not considered in the effects of media depictions of the gendered body. This dissertation takes this into account through the concept of ‘racialized gender’ as it is taken up cross- culturally by the young women taking part in this study.

In Canada and across North America, the disciplining of the body through public pedagogies of transformative television such as The Last Ten Pounds, Bridal Bootcamp, and The Biggest Loser function to construct ‘healthy' individuals who encapsulate hegemonic beauty norms (Negra, Pike & Radley, 2013). Negra et al., (2013) argue that “reality television programming represents one of the most significant and dynamic sites in which national and gendered ideologies are renegotiated” (p. 7). Andsager (2014) posits that traditional media 39

imagery contributes a great deal to body dissatisfaction of girls due to the “homogeneity of the media’s depiction of the female body” (p. 410). These public pedagogies, delivered through television and media, instruct and produce knowledge about the normative relationship between children, their bodies, exercise and food (Wright & Halse, 2015, p. 838). Public pedagogies of media, then, work to “instruct, regulate, normalize, and construct understandings of the physical body and the virtuous bio-citizen” (Halse, 2009).

In Brazil, plastic surgery and other body modification practices have increased six- fold since the 1990s (Edmonds, 2010). Edmonds (2010) argues that the vast majority of Brazilians have been exposed to media images of surgically enhanced models and actresses supporting the modernizing elite’s mandate to create “an authentic national culture and modern citizenry” (p. 56). The Brazilian body, characterized by “tropical sensuality” provides a means through which to overcome colonial legacies through “compelling and founding myths of Mestico Brazilian identity,” reinventing the nation as beautiful, youthful and moving towards independent modernity (Edmonds, 2010, p. 57). Edmonds locates plastica as a specific cultural practice with its recipients in pursuit of “aesthetic health,” or psychological well-being accomplished by increased self-esteem through changing appearance. The plastica public pedagogy, deeply embedded in Brazilian culture and media narratives, is often invoked to mask social issues such as racism, poverty, and gendered stereotypes (Edmonds, 2010, p. 57).

The narrowed range of femininity taken up in Brazilian culture has become a national project. During modernization and after slavery, European and North American countries insisted upon racial purity while the Brazilians celebrated ‘mixedness.’ The combination of Latin and African music provided the backdrop for the Mestica women’s dance. Edmonds (2010) notes that this Brazilian woman has “brown skin, small breasts and a large, round ‘bumbum,’ and is imbued with the erotic’s of impurity” (p. 131). The 2016 Rio Olympic Games opening ceremonies mirrored this “mulatta beauty” through images of Mestica dancers, reinforcing gendered discourses of the female body deeply embedded in the core of Brazilian imagination and culture. The gendered, classed and raced-based discourses inherent 40

in the plastic surgery culture of Brazil demonstrate an interesting point of contrast from that of curriculum biopedagogies of inclusion in the PCN and the Principals of Educational Sport.

To conclude, media represent forms of public pedagogy that may shape how young women embody gendered and racialized stereotypes, practices and relationships in Canada and Brazil. Canadian youth are exposed to specific gendered and racialized bodies that influence their own perceptions of perfection. Brazilian youth receive the same media messages, with a cultural importance placed on plastic surgery and other body modification practices. Critical media literacy education has the potential to provide alternative messaging (Manovich, 2009) regarding dominant media depictions of the gendered and racialized body in both Canada and Brazil.

2.5 Critical Media Literacy in HPE: A Tool for Contesting Gendered Norms Though social media alone cannot combat the overwhelming power the media has on moulding young women’s perception of the body, it can offer alternative discourses and afford agency within this powerful structure. In addition to utilizing new media as a site of social resistance to public pedagogies, this research further unpacks critical media literacy education as an educational approach for young women to take up public pedagogies of gendered and racialized bodies.15

Critical media literacy education goes beyond teaching students about the role that media plays in their lives and challenges the reading of media texts with a focus on the links

15 Several larger corporations have responded to gendered norms of the female body. The 2013 Dove Campaign for real beauty and the 2015 Always #likeagirl commercials, though ultimately used to promote a brand, provide an alternative discourse to the gendered body and the normative feminine/masculine form. The latter campaign received over 59 million views on social media sites, and the real beauty sketches were one of the most viewed video advertisements ever (Neff, 2013).

between power and information (Kellner & Share, 2007, p. 5). Kellner and Share (2007) define critical media literacy as an

educational response that expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication, popular culture, and new technologies. It deepens the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power (p. 60).

Critical media literacy education gives students the opportunity to discuss alternative media production and empowers them to create their own messages that can challenge media texts and narratives. Kellner and Share (2007) argue that critical media literacy education in North America still functions under a protectionist or anti media approach, over simplifying the complex relationships youth have with media and removing the potential for empowerment that critical pedagogy and alternative media production can produce (p. 61).

Critical media literacy relies heavily on students’ already existing understanding of public pedagogies so students must have knowledge of the apparatuses that control gendered and racialized discourses in the media so they can deconstruct them in relation to their own personal experiences (Kellner & Share, 2007, p. 62). This can be a challenging exercise for many teachers, as it asks them to consider their own constructions of gendered and racialized biopedagogies. Cliff and Wright (2010) studied how two contemporary health concerns, obesity and eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia), were negotiated by one female health and physical education teacher and her students. Though the teacher was cognizant of the increased risk of her students developing eating disorders (this study took place at a private school),16 the investments both teacher and students had in their own bodies as the slim ideal

16 Historically, disordered eating has been more prevalent in the upper classes. This study only took place in a private school, and therefore, results are indicative of the social class studied.

proved difficult as they attempted to navigate alternative perspectives to the dominant gendered and racialized discourses.

Critical media literacy education is worth this personal struggle, as it combines biopedagogy and public pedagogy literature with new information communication technologies and a market-based media culture that has “fragmented, connected, converged, diversified, homogenized, flattened, broadened and reshaped the world” (Kellner & Share, 2007, p. 59). It also provides a multiperspectival approach that addresses issues of gender, race, class, and power to explore the interconnections of media literacy, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy (Kellner & Share, 2007, p. 59).

In 1987, Ontario was the first Canadian province to mandate media education in elementary school curriculum (MediaSmarts, 2014). In 2006, a new grades one to eight English curriculum introduced a media literacy expectation strand, and in 1999 the secondary (grades nine to twelve) English curriculum implemented media literacy into its four strands, and an optional media course that is predicated on the study of media texts, media audiences, and media production (MediaSmarts, 2014). Media expectations are also included in Ontario’s HPE curriculum, particularly in the ‘Substance Use and Abuse’ and ‘Living Skills’ strands. Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy claims, “HPE curriculum promotes important educational values such as tolerance, understanding and good health … working together, schools and communities can be powerful allies in motivating students to achieve their potential and lead safe, healthy lives” (MediaSmarts, 2014).

Social media literacy is a dominant form of critical media literacy education being discussed in academia. The widespread use of social networking sites (SNS) in recent years has drastically altered how young people communicate, with whom, and under what circumstances (Livingstone, 2014). Social media literacy examines how young people learn about, engage with and interpret social media messages and the social dimensions of these spaces to determine what is risky and why. This literacy is developed in much the same way as critical media literacy in that the young person becomes informed by media literacy 43

research in which the students become recipients, then participants, and finally actors in the messages delivered to them through social media (Livingstone, 2014, p. 1).

Social media sites, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat provide young consumers with the chance to view alternative gendered, racialized, and sexualized public pedagogies beyond that of corporate or publicly funded media. For young women who do not seek out ‘thinspiration’ in social media, such sites can be used to promote alternative body norms. For example, a young social media user may post a picture of a group of friends of various sizes, shapes, and colours that focuses on friendship rather than the group’s body size/shape/colour. There has also been a proliferation of women posting images of their postpartum bodies to raise awareness of the realities of female bodies after giving birth (Manovich, 2009). These images often go viral and provide young women with a great example of the power of the body and the broader range of shapes and sizes that define ‘femininity.’

Much of the media youth consume carries some sort of sexualized content (Livingstone, 2014). Policy dedicated to sexuality education tends towards a protectionist discourse where the young person, especially the young girl, is victimized by online and real predators. Thick desire, a concept formulated by Michelle Fine (1988) and brought to the current HPE debates in sexuality by Connell (2005) provides a theoretical tool for contesting this discourse and empowering youth in how they embody sexuality.

2.6 Thick Desire & Pleasure: Extending Biopedagogies of the Body Historically, North American sexuality curriculum has been focused on ‘saying no,’ practicing abstinence, listing possible diseases contracted from sexual encounters, and enumerating the emotional and social risks of sexual intimacy (Fine, 1988, p. 32). These biopedagogies of victimization remove sexual subjectivity, and the effort invested in such conversations diverts attention away from “structures, arrangements, and relationships that oppress women in general, and low-income women and women of colour in particular” (Lorde, 1980). The outcome of victimization is the adult woman assuming a sort of “dual consciousness – at once taken with the excitement of actual/anticipated sexuality and 44

consumed with anxiety and worry” (Fine, 1988, p. 35). While too few safe spaces exist for adolescent girls’ exploration of sexual subjectivity, there are all too many dangerous spots for their exploitation. This dual consciousness that Fine speaks of has become exacerbated in modern society as students grapple with the over sexualization of females in the media.

Young women rarely get opportunities to discuss embodied pleasure and desire in open and safe forums such as schools, just as they rarely get the opportunity to discuss the range of normative femininities in media. Edwards (2016) asserts that “when sex education positions young people as reckless, easily pressured, unknowledgeable or unwise to consequences rather than as human beings who seeks [a sexual] relationship and pleasure within it,” they may be inclined to seek sexual knowledge by more informal means such as friends or family (p. 266). If this is the case, we are doing our young women a disservice, as other sources of information on sexuality may not be available or reliable for young women, leaving them with unreliable information on healthy sexuality. This proves an imperative, as Fine and McClelland (2006) point out that the radical growth curve of neoliberal reform has compromised the sexual subjectivities of those young women most vulnerable – LGTBQQ2 youth, Black and Aboriginal youth, those living in poverty, and/or recently immigrated to Canada (p. 4).

Missing discourses of desire were first uncovered by Michelle Fine (1988) who found that American public school students in the 1980s were receiving a “consequences” model of sexuality education. The result, she argues, is a “missing discourse of desire,” where pleasure and sexual entitlement is ‘missing’ from student narratives. Fine and McClelland (2006) propose to eradicate the missing discourse of desire through thick desire, arguing that young women “are entitled to a broad range of desires for meaningful intellectual, political and social engagement, and the possibility of sexual and reproductive freedom” (p. 301).

Providing students with the opportunity to discuss thick desire requires that young women have the opportunity to imagine themselves as “sexual beings capable of pleasure and 45

cautious about danger without carrying the undue burden of social, medical and reproductive consequences” (Fine & McClelland, 2006, p. 301). They have access to information and health care resources and rely on a public safety net of resources to support youth and families and are protected from intimate and structural abuse and violence (Fine & McClelland, 2006, p. 301). Introducing thick desire into formal policy and biopedagogies could allow conversations about determinants of health to inform sexuality conversations. This would enable the educational, economic, social, and psychological health of the diverse group of young women to be better serviced in schools.

Finally, teaching thick desire allows teachers to take up the dangers associated with unsafe sexual behaviours but does so in a more inclusive, understanding, and all-encompassing position about the sexual subject. The benefits to the health of students far outweigh any loss of control felt by the teacher. Research has shown that when young people dismiss or question certain topics covered in health class, they position themselves as “sophisticated, embodied sexual subjects,” (Allen, 2005, p. 575), where the protective discourse becomes only a fraction of the full story. This study extends the project of thick desire by locating it within a framework of embodied pleasures that diffuses into movement and physical activity. Further, it engages with media as a public pedagogy and critical media literacy as an alternative discourse. Exploring these two concepts together extends the pleasure project and brings it into the digital age. The following section provides a brief overview of how I take up pleasure with respect to young women’s HPE experiences in Toronto and Porto Alegre.

2.7 Theorizing Pleasure and Play Gerdin and Pringle (2017) theorize pleasure as an embodied, discursive construct, shaped by the discourses that circulate in an individual’s everyday life. This is an important point of departure in theorizing pleasure, as it locates the concept within the confines of the discourses that are shaped through institutions such as schools. Theorizing pleasure as discourse, then, locates the achievement of pleasure as socially specific and shaped within a heteronormative matrix. Gerdin and Pringle (2017) elaborate, “different systems of thought 46

and mechanisms of power in different contexts … shape how humans experience, understand, manage and use pleasure (p. 197). Individuals, then, may find pleasure in performing dominant gendered constructions of physical activity, and it is here that powerful and subtle work gets done on the body. Foucault (1978) states,

if power was never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but say no, do you really believe that we would manage to obey it? What gives power its hold … (is that) it does not simply weigh like a force that says no, but that it runs through and produces things, it induces pleasure. (p. 119).

Locating pleasure as a gendered performance is an important consideration when theorizing pleasure in HPE. Gard (2008) reminds us that when we seek to enable young people to explore the pleasures associated with movement, we must also consider that these experiences are contextually specific. If pleasure is theorized through this discursive lens, teachers and policy writers in HPE are the ‘border protection officers’ who regulate and control the gendered performances of pleasure in HPE (Allen & Carmody, 2012).

Considering pleasure as a gendered, discursive construct, this dissertation follows in Gerdin and Pringle’s (2017) contention that HPE teachers [and professionals] should instruct in such a way that enables young people to “critically learn about themselves, others and their bodies, in/through a broad range of movement-related contexts/activities” (p. 209). One of my recommendations (explored in greater detail in Chapter Six) is that HPE teachers provide choice and opportunity to discuss embodied pleasures through the concept of ‘thick desire’ and providing diverse opportunities for young women to discover the types of physical activities and play-based activities that speak to them as individuals. Providing young women with choice to explore their own range of preferred movements and removing play as a means to an end in physical education policy and practice could contribute to the location of more pleasurable experiences in HPE. This could be accomplished through a commitment to protected time in HPE class for low-organization

games and a movement away from standardized fitness testing and skill-based lessons. These recommendations are taken up in greater detail in Chapter 5.

2.7 Conclusions To conclude, exploring HPE and health education from a political and historical perspective provides a platform through which to uncover biopedagogies in current curriculum documents in Canada and Brazil. A historical analysis of Canadian and Brazil education reveals that each country has experienced resistance to and public distain over the introduction of sexuality policy in public schools over the past century. Resistance to the introduction of more progressive sexuality pedagogy in both countries shows important trajectories across cultures that must be explored to understand pressures and conformity in the contested space of body politics. Doing so from a physical cross-cultural perspective can assist in locating cross-cutting themes that contribute to this resistance.

Biopower and biopedagogy will be utilized to unhinge discourses inherent in curriculum and to explore the subtle ways that power gets internalized and normalized by young women in HPE. Governmentality research can assist in further unpacking how power is embedded in pedagogy and biopedagogy research can tease this apart within the system of schools. The following chapter outlines the methodology utilized for data collection as well as the ethical considerations for working with young women in a cross-cultural setting.

CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY

This chapter begins with a review of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings that guide this study. Conducting research with young women that explores gender, sexuality, race, and physical fitness in a transnational context requires a methodological approach that is complex and recognizes diverse perspectives. Thus, this project consists of a multimethod approach grounded in feminist poststructural theory.

To reiterate, the purpose of this study is to examine how 14-18 year-old students in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil conceptualize, experience and embody gendered and racialized identities and relationships within health and physical education (HPE) and media. To repeat my earlier key concerns that flow from this purpose, the following research questions guide the analysis:

1. What range of understandings about gendered bodies are held by young women in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil? 2. What range of gendered identities are constructed by students in gym and health classes? 3. What values and discourses are embedded in HPE policy and curricula with respect to gender, sexuality and fitness in Canada and Brazil? 4. What insights can be gleaned from doing globally conscious policy analysis on a north/south axis? 5. How do media narratives influence gendered embodiment? 6. What effects do gendered and sexualized narratives delivered by HPE policy and media have on young women taking part in this study?

The following section outlines the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of this study. Providing this philosophical background is useful as it allows transparency about my positionality as the primary researcher.

3.1 Overview and Epistemological Underpinnings of Inquiry Methodology, theory and ideology are intimately intertwined and connected to how we view the world as researchers. The selection of a theoretical model and the subsequent methodology is a political and critical aspect of research and is based on worldviews and the kind of information sought, from whom, and under what circumstances (Guba & Lincoln, 1994, p. 105). Guba and Lincoln (1994) remind that scholars must engage in these deeper conversations of ontology and epistemology, as the primary task of the researcher is to critically understand and communicate these worldviews to others (p. 105). For this purpose, I want to preface my methodology and selected data collection tools with the ontological and epistemological tenets that guide this dissertation.

I bring a specific set of values and experiences that shape the paradigms of my work. As researchers, the topics we choose are typically aligned to our own life experiences and interests (Creswell, 2007, p. 216). I was a competitive gymnast for most of my preadolescent life. As I reached puberty and began to develop and gain weight, I felt increasing amounts of pressure to conform to the normative body size for my sport, characterized by little body fat and a petite, yet muscular body shape. Achieving this body required me to limit my food intake and partake in drastic training and exercise habits. I will never forget my coach yelling into the change room during a snack break that he could “hear me getting fatter.” From these early experiences, I discovered that the body is far from neutral and biological: it is a complex entity, multiplicitous, and experienced within negotiations of power controlled by various structures. These early experiences and realizations form the foundation on which this study is structured as I attempt to theorize power, identity and discourses that revolve around the ‘fit,’ ‘healthy,’ and ‘sexually responsible’ young person in HPE and media.

Despite my conflicted experiences in gymnastics, my love for sport and physical activity flourished into my adult years, and I pursued a career as a health and physical education teacher. It was during my initial teacher training that I began to recognize that the Canadian education system aligned with Paulo Freire’s concept of “banking.” The term “banking” represents a form of instruction in which the teacher “fill ups” the passive and empty minds of students (Freire, 1970). This banking style of education was especially true in HPE classes I experienced, as teachers instructed students on the dangers of sexual promiscuity outside of marriage, the proper techniques and strategies for achieving a ‘fit’ and ‘healthy’ body, and the kind of food one should consume to maintain a body size that fit within a normative, acceptable range for a girl. Within this model, student perspectives and, ultimately, agency within the school system seemed to be invisible and masked by a moral imperative on part of future teachers to mould a generation of fit, healthy and sexually ‘responsible’ young women.

Freire (1970) calls for a critical consciousness in education that uses a problem-posing pedagogy and action against oppression. The problem-posing alternative requires reciprocal communication between the teacher and student where both are learning and teaching each other (Freire, 1970). This type of emancipatory education Freire imagines is absent from the policy I have studied and taught over the years. I found myself trapped within a system where I felt I was doing my students a disservice. Delivering curriculum focused on standardized testing, victimization, and shaming of pleasure in sexual experiences and eating seemed counterproductive to my holistic teaching philosophy.

Several years into my career, I observed my students questioning the commitment of HPE practice to a normative body. I saw many young women struggle within the confines of curriculum and teacher practices to express their opinions and exercise agency within the school system. These student perspectives aligned with my own teacher training, in which standardized testing has become the norm, and conversations about diversity and difference were rarely discussed in class. Curriculum has become focused on skill-based learning; and teacher preparation works hard to ensure pre-service teachers learn about the duty to keep 51

young people fit, healthy and sexually responsible. A combination of my observations of my initial teacher training, my time spent in the HPE classroom, and student feedback inspired me to undertake graduate research. My Master’s thesis addressed the lack of attention in curriculum and teaching practices to various body shapes and sizes in standardized testing and the delivery of narratives on the fit and healthy biocitizen.

In terms of my own HPE practice, I have attempted to subvert these mainstream, healthist discourses in more recent years. My first years of teaching, however, aligned with the ‘banking’ model of education and I reinforced the dominant neoliberal and healthist discourses related to the fit and healthy body that I had learned in school. As the years have progressed, however, I have begun to help students find pleasure in their corporeality. I believe this began by avoiding standardized testing, such as BMI measurements, the ‘beep test,’ and skin fold caliper testing. Giving student’s choice in their HPE participation and focusing on play-based classes has also guided my practice. For example, a decreased focus on the importance of skill gets replaced with low organization games and play ‘for the fun of it.’ I have found that this type of practice encourages students of all body types and skill levels to move their bodies in ways that are comfortable and enjoyable. The school board in which I work has recently committed to focusing more on this play-based type of HPE experiences, though teacher practices do not always mirror these changes, nor does policy.

To conclude, this study recognizes institutions (such as schools) as powerful agents in the construction of human knowledge, activity, and opportunities. My experience within these systems of control is proof of this point. This study identifies the important interplay between the individual perspectives of young women, the structures that guide their lives, and the agency they exercise within the confines of these structures. It is overly simplistic to assume that youth as social actors have complete control and power over the structure of their lives, especially school-aged individuals functioning within the confines of their parents’, friends’, social networks’, and school’s social circles. The following section extends this ontological conversation into considerations of reflexivity and positionality on the Porto Alegre site.

Exploring these foundational issues is imperative in cross-cultural research where participants hail from an environment that is foreign to me as the primary researcher.

3.1.1 Reflexivity and Positionality in Cross-Cultural Research

How and what we write in the research process are direct reflections of our own interpretation based on the cultural, social, gender, class, and personal politics that we bring to our research (Creswell, 2007, p. 215). Reflexivity represents the “concept in which the writer is conscious of the biases, values and experiences that he or she brings to a qualitative research study (Creswell, 2007, p. 216). Reflectivity, then, is a sort of self-scrutiny on the part of the researcher; a self-conscious awareness of the relationship between a researcher and an ‘other’ (Bourke, 2014, p. 2). Positionality represents a space where objectivism and subjectivism meet, and as Freire (1970) notes, it is where the two exist in a dialectic relationship (p. 50).

Freire argues that researchers who emphasize subjectivism believe that they must transform the consciousness of individuals, whereas those who emphasis objectivism assume that only when objective realities are altered, will subjectivities change (Freire, 1970). Freire (1970) contends that neither of these positions are accurate and that historical processes are, therefore, dialectic and often contradictory. Positionality, thus, is complex and shapes the research process and interpretation. To assume we become purely objective in our research is impossible, as we can never truly remove ourselves from our own experiences and subjectivities in the research setting.

A critique of the researcher’s role in data collection has been uncovered in response to “a greater consciousness of situational identities and to the perceptions of relative power” (Angrosino, 2005, p. 734). Bourke (2014) notes that qualitative researchers are the “data collection instrument” in the research process, so it is reasonable to expect that their beliefs, opinions, and cultural background (gender, race, class, socioeconomic background, educational background, etc.) inform and shape the research process (p. 4).

I was an outsider in many ways while conducting research for this project: First, I was an adult asking for insight into young women’s lives. In the Brazilian context, I was a foreign researcher Skyping in, working and interpreting data gathered from a completely different cultural group than my own in a distant location. This applied not only to the young women participating in the study but also to the researchers, interpreters, and interviewers in this study.

I am a White, heterosexual female who was born and raised in Canada. Though neither of my parents attended university, I have spent much of my life in education as a student, a teacher, and a researcher. My experiences as a researcher further inform my interpretation of the information I receive from the young women in this study. I am cognizant of not speaking for the young people who take part in this study, especially those girls who hail from a different racial, ethnic, or gendered background than myself. According to Freire, such efforts on my part would be counter liberatory, as my background and position situate me as an oppressor (Bourke, 2014, p. 3).17

To be an ally and advocate as an interviewer of the individuals taking part in this study, data interpretation and collection reflect (as much as possible) the voices of these individuals. This was challenging, as my mere presence in the research setting placed me in an active role by bringing attention to the objects of concern. Bringing a mindfulness to my presence in semi structured interviews was of great importance to get a true glimpse into the shared experiences and perceptions of youth. How data are co-constructed by the participants and me is taken into account and discussed in Chapter Five of this dissertation. A co-production of knowledge was developed by ensuring questions were open-ended, that youth had a ‘safe space’ to speak openly about their experiences, and those who completed a ‘buddy’ interview often entered into free-flowing conversation about a topic without intervention from myself.

17 Part of my positionality is that I am a White, well-educated person entering into the lives of individuals that hail from diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. To assume I understand the experiences of these individuals would be counter-liberatory.

Dwyer and Buckle (2009) theorize the insider/outsider conundrum as more of a “space between,” to challenge this dichotomy. They warn against the restrictive nature of such a dichotomy in the research setting and call for a dialectic approach that honours the preservation of the complexity of similarities and differences (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009, p. 60). This is not to say that my own positionality should be overlooked, but rather an attention to the fluidity and multilayered complexity of the human experience should be considered. In practice, if the researcher holds an outsider status, this does not denote complete difference, and to assume such binaries would fail to recognize the complexity of the human experience in the qualitative research setting. The origin of the space between requires that the researchers note not only the ways they are different from the participant, but also the ways they are similar. For example, in this particular study, both the participants and I identify as female.

I have also been a participant in physical education classes and a recipient of media messaging on the narrowed range of normative bodies. In these ways, I am similar to the participants and can empathize with their responses based on previous experience. Reflecting on these points assists in creating a ‘third space’ or a ‘space between’ where research is conducted with participants. Critically thinking about the ways in which participant and researcher are similar and different aids in creating this third space. Research, then, is a shared space, shaped by both researcher and participants, and as such, the identities of both the researcher and participant have the potential to impact the research process (Bourke, 2014). Sharing this third space proved challenging in the research I conducted with Porto Alegre youth. Firstly, I was unable to attend the interviews due to public health warnings about the potential complications of the Zika Virus to myself and my expanding family. Secondly, there were numerous cultural barriers encountered throughout the data collection, coding and analysis processes. The following section takes up these issues and presents a plan for crossing borders.

3.1.2 “Crossing Borders” in Qualitative Data Collection

There are several caveats to “crossing borders,” both cultural and geographic, that must be negotiated for meaningful coalitions of understanding to occur (Giroux, 2010). This required that I had the ability to traverse the borders from one culture to another and put aside my own cultural beliefs and representations as I moved back and forth between groups. Hall (1997) reminds us that “we all speak from a particular time, out of a particular history, out of particular experiences, out of a specific culture without being contained by that position” (p. 258). This cross-cultural analysis is rooted in the notion that, though students live within specific cultural fields, they also act as social agents that resist and challenge these environments. I have discussed my own personal and academic history while also recognizing my position as a White, well-educated, heterosexual North American conducting research within cultural fields quite different than my own.

This project involves two very diverse global and local communities in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Palmary (2011) thoughtfully observes how conducting cross-cultural research presents a number of challenges and limitations that can be quite messy, complex and political in nature. The interviews conducted in Porto Alegre presented me with a number of challenges and triumphs. This section discusses methodological concerns, challenges, and possibilities for infusing the voices of multiple researchers working together in a cross-cultural context.

First, language and cultural barriers have posed challenges throughout the data collection for this study. In meetings held prior to the interview process the Educational Policies for Physical Education and Health team (POLIFES) and I often found we struggled to give meaning to Brazilian terms that did not translate to English terms and concepts from Northern traditions of knowledge production (and vice versa). For example, we had trouble interpreting and constructing a common understanding of what it meant to be ‘fit’, as this term carries different meanings in different cultural contexts. These issues of translation illuminate the position of the researcher as co agent, and, more specifically, the importance

of discussing the involvement of others, such as interviewers and interpreters, in the production of knowledge. A discussion of this point is especially important as meaning- making was taken on by me, my Brazilian supervisor Dr. Alex Branco Fraga, two graduate student interviewers, and two transcribers.

The trouble with language barriers in cross-cultural work is that researchers may believe that he or she ‘knows’ what a particular concept means in the different language. Difficulties then arise in extricating the ‘familiar from the alien,’ and then discovering the boundaries between both to make final decisions about data on the part of the primary researcher (Temple, 1999, p. 603). Words such as ‘fit,’ ‘sexuality,’ and ‘feminine/masculine’ carry with them different histories and meanings in different cultural contexts. It is important to preface that I cannot assume that Brazilian culture consists of similar norms, values, and beliefs as North American culture and vice versa. Providing cultural and historical context to this project therefore becomes imperative, as does my own representations and assumptions as the primary researcher.

Stanley (1990) suggests that researchers must consider the “intellectual biographies” of others involved in the data collection process, for example, interpreters, interviewers, and transcribers. How we interpret data varies based on our own intellectual biographies, which includes the country we were raised in and studied in and the language we speak (Temple, 1999, p. 613). To engage as researchers in this project over loaded concepts such as gender, sex, race and health, the perspectives of the interviewers in Porto Alegre were collected, analyzed, discussed, and included in the data collection chapter of this dissertation. Readers of this study can then draw their own conclusions using the information of these intellectual autobiographies in their own process of “empirical unfolding” (Temple, 1999, p. 613). Indeed, this process happens quite naturally in many ways, as all researchers inherently ‘translate’ the experience of others on their own terms and from their own positions of reference in order to communicate (Hatim & Mason, 1997). For example, a transcriber will inevitably make important decisions about details to be included, how to punctuate, and whether to note tone in a particular comment. 57

At the conclusion of the data gathering, I conducted short interviews with the graduate students who graciously offered their time and effort to conduct interviews on my behalf in Brazil. This was an important methodological exercise as it offered insight into their intellectual biographies and how these might shape the data collection process. The interviewers note, as I did, that there were some issues in terms of translating certain terms from English to Portuguese. They give the example of the term ‘fit’ and the lack of a term that translates to Brazilian youth culture.

One of the methodological limitations for the Brazilian interviewers was the lack of my immediate presence (both physically and online) when young women were asking for terms to be clarified. Brazilian interviewers did not have directly translatable terms to offer. Both Brazilian interviewers valued the contributions of the study to gender, body, and health in the context of Porto Alegre youth and HPE studies. They also appreciated the opportunity for youth in their city to take part in this study to discuss their opinions about school contexts that were quite distinct across the city of Porto Alegre. Interviewers also appreciated the opportunity for young women to “discuss with colleagues on issues of race/culture/gender/body image and health.”

Conducting this interview with the Brazilian interviewers provides invaluable insight into the intellectual challenges and strengths from the perspective of natives in the Brazilian field and is recommended for sound methodological practice in future cross-cultural work in the HPE field. Perspectives and insight from the interviewers in Porto Alegre are also interspersed throughout Chapter Five. The following section follows the theoretical framework used in both Toronto and Porto Alegre data collection and analysis.

3.2 Theoretical Framework I have discussed the ontological and epistemological foundations of this study, have theorized the poststructural research paradigm, and discussed reflexivity and positionality in a cross-cultural context. I now shift to the specific theoretical framework that guides data 58

collection and analysis based upon these foundations. Uncovering the experiences of the young person in HPE in terms of gender, race, physicality, and sexuality is a delicate and complex undertaking. Qualitative inquiry that recognizes power structures, agency/structure, gender dichotomies, and diverse sexualities in HPE is called for. Feminist theory recognizes the perspectives of the other and locates the female body as sexually specific and sociocultural (Butler, 1990; Evans, 2006; Grosz, 1994; McDowell, 1999). It teases apart the work done on the body to recognize how gender and sexualities are written onto the body in very specific ways. Recognizing the gendered body as a sociocultural phenomenon provides the foundation upon which this study is constructed.

These frameworks assist in teasing apart the work done on the gendered and racialized body and provide an understanding of the body as a locus of practice of social control (Theberge, 1987). This section challenges the traditional assumptions about the body as a “natural and biological object” (Wright, 2009, p. 35), the dichotomies inherent in structuralist assumptions of the body, and the discourses that shape inter-embodied perspectives in HPE.

3.2.1 Feminist Poststructural Theory

This study denaturalizes several of the dominant conceptions of the gendered body represented in cross-cultural HPE curriculum and media narratives. Topics of ‘gender,’ ‘sex,’ ‘race’ and ‘sexual difference are heavily debated concepts in feminist theory; however, feminist scholars are in consensus that these terms must be non-essentialist and are capable of being something other than what is portrayed in dominant structures (Alcoff, 2006, p. 19). Specifically, engaging with the concept of gender ideology can assist in unraveling these terms and locating and resisting ideological dichotomies. Gender ideology is theorized as a “set of practices which organizes, regulates and defines relations between men and women, including sexual activity, reproductive activity and gender-based roles of all types … it works to produce gender, or masculinity and femininity” (Alcoff, 2006, p. 20). Deconstructing dominant gender ideologies assists in unraveling the complex narratives of femininity that have been communicated by young women during data collection. In

addition, feminist post structural theory (FPST) can be utilized in conjunction with biopower and governmentality to develop a more nuanced analysis of subtle daily control exercised over bodies with respect to gender.

This study locates gender as a social construct, regulated by structures of power within ideological apparatuses that control and instruct the body. Feminist poststructuralism provides a sound platform to challenge these gender myths and other modern assumptions made about the body. This includes beliefs and knowledge about universal principles through which bodies are confined and defined with respect to gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability (Azzarito, 2009; Bordo, 1993; Wright, 2009).

Power and domination figure prominently in feminist poststructural theory. How gender is defined and regulated is intimately tied to power structures within a society. Feminist poststructural theorists (Gastaldo, 1997; Rail, 2012) deploy the work of Foucault to deconstruct gender, race, and power. Foucault defines discourse as the “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Discourses are not about objects; they constitute them and in the practice of doing so conceal their own intervention” (Foucault, 1978, p. 49). It is in and through discourses of meaning, and how they come to be, that subjectivities of the body are formed. Writers and speakers of dominant discourses inform ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ within various social contexts. These truths construct how young women take up and embody dominant conceptions of the female form in HPE and media.

Foucault’s concept of discourse is useful for this project because it assists the formulation of language as it gathers to form socially constructed rules that permit certain statements to be made and others to be silenced in HPE. When gendered discourses become hegemonic, it becomes difficult to think and act outside of them within a particular social context (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 485). Discourse constructs the topic: “it defines and produces the objects of our knowledge…and governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about” (Hall, 1997, p. 44). Of particular interest for this project is the argument that discourse ‘rules out,’ restricts, and places limits on other ways of talking about a topic, such as gender 60

(Hall, 1997, p. 44). This idea is important for this project because dominant discourses about femininity in HPE and media gather together and ‘leave out’ many bodies in the process. Foucault constructs the idea that knowledge is intimately linked to power, not only assuming the authority of ‘the truth’ but also having the power to make itself true (Hall, 1997, p. 49). He argues,

Truth isn’t outside power … truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regimes of truth, its “general politics” of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned … the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. (Foucault, 1980, p. 131)

This project explores the power/knowledge relationship embedded in HPE policy and media consumption that students experience. Foucault’s work assists in theorizing power that gets translated to truth as it circulates around productive forces and discursive formations. Exploring student perspectives through this concept and “what counts as true” provides a powerful analytical platform for understanding the difficulty that working outside of these discourses can pose (Foucault, 1980). Locating these tensions is the first step in resistance and begins the path of locating ‘technologies of the self’ within the structures of a young person’s life.

Judith Butler has extended Foucault’s work into the theorizing of dominant discourses surrounding the productions of gender and sex. Her work assists in locating and theorizing mechanisms to explore resistance and agency in HPE with relation to gendered norms. Butler argues that heteronormativity is accomplished through gender performativity or a

stylized repetition of acts . . . which are internally discontinuous ... [so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative

accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. (Butler, 1999, p. 32)

Butler challenges the discourse of heteronormativity through this concept of performativity, highlighting agency through thinking and speaking about discourse in a different way. Recognizing discourses of gender/sex performativity can afford agency to individuals to reformulate ontological assumptions of boy and girl.

Butler’s work provides a logical and sound platform for the proposed project. Her elaboration of heteronormativity and performativity outlines the normalizing effects of gendered discourses and the difficulty it poses to act outside of these discourses. Heteronormativity and performativity are deeply embedded in young people’s constructions of gender, race, and the active body in health and physical education (Burrows & Wright, 2007; Campos, 2004; Gard & Wright, 2001; Harwood, 2009; Rail, 2012). This project has provided an opportunity for young women to potentially disrupt heteronormative discourses and question the performative dimensions of their identities in HPE through questioning said discourses in their interview process.

3.2.4 Demographic Information in Toronto and Porto Alegre

The communities in which these interviews took place were both culturally and racially diverse. Toronto is Canada’s largest city and is one of the most multicultural cities in the world (Statistics Canada, 2006). Data released in 2006 by Statistics Canada indicates that Toronto is composed of 49.9% foreign-born citizens, and this number continues to grow yearly (Statistics Canada, 2006). The students who participated in this study provided a sample of this diversity with many foreign-born young women who were mostly first or second-generation Canadians. This multicultural group provided many different perspectives of the gendered and racialized body in HPE and media, although there were common experiences that emerged as discussed in Chapter Five.

Porto Alegre is Brazil’s capital and largest city in the region of Rio Grande Do Sul. The city is less culturally diverse than Toronto with the 2010 IBGE Census revealing that 79.2% of the city’s population is White, 10.2% Black and 10% multiracial (IBGE Census, 2015). Still, there were several different racial groups identified in the interviews that took place in Porto Alegre, including white, black and multiracial.18 In Toronto, students were recruited from an area that spoke Urdu, Gujarati, Farsi, Tagalog and Pashto as the top five languages spoken at home. Only 30% of the inhabitants of this demographic area were born in Canada, compared to 49% for the rest of the city of Toronto (Statistics Canada, 2011). In Porto Alegre, Portuguese was the first language of the young women participating in this study.

3.3 Methodology: Introduction This chapter has addressed the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of poststructuralism and how these tenets contribute to data collection practices. Connections have been made to the constructions of knowledge within poststructuralism, and feminist poststructuralism that form the foundations of analysis for this study. The following section outlines the methodologies employed for this study including gender and discourse analysis, ethnography and critical discourse analysis.

3.4 Gender & Critical Discourse Analysis Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a sound methodological choice in educational research as it can provide insight into how institutions influence health and physical well-being that are structured through policy. Evans-Agnew, Johnson, Lui, and Boutain (2016) posit a postpositivist framework guides most policy researchers and assumes political and social contexts that are measureable and fixed (p. 1). Such policy researchers are guided by assumptions that may not sufficiently capture the ways policy makers and subjects cocreate

18 Students in Brazil referred to multiracial individuals as ‘mixed’ in the interviews. When discussed in Chapter 5, ‘mixed’ refers to individuals whose parents come from two different ethnic backgrounds. ‘Mixed’ individuals were considered an ‘ideal’ type of body and look for many of the Brazilian young people taking part in this study.

how policies are enacted, written, and implemented (Leeman et al., 2012). CDA allows researchers to explore such processes and is defined as a

type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power, abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. (van Dijk, 2001, p. 52)

CDA unearths how dominant language, utilized by those in power, may advance or impede particular social issues, such as gender inequality (Fairclough, 2008). Exploring this language in policy allows the researcher to “probe beneath the idea that all policy is a ‘well- intentioned’ passive construction of words and sentences” (Evans-Agnew et al., 2016, p. 2). Most importantly, CDA assists in creating a space for young people to resist power and control and locate a voice in the co-creation of future policy by understanding the subtle mechanisms of power that circulate in their daily lives. Developing an understanding of this dominant language is a first step towards contesting such language and cocreating inclusive policy in the future.

This project provides a poststructural CDA of several curriculum documents in Canada and Brazil. The concept of discourse is a flexible term that is greatly dependent upon the epistemological framework being adopted. Thus, I wish to return to several of the epistemological underpinnings of poststructuralism throughout this section. Jorgensen and Philips (2002) argue that the notion of discourse involves the idea that language is “structured according to different patterns that people’s utterances follow when they take part in different domains of social life” (p. 12). CDA is the analysis of these patterns or the “particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world)” (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 12). CDA involves an intertwining of theory and method (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 12) as the researcher connects the ontological and epistemological premises regarding the role of language in the social construction of the world.

CDA focuses on a variety of “texts,” that carry explicit or implicit content and meaning in relation to the gendered body (Gasper & Apthorpe, 2000, p. 161). CDA is useful for considering the norms or practices that “health talk” has in constructing gendered and racialized expectations in HPE class for young people (Gasper & Apthorpe, 2000, p. 161). This study provides a CDA of three policies that instruct young women about the gendered and racialized body within Canadian and Brazilian contexts. The documents that are analyzed include,

1. The Ontario Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (1999, 2015) 2. The Parametros Curruculares Nacionais (1997)19

Providing a discursive analysis of these documents in conjunction with the voices of the young women participating in this study, Gasper and Apthorpe suggest, “bridge(s) the gap between macro-analysis of social structures and ideologies and the micro-analysis of conversations in order to examine the complex relationship between structures and strategies of discourse” (2000, p. 2).

This analysis begins with coding key words in the selected policies. Coding “involves taking text during data collection, segmenting sentences (or paragraphs) or images into categories, and labeling those categories with a term” (Creswell, 2007, p. 186). I deductively coded for the terms ‘gender,’ ‘sexuality,’ ‘race,’ ‘sex,’ and ‘fitness’ in the first reading, keeping in mind that these terms are never neutral and are always tied to hegemonic power within society (Johnston & Sidaway, 2004, p. 281). During the second reading, inductive coding was used to extrapolate surprises in meaning that emerged. During a third reading of the data,

19 The PCN is the primary guiding education policy for all of Brazil. This paper focuses attention on this document, but also picks up on a guiding sporting document called the Principals of Educational Sport guidelines that are used by major sporting organizations in Brazil. This document is not directly delivered in schools, but the philosophies of major sporting organizations and these guiding principles appear in the practice of HPE in Brazilian schools and are picked up on in Chapter Four (Betti, 1998).

categories were established through an interplay of inductive and deductive logic, meaning themes were explored from the ‘bottom up’ by “organizing data inductively into increasingly more abstract units of information and working back and forth between themes and the database until a comprehensive set of themes was established” (Creswell, 2007, p 45). Deductive reasoning was used as a means to build on themes that were grounded in and checked against an existing literature review of the subject matter.

3.4 Ethical Considerations Ethics approval for this study was granted from the University of Toronto (32717), the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (1763615), and the Toronto District School Board’s research ethics boards (2015-2016-81) (see Appendices E, F, and G). All data collection for this project was done so with the approval of all research participants taking part in the study and was in full compliance with the Department of Exercise Science at the University of Toronto and the Faculty of Physical Education at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. The data used for this study included interview data as well as audio recordings and field notes taken over the course of the study. Field notes and audio recordings were encrypted and stored on my password-protected laptop.

3.5 Recruitment of Participants Due to the complications associated with the Zika Virus, travelling to Brazil to complete interviews was not an option for me during the period of time that data collection occurred for this study as planned.20 Dr. Alex Branco Fraga and his research team, POLIFES, graciously recruited and interviewed 20 female youth in Porto Alegre, Brazil on my behalf. Porto Alegre was the city selected for interviews in Brazil as I had a connection within my graduate

20 Research travel funds were awarded through the MITACS scholarship, but they were not accepted, as I was unable to travel to Brazil due to the complications associated with the Zika Virus. Dr. Branco Fraga and the POLIFES team graciously conducted the interviews in Porto Alegre in my absence. Procedures, logistics and results were discussed in length over SKYPE meetings with the entire POLIFES team several times over the course of this study.

department to Dr. Branco Fraga at UFRGS. I was granted access to the resources at UFRGS and the two urban high schools in Porto Alegre through this important connection. This was an integral component of the study, as Dr. Branco Fraga and his POLIFES team graciously gained ethical clearance and conducted interviews in Porto Alegre on my behalf. Throughout the course of data collection, I had regular Skype meetings with Dr. Branco Fraga and the POLIFES team. These regular meetings were integral to the development of professional connections and clarifying research and interview questions as data collection commenced.

Dr. Branco Fraga and his team have continued to strengthen the relationship between UFRGS and the University of Toronto. Dr. Branco Fraga spent this past year (2017-2018) in Toronto working closely with the sociocultural department in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education. During this time, we were able to meet in person and discuss study results and strengthen our professional connection. Having this close access to Dr. Branco Fraga and the POLIFES team allowed me to gain institutional knowledge about conducting research in Porto Alegre, have regular check ins with the team about the interview process, and, most importantly, it allowed me access into two urban schools in Porto Alegre.

These interviews occurred in two urban high schools in Porto Alegre and two urban high schools in Toronto with young women, 14 -18 years of years. I chose the 14-18 years of age range as it represents a time in the lives of young women when they are beginning to fully form their sense of identity as young adults while simultaneously attempting to navigate the huge amount of information available about their bodies in modern society (Burrows & Wright, 2007). In Toronto, Canada, I conducted 20 interviews with 14-18 year-old youth in two Toronto high schools. These interviews took place at the schools either during the students’ lunch hour or after school hours.

To keep data collection congruent between the two countries, regular Skype meetings were held between Dr. Branco Fraga, the POLIFES research team and myself from September 2016 to September 2017. One full team meeting involved both international co-supervisors, the POLIFES research team and myself (May, 2016). During these meetings, I explained in detail 67

the recruitment process, consent/assent process, interview questions, and follow-up/transcription of the data. As mentioned, the population of young women interviewed in Toronto was quite racially and culturally diverse yet, because all students were fluent in English, interviews were conducted in English. In Porto Alegre, research assistants from POLIFES conducted interviews in Portuguese.

All school boards involved in this study granted ethical approval for interviews (see Appendices E, F, and G). In Toronto and Porto Alegre, principals at all four high schools gave signed permission for interviews to occur with young women in their respective schools. Once this permission was obtained, researchers in Toronto and Porto Alegre visited HPE classes and used an oral recruitment speech (Appendix D) to recruit students. If students were interested, they were asked to take an information and consent/assent form for their parents and an information and consent/assent form for themselves. The researcher collected student emails and followed up for interview times with students via email. Many students were interested in the study and volunteered to be interviewed. In total, 40 students were interviewed for this study: 20 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and 20 in Toronto, Canada.

The schools recruited for this study were composed of a relatively racially, culturally and socioeconomically diverse group of youth. This was done intentionally in an attempt to capture the diverse populations of young women in both Toronto and Porto Alegre. The selection criterion for this study was that students were currently enrolled in physical education in their schools. In Porto Alegre, as mentioned, participants were recruited through organizations and universities already involved in qualitative research with youth in select schools. Under the guidance of Dr. Alex Branco Fraga,21 my project contributes valuable data to the UFRGS research group POLIFES (Training Policies for Physical Education and Health), a research cell

21 Margaret MacNeill successfully nominated Dr. Branco Fraga to become a non-voting committee member on EXS PhD supervisory committee. He has also been awarded “Status Appointment” by SGS and served as the international field-supervisor. During the analysis stage, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, which has enabled a significant amount of fact and translation checking.

linked to the Faculty of Physical Education of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). The POLIFES group has already done work with selected participants.22

All research participants, school principals, and parental guardians were provided with information letters as well as parental and participant consent forms (see Appendices A and B). These forms contained an outline of the study goals and objectives as well as thorough details about the content and time commitment of the semi structured interviews. Students and parents were informed that no part of the research project would have an effect on grades or course work in HPE class and that participants would have the option to voluntarily withdraw from the study at any point in the process. Students and parents were informed that they could choose to not answer any of the questions asked during any part of the semi structured interview. No students decided to withdraw from this study in Toronto or Porto Alegre. In addition, it was communicated that student names would be replaced with pseudonyms to protect student confidentiality in any publications of the study. Permission and information forms contain contact information for my supervisor, Margaret MacNeill and I should students, guardians, teachers, or administrators have any questions pertaining to the study and their youth’s participation in the data collection process.

3.6 Photo-Elicitation Photo-elicitation is a participatory visual research method that uses images as a stimulus for talk. This method is especially useful for data collection with youth because limited adult intervention is needed as participants engage with everyday experiences (Plowman & Stevenson, 2012). The young women taking part in this study were asked to bring a photo (or retrieve one from their phone) that they believed represented the ‘fit’ female body. This was useful as choosing a photo provided a moment in the interview setting for girls to take the lead and co-construct meaning with the interviewers. This point is especially imperative in

22 To keep consistency with methods and to clarify any discrepancies that surfaced during the course of the interviews, regular Skype meetings were conducted between the POLIFES team and myself. 69

two very diverse research setting such as Toronto and Porto Alegre. Often meaning can get lost in translation, as I discuss earlier in this chapter. Tasking the young women in this study with discussing an image helped to break down these language and cultural barriers in responses.

Leonard and Knight (2015) note that using photographs as prompts for young people allowed for more flexibility than semi-structured interview questions and may have stimulated memories that led to a wider dialogue. By releasing some of this structure and handing it over to the young people through their selection of an image, this participatory approach proved useful for doing this cross-cultural work (Harris & Sunderland, 2012). Photographs that students selected were not included in Chapter Five as it was not possible to obtain permission from all of the media sources that students referenced. Including these images would have presented copyright violation in Canada and Brazil.

3.6 Semi Structured Interviews The young women participating in this study took part in one, semi structured interview that lasted approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour in length (see Appendix D). Students were given the option of interviewing on their own or bringing a ‘buddy’ along to generate discussion in a triad or ‘friendship’ interview. One quarter of the interviews consisted of these triad interviews. These interviews were often useful in that students would play off of one another’s responses and end up in rich conversation with one another on various topics related to the questions asked.

The questions asked were broad to avoid leading student responses that might skew results in the favour of the researcher’s theoretical assumptions. The schools recruited for the study each provided private classroom or library spaces for the interviews to be conducted. This ensured student responses were kept confidential and that the space was safe for students to share insight and opinions on sensitive subject matter. At the conclusion of the interview, students were asked if they wanted to share anything in addition to the questions asked and were given the

opportunity to make further suggestions that may not have been covered in the interview. Students were given a healthy snack at the conclusion of the interview.

3.7 Treatment of the Data For the interviews conducted in Toronto, I transcribed all interviews in their entirety to engage deeply with student responses, tones, and personal styles of communication. I used inductive coding for this activity, noting surprises that arose in the student responses. I then created themes, that emerged based on student responses and colour coded each student response into the thematic categories I created. As I had conducted a literature review, and bring my own experiences, practices and beliefs to this data set, these themes were, admittedly, explored through deductive coding. As I went through the interviews, themes emerged and grew and some were eliminated and amalgamated into other categories. For example, ‘anxiety to perform’ and ‘participation as functionality’ were folded into consequences of healthism.

In total, seven themes emerged from the interviews, including missing discourses of desire in HPE, healthism in Toronto and Porto Alegre HPE experiences, the masking of healthism through ‘moderation,’ the gendering of the body in media, cultural and racial representations in the media and self-acceptance and intrinsic joy in Brazilian HPE. These six themes were separated into separate documents, and responses were then sorted into subcategories and clusters for specific writing purposes.

3.8 Conclusions This chapter has explored the key methodological assumptions and methods employed during this project while also considering reflexive issues that emerge in cross-cultural research. A complex interplay between the structures that guide young women’s embodied perceptions of gender and race is assumed. Feminist poststructural theory assists in denaturalizing these dichotomous performances of gender that are embedded in the structures that instruct young women and provides a useful platform for alternative deconstructions. Moving beyond the essentializing nature of girl or boy in binary assumptions embedded in

policy and everyday beliefs, to recognize and give voice to the ‘other,’ is important for a thorough analysis into the diverse demographics of the cross-cultural communities in Toronto and Porto Alegre.

As mentioned previously, one of the fundamental tenets of feminist theory is the affordance of agency and giving voice to the marginalized ‘other’ within the structures that shape their lives. Participating in semi structured interviews has provided young women with an opportunity to exercise agency within the confines of the school system. This study contributes to feminist theory through the utilization of these fields in cross-cultural HPE research. This study generated a substantial amount of insightful data from the young women taking part in this study, and these theoretical foundations will guide the presentation of their beliefs, opinions, and embodied entities in HPE and beyond.

CHAPTER FOUR CROSS-CULTURAL POLICY ANALYSIS

This chapter provides a critical policy analysis (CPA) and more specifically, a critical feminist discourse analysis (CFDA) of The Ontario Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (1999, 2015) in Canada and The Parametros Curruculares Nacionais (PCN; 1997) in Brazil. In Canada, curriculum is developed and implemented at the provincial level. As part of this study took place in Ontario involving youth residing in the Greater Toronto Area, documents from Ontario are the focus of analysis for the Canadian context. The interviews with youth in Brazil took place in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande Do Sul, conducted by POLIFES graduate students in the Department of Physical Education at UFRGS and analysis of policy has focused on Brazil’s guiding national document, the PCN, which provinces modify and implement according to their regional needs.

Doing critical policy work on a transnational scale is important in the current global climate. Education has become a national focus in many countries (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010), yet continues to be a provincial responsibility in Ontario. Across developed nations, there has been a tightening of control by governments over schools, parents, students, and educators through policy reform and public health initiatives in recent decades in a neoliberal attempt to produce the ‘healthy’ citizen (Diem, Young, Welton, Cummings, & Lee, 2014). At the same time, many policy researchers have turned to critical analyses after becoming dissatisfied with traditional positivist frameworks Diem, et al., (2014) argue that the developments in critical education policy studies are a response to this increased “economy of control” in education that represent an important shift in the field (p. 1069).

A critical analysis of education policy provides a foundation for navigating the messy and complex work of deconstructing HPE curriculum on a transnational scale. In this chapter, I explore how knowledge and power get distributed within these policies, how educational policy (re)produces stratified social relations, and how the HPE classroom politically institutionalizes young women. This last point gets taken up in greater detail in the data 73

analysis portion of this dissertation. This chapter begins with a brief history of policy analysis and shifts towards a CDA and CFDA to locate current practices that assist in deconstructing complex systems of power in local and global education systems. This is followed by an application of the framework through a deconstruction of HPE policy in Canada (Ontario) and Brazil. Attention is paid to the lack of pleasure in HPE curriculum with respect to sexuality and pleasure-seeking in physical fitness. I conclude with an exploration into the possibilities for reform and agency-giving meaning in HPE. This provides a bridge to the data analysis chapter that takes up, in detail, several key themes that emerged through student voice.

A brief history of the policy analysis field is helpful for illuminating the divergences of CPA, CDA, and CFDA from traditional policy analysis approaches. I also briefly reengage with the critical social theory that guides this CDA; namely, an extension of feminist poststructural theory discussed in Chapter Four, explored more specifically through the theoretical approach of CFDA. It must be noted that critical theories are constantly changing and evolving and “attempt to avoid too much specificity since there is room for disagreement among critical theorists” (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2005). This study embraces the critical frameworks and theories that navigate the ever-changing field of educational policy research and the uneven path of conducting such research. Strong theoretical lines of analysis are avoided, as the nature of this research requires flexibility and openness to navigate the complex set of documents presented.

4.1 History of Policy Analysis in Education Diem, et al. (2014) identify several pillars of traditional policy analyses. First, traditional policy researchers tend to view educational change and reform as a deliberate process that is both planned and managed (Rist, 1994). Reform, then, is broadly implemented as analysis in a process composed of steps that include problem definitions, goal setting, policy alternative identification, policy selection, implementation, and evaluation (Weimer & Vining, 2011). If these steps are followed precisely under the traditional model, policy can be modified and adapted according to new agendas. This approach, however, does not take into account how 74

policy venues are interconnected, multidimensional, and adjusted based on tensions between governments and the public. This point is illuminated through the tumultuous history of sexuality education in Canada and Brazil in Chapter Two.

The second pillar made in traditional policy analysis is that goals drive action; that is, this approach assumes that goal-driven behaviour is understood as the substance of rationality (Elster, 1986). It is assumed that analysis, then, can predict this rational, goal-driven behaviour with a high degree of confidence (Elster, 1986). The third pillar is that knowledge for identifying policy solutions is obtainable and capable of being expressed to others (Dunn, 1994). These pillars of traditional policy analysis are scientific and carried out by the expert researcher who uses theoretical frameworks in an attempt to foster effective change (Diem, et al., 2014, p. 1017). This traditional approach is positivist in nature and assumes the researcher as the all-knowing, central entity in the analysis process.

In recent decades, many policy scholars have provided opposition to this scientific approach to analysis. Within the educational policy analysis field, researchers have introduced a wide range of critical perspectives in response to the regimented frameworks of more traditional approaches. In the late 1980s, many policy analysts embraced a model of research that established “procedural policy that would enable the inclusion of oppressed groups” (Prunty, 1985, p. 135) and the decentralizing of the researcher as the all-knowing knowledge producer. These groups included those most silenced by dominant bodies of knowledge in society, including ethnic and racial minorities, those of lower socioeconomic status, and women/girls. During this foundational phase of critical policy analysis, researchers were attempting to explain how policy affected the lives of these marginalized groups in a society. Prunty (1985) reminds us that the critical policy analyst must be aware of the various approaches to achieving this objective and work with these approaches to expose sources of control, domination, and exploitation that are embedded in educational policy.

Achieving a sound critical analysis must serve the needs of the subaltern voice that has been silenced by the actions and words of a powerful group. This approach places policy within 75

the political realm and assumes power is central to properly unhinging dominant discourses within these policies. To achieve such an analysis, Ball (1994) suggests a pragmatic “tool box” of analysis that is shaped, but not determined by the methodology. More recently, critical policy researchers have attempted to offer insight and understanding of the complexity and contextuality of policy-making practices within larger discursive practices in education (Taylor, 1997). CDA achieves this goal by exploring the historical and political dimensions of exclusion that shape current policy practice. CFDA undertakes this agenda within the poststructural feminist field and offers possibilities for locating policy analysis within the new feminist project.

4.2 Conceptual Framework for Cross-Cultural Critical Policy Analysis This dissertation explores the concept that policy is a representation of text, action, or words and deeds; “it is what is enacted as well as what is intended … it is an economy of power, and a set of technologies and practices which are realized and struggled over in local (and global) settings” (Ball, 1994, p. 10). This power gets exercised in educational policy through testing, governance, and curriculum; it is an all-encompassing term that takes into consideration the multifaceted and far-reaching influences that such documents possess in the school. A common theme in scholarly definitions of policy is the distribution of values within a society or more specifically the “authoritative allocation of values” (Easton, 1953). Locating these dominant values in society, and how power shapes and controls these values forms the central pillar of analysis for this chapter. These concepts weave together policy analyses with poststructural and feminist constructions of dominant and heteronormative discourses delivered through policy.

Some questions to be considered regarding the concept of values and power in HPE policy include: Who owns these values? How is power enacted and actualized within value systems? What values are silenced and which are championed by governments in a given time in history, and why? Answering such questions requires the analysts to observe schools as sites of cultural production that is complex, unstable, and changing over time. In Chapter Two, I alluded to this theme of values that constitute wider discourses of control and power 76

when I traced the intimate connections of curriculum policy by government within the history of HPE policy in Canada and Brazil. Giroux (1990) stresses,

the importance of linking educational reform to the needs of big business (government) that has continued to influence the debate, while demands that schools provide the skills necessary for domestic production and expanding capital abroad have slowly given way to an overriding emphasis on schools as sites of cultural production. (p. 24)

Women’ and girls are the specific focus in this policy analysis. Chapter Five provides voice to young women through semi structured interviews while also recognizing the reflexive lens through which I present these data. When discussing the distribution of power with respect to educational policy, the unit of analysis is the policy itself, the site of implementation or who gets what, when, and how (Ingham, 2005). Beyond deconstructing the HPE policies, this chapter also explores another important tenet of CPA that being social stratification, or the broader effect curricula have on relationships of privilege and inequality (Ingham, 2005). The following section takes up the conceptual frameworks and guidelines for CPA, CDA, and CDFA. I then provide an application of these frameworks to tease apart dominant conceptions of sexuality, fitness, and gender in Canadian and Brazilian education policy, how they have been challenged, resisted and re-enacted by young women, and how heteronormative discourses remain in place today.

Doing critical policy analysis is a messy and complex endeavour. It is for this reason that multiple theoretical approaches are introduced in the literature review of this dissertation and why each approach must be utilized here to do this complex “policy-sociology” (Ball, 1993). The complexity and scope of policy analysis, especially in a cross-cultural context, is best deconstructed through poststructural theories that recognize the local and global complexities of schooled bodies. Ball (1993) reminds us “it is important to bring together structural, macro-level analysis of education systems and education policies and micro-level

investigation, especially that which takes account of people’s perceptions and experiences” (p. 359). Critical discourse analysis can assist with this project.

4.3 - Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) CDA provides an extension of CPA into the field of language, power, and domination in HPE policy. It assists in providing insight into how language and values work in policy, rhetoric, and talk (Fairlough, 2008; Taylor, 1997). Critical policy researchers have increasingly utilized CDA as a valuable tool to deconstruct values and power in educational settings (Bacchi, 2009; Ball, 1993; Taylor, 1997). CDA is a “theory of and methodology for analysis of discourse understood as an element or ‘moment’ of the political, political- economic and more generally social which is dialectically related to other elements/moments” (Fairclough, 2010, p. 178). CDA has been utilized by scholars as both an approach and a lens. As an approach, the technique provides a conceptual framework through which to study discourses in policy (Fairclough, 1995). As a lens, it provides a sound methodological approach to interpret and analyze social and political domination in written text. For this project, then, CDA provides both a lens and an approach to unearth dominant discourses in HPE policy and practice.

CDA is situated within transdisciplinary critical social theory and lends itself well to collaboration with a number of theoretical frameworks. Fairclough (1995) reminds us that CDA brings the critical tradition in social analysis into the study of language (discourse) and the relations between language and power. It is a “normative critique: it does not simply describe existing realities but also evaluates them, assesses the extent to which they match up to values that are taken (contentiously) to be fundamental for just or decent societies” (Fairclough, 2010, p. 178). CDA seeks to explain rather than describe existing realities through analyzing the structures that produce and influence policies and agendas in education.

CDA is powerful tool for analysis because it contributes a “point of entry” into transdisciplinary critical social analysis (Fairclough, 2010).23 Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) assert that “discourses are ways of construing aspects of the world (physical, social or mental), which can generally be identified with different positions or perspectives of different groups of social actors” (p. 389). For analysis purposes, CDA forms the foundation for more specific theorizations of gender, sexuality and race explored through CFDA.

4.4 - Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) Feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) is a perspective that

seeks to examine the complex, subtle, and sometimes not so subtle ways in which frequently taken for granted gendered assumptions and power asymmetries get discursively produced, sustained, negotiated and contested in specific communities and discourse contexts. (Lazar, 2014, p. 183)

This study borrows from FCDA the argument that gendered, racialized, and sexualized discourses must be challenged and bring into question entrenched social narratives that work towards a “closure of possibilities” for young women (Lazar, 2014, p. 183). FCDA is a fitting perspective to guide this policy analysis because it has been developed and implemented at the intersection of CDA and feminist studies, both fields guided by goals of transformation (Lazar, 2014, p. 184). FCDA, in conjunction with the analytical 'tools’ of CDA, has the possibility of producing powerful insight into the complexities of HPE curriculum.

Lazar (2014) warns that there is more to FCDA then simply applying a feminist lens to a CDA framework of gender. FCDA is fundamentally guided by critical feminist theory and the “feminist political imagination” (Bell, 1999) derived from Mills classic 1959 text, The Sociological Imagination. Mills aim was to provide a connection between individual

experience and social relations and “translate private troubles into public issues” (Mills, 1959, p. 187). A feminist version of Mills’ aim is that “the personal is political”. This phrase is central to the feminist imagination and represents the theorization of a political struggle for social change (Lazar, 2014, p. 183). Within this framework gender becomes a radical issue that requires feminist critique of dominant discourses.

Previous feminist scholars (Alvesson & Billing, 2009; Ehrlich, Meyerhoff, & Holmes, 2014) have argued that dominant societal narratives of the body display “gender undersensitivity” with respect to women and girls. More recently, there has been a renewed cautiousness towards what has been branded as “gender oversensitivity,” or a reading into gender at every situation, when other aspects of one’s identity might be more theoretically important. Lazar (2014) warns that feminist scholars might be creating a new form of gender insensitivity if we are to ignore the multiple dimensions of one’s identity, especially in a global, multicultural context. This interdisciplinarity of FCDA places it in the position to “undertake analyses of discursive enactments of structural dominations (the type CDA is well known for), as much as analyses of discursive strategies of negotiation, resistance, solidarity, and social empowerment of disenfranchised women” (Lazar, 2014, p. 183). The eclectic nature of FCDA, therefore, allows multiple feminist perspectives to be taken up in conjunction with Foucault’s formulations of discourse that recognize the multiplicity of girls’ identities and the diversity among young women across diverse cultural settings. This characteristic of FCDA also creates a space to utilize the concept of biopedagogies in the deconstruction of policy.

Similar to CDA, FCDA recognizes social practices as constituted and reflected by discourse (Fairclough, 1999). This field takes this idea further, however, and locates the notion that social practices are deeply gendered and never “neutral” (Lazar, 2014, p. 185). HPE policy is not outside of these normalized gendered practices; thus, this chapter reveals several discourses that are normalized in policy and curriculum regarding young women’s constructions of the fit and healthy body. Feminist scholars take up these gendered discourses through deconstructing patriarchal structures of control that shape how we think and act as ‘boy’ or ‘girl.’ 80

Feminist scholar Bell hooks remind us that discourses delivered about dominant gendered practices must be confronted through an “openness of conviction” when forming movements of resistance (hooks, 1984). FCDA can assist in this task as it allows researchers to expose the intricacies of power and ideology that maintain specific concepts of gender (Lazar, 2014, p. 184). This type of work assists in organizing communities of analytical activism and resistance in the academic community (Lazar, 2014, p. 184). Teaching young women about concealed gendered and racialized concepts in policy and media is a tricky endeavor.

The following section provides a brief overview of the organization and delivery of the Ontario and Brazilian HPE documents. The analysis of Ontario policy includes the 1999 and 2015 documents to observe dominant trends of gender and sex over the past 15 years. This is followed by a critical feminist discourse analysis (FCDA) of the Parametros Curriculares Nacionais (PCN) from Brazil that offers comparisons and divergences in the political and social implications of these Canadian and Brazilian policies.

4.5 – Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum: An Overview Ontario’s 1999 HPE curriculum documents consist of four “strands:” physical activity, active living, healthy living, and living skills. The 2015 HPE curriculum contains four similarly labeled strands, including: (a) living skills, (b) active living, (c) movement competence, and (d) healthy living. Specific expectations are set out for each learning strand. Generally, physical activity strands encourage students to “participate in a wide variety of sport and physical activities and develop movement proficiency necessary to enjoy life fully” (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1999, p. 6). “Healthy living” goals help students develop the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions relating to mental health, healthy growth, sexuality, and personal safety and injury prevention. Media awareness and the development of healthy body image strategies are mentioned briefly in the curriculum expectations, though the overall focus is on maintaining healthy eating habits and personal choice, balancing activity and nutritional choices.

In 2010, the Ontario HPE curriculum was revised to include “health and media literacy.” Individuals who are physically literate

move with competence in a wide variety of physical activities that benefit the development of the whole person and consistently develop the motivation and ability to understand, and analyze different forms of movement … that enable individuals to make healthy active choices throughout their life span that are beneficial to and respectful of themselves, others and their environments (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 2010, p. 6).

Health literacy involves the “skills needed to get, understand and use information to make good decisions for health” (Ontario Ministry of Education and training, 2010, p. 6).

The Canadian Public Health Association defines health literacy as the “ability to access, understand, evaluate and communicate information as a way to promote, maintain and improve health in a variety of settings across the life-course” (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 2010, p. 6). The inclusion of health and media literacy in the updated HPE curriculum provides the most recent example of pressures to conduct self-surveillance: that is, placing the onus of “health” on young people, negating the more complex intersections of gender, class, and race contributing to the complex puzzle of their health and well-being. “Doing” physical activity in the name of health literacy involves the notion that exercise is needed to improve fitness that is in turn needed to improve health and that all bodies are similar in how they respond to or do physical education (Gard, 2011, p. 44).

Figure 2 provides a comparative selection of overall and specific expectations taken from the grade 9 section of each document. The grade 9 document is the focus for this analysis, because in Ontario students are required to take physical education to the grade 9 level. Many students interviewed in this study were either currently in grade 9 HPE, or if older, had only taken PE

once.24 The introduction of physical and health literacy to 1999 HPE documents and their renewal in the 2015 policy is analyzed in this dissertation for gendered, racialized and healthist rhetoric and underlying sources of control and power at the political level.

Physical literacy goals expect young people to move with competence in a variety of physical activities. They are expected to develop the ability and motivation to understand and analyze different forms of movement that enable them to make healthy active choices throughout their life span that are beneficial to and respectful of themselves. Health literacy is the skills needed to understand and use information at hand to make positive and good decisions for health. This concept of health is represented through a narrow lens of personal responsibility that does not include external social determinants of health (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 6). Factors such as sociodemographic status, race, culture, amongst others, must be included beyond making “decisions for health.” Figure 1, a Comparison of Grade 9 HPE Strands, provides a comparative chart of the changes and similarities between the 1999 and 2015 Ontario HPE documents.

24 Students in Ontario are required to take at least one HPE credit in high school. If this credit in not taken in their grade 9 year, they must fulfill the requirement in grade 10-12.

Strands – Grade 9 Comparative Chart

Healthy Living (Healthy Growth & Movement Competence (2015), Active Living Living Skills (Making Healthy Choices Sexuality)** (1999) (Healthy Living) (2015 Curriculum) ** 1999 Overall Expectations: Overall Expectation: Overall Expectation: Explaining the consequences of Demonstrate personal competence in applying Use appropriate decision-making skills to achieve sexual Decisions on the individual, movement skills and principles goals related to personal health family and community and identifying strategies to Specific Expectation: Minimize potentially dangerous Specific Expectation: Demonstrate understanding of personal values situations Participate regularly in physical activities, that can lead to conflict choosing a wide range of activities Specific Expectation (human Use assertiveness techniques to avoid escalating development & sexual health): Demonstrate positive, responsible personal and conflict Describe the factors that lead social behavior to responsible sexual relationships

Describe methods of preventing pregnancy

Understand decision-making and assertiveness skills effectively to promote healthy sexuality 2015 Overall Expectations: Overall Expectations: Overall Expectations: Demonstrate the ability to apply health Perform movement skills, demonstrate Demonstrate personal and interpersonal skills and knowledge and living skills to make reasoned an understanding of the basic the use of critical and creative thinking processes decisions and take appropriate actions relating requirements of the skills and applying as they acquire knowledge to their personal health and well-being movement concepts as appropriate, as they engage in a variety of physical Specific Expectations: Specific Expectations: (human development activities Use self-awareness and self-monitoring and health): skills to help them understand their strengths Describe the relative effectiveness of various Specific Expectations: needs, recognize sources of stress, take methods of preventing unintended pregnancy Apply appropriate movement principles’ in responsibility for their actions, and monitor their or STI’s order to refine skills in a variety of own progress physical activities Demonstrate an understanding of factors that can influence a person’s understanding of their gender identity and sexual orientation

Apply their knowledge of sexual health and safety, including a strong understanding of the concept of consent and sexual limits and their decision-making skills to think in advance about their sexual health and sexuality

Figure 1. Comparison of Grade 9 HPE Strands

4.6 - The Ontario HPE Curriculum: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis As previously discussed, the PCN and Ontario HPE curricula will be analyzed through a feminist critical discourse analysis approach. FDCA allows for fluidity of movement between feminist constructions of the body and a sound framework to guide analysis through central themes of power and domination in policy. Specifically, FDCA is used for the following analysis to locate gender, race, sexuality, and the ‘fit’ body as culturally and socially produced concepts, shaped by policy and those who control policy. The following section will weave in themes inherent in poststructural feminism, discourse and biopedagogical analyses within the FCDA mode and the objectives of highlighting opportunities for emancipatory action for young people within the education system. The following section takes up biopedagogies of the “fit” and “healthy” body displayed in the Ontario HPE curriculum.

4.6.1 Biopedagogies of the Fit and Healthy Body

As discussed in Chapter Two, attention to biopedagogical philosophies, strategies and tactics of schooling of the body help us to understand how students in HPE are hailed to healthy biocitizen subject positions. The 1999 and 2015 Ontario HPE curriculum documents are replete with healthist language that place the onus for physical and sexual health on individual students. Healthist biopedagogies are deeply rooted in subtle, gendered discourses that aim to control the population through the life-giving meanings attributed to “good health.” North American governments wield this control through policy and public service platforms that appear to be assisting in good health of a nation through very regimented and exclusionary means. Placing responsibility on the individual to control one’s health and well- being, rather than acknowledging larger issues that contribute to ill health, elicits numerous negative consequences that will be discussed Chapter Five of this dissertation.

As noted in Figure 1, striking similarities of personal responsibility are encapsulated in overall and specific expectations in each Ontario document. With respect to physical fitness, in the 1999 document, students are expected to demonstrate “personal competence” in a 85

variety of movement skills. Similarly, the updated document requires students to apply “appropriate movement principles” in order to refine skills in physical activities and use “appropriate decision-making skills” to achieve goals for personal health. The language embedded within these objectives demonstrates a wider neo-liberal project of self-making that assumes free choice, yet, it places personal responsibility upon the student to become a particular kind of healthy girl. The language embedded in the 1999 curriculum and reaffirmed in the 2015 HPE document represents the most recent form of surveillance and healthism in HPE in Ontario instructing young people on how to be(come) “healthy,” contributing biocitizens.

The most recent display of Gastaldo’s surveillance medicine that has been translated into Ontario HPE policies are the concepts of health and physical literacy. These literacies were introduced into Ontario HPE curriculum in 1999 with a continued focus in the 2015 document. Individuals who are physically literate within both HPE policies “move with competence and confidence in a wide variety of physical activities in multiple environments that benefit the healthy development of the whole person” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 9). Health literacy ‘involves the skills needed to get, understand, and use information to “make good decisions for health” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 9). This definition proves too simplistic to invoke real change and take into account the social determinants of health on a more critical level. In relation to surveillance medicine, health literacy locates the responsibility of ‘good health’ with the individual in a risk culture where the healthy person can be even healthier through developing their own physical literacies to better understand health through life. Don Nutbeam’s (2000) work is useful in complicating and deepening health and physical literacy delivered in education.

Nutbeam (2000) differentiates between basic functional health literacy (included in Ontario HPE policy), communicative interactive health literacy, and critical health literacy. It is this last type of health literacy that Nutbeam differentiates as possessing the skill and cognitive development outcomes that contribute to effective social and political, and individual action. Critical health literacy is defined as “more advanced cognitive skills which, together with social 86

skills, can be applied to critically analyse information, and use this information to exert greater control over life events and situations” (Nutbeam, 2000, p. 264). At present, Ontario HPE documents function at the basic functional health literacy level.

If health literacy within Ontario policy is the skills needed to get, understand, and use health information, then critical health literacy is “potentially a higher order process that could be developed through education to critically appraise information relevant to health” (Sykes, Wills & Popple, 2013, p. 4). This critical appraisal of health has potential for empowerment with its focus on community capacity to influence social and economic determinants of health. Examining health literacy through this critical capacity allows students to be involved in real decision-making processes for health, participate in critical dialogue and become aware of health issues in a given community (Sykes, et al., 2013, p. 5).

The rationale for physical literacy in academia has origins in the struggle to recognize the embodied existence of individuals in the processes of physical activity, health, and fitness. The manipulation of embodied realities through policy has the potential to create an alienation of students from their own bodies. This may elicit negative consequences, such as obesity or increased sexual activity (Connell, 2005). In the past, proponents of physical literacy argued responsibility for developing embodied potential rests primarily with practitioners in the field of physical education.

Physical literacy scholars (Sykes, et al., 2013) now recognize the embodied potential of individuals to take control of their own physical destiny and begin to make good decisions for their own health and well-being through providing individuals with the tools to develop their own physical competencies. While this endeavor is an important contribution to physical education policy, particularly with respect to the call for the development of intrinsic motivation, a healthist rhetoric begins to diffuse into these embodied realities. The onus moves off teacher, parent, and society and onto the young person to “make good decision for their health” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 9).

Thus, a recent shift in Ontario has occurred towards the self-surveillance of students with respect to their sexual and physical well-being. This shift is concealed within the power-giving definitions of health and physical literacy within Ontario’s HPE curriculum. Within the biopower mode, the individual figures prominently in the control of the health of the whole population. To be a good citizen means to control your body in a variety of ways and this control differs based on one’s gender. These biopedagogies focused on individual control are explored next through an examination of Michelle Fine’s work surrounding themes of victimization and consent, drawn from her research in the American education system and applied to Ontario HPE policy.

This dissertation extends the study of biopedagogy work into the study of sexuality education, gathering an all-encompassing perspective on the forces that control young women’s physical, social, and sexual selves. Although Fine’s work is grounded in an American context of the 1980s, her critique can be applied to analyze the language of HPE policy in Ontario.

4.6.2 Biopedagogies of the Sexual Self

Biopedagogies of the “healthy body” articulated in the Ontario 1999 and 2015 HPE documents not only instruct young women on how to be(come) healthy bio (sexual) citizens, but also explicitly instruct on how they should monitor their sexual health. These biopedagogies are deeply gendered and intertwined with the concept of the “healthy body” to create a regimented dialogue about how young people should look, behave, and monitor themselves, creating a “cult of the body” (Gard & Wright, 2001) that extends beyond healthism into sexual health.

As discussed, previous biopedagogy research in the critical obesity and physical cultural studies field, have pointed to a normative body weight achieved by monitoring diet and exercise in the creation of the virtuous biocitizen. This research adds onto biopedagogies grounded in the moral imperative for young women to monitor their sexual and reproductive health. These latter narratives are deeply embedded in both formal and informal policy in

Ontario HPE and are intertwined to create an overarching and highly structured set of parameters that define acceptable and unacceptable embodied practices for young women. The remainder of this analysis will explore these parameters through the concepts of victimization and consent in Ontario HPE policy.

Fine (1988) traces the narratives of victimization in sexuality education, particularly those targeted at young women. She argues that girls have been expected to learn about their “vulnerability to male predators and the subsequent need to defend themselves against disease, pregnancy and “being used’” (p. 6). To avoid being victimized, females are expected to learn to defend themselves against pregnancy and disease (Fine, 1988, p. 32). Historically, North American sexuality curriculum has been focused on “saying no,” practicing abstinence, listing possible diseases contracted from sexual encounters, and enumerating the emotional and social risks of sexual intimacy (Fine, 1988, p. 32).

Biopedagogies of victimization remove sexual subjectivity, and the effort invested in such conversations diverts attention away from “structures, arrangements, and relationships that oppress women in general, and low-income women and women of colour in particular” (Lorde, 1980). The outcome of victimization is the adult woman assuming a sort of “dual consciousness – at once taken with the excitement of actual/anticipated sexuality and consumed with anxiety and worry” (Fine, 1988, p. 35). While too few safe spaces exist for adolescent girls’ exploration of sexual subjectivity, there are all too many dangerous spots for their exploitation. This dual consciousness Fine speaks of has become exacerbated in recent years as students grapple with the over sexualisation of females in the media.

The 1999 and 2015 Ontario HPE curriculum documents are replete with biopedagogical commands that assume female victimization and demand, to apply Connell’s argument, a “compulsory heterosexuality … [where] sexual health is grounded in personal morality and danger, while discourses of desire are often negated” (2005, p. 255). The 1999 HPE document reflects these discourses of victimization in discussions of abstinence or the “conscious decision to refrain from sexual intercourse” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 89

1999, p. 11). In grade 9 for example, students are expected to “describe the relative effectiveness of methods of preventing pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases [STDs] (e.g. abstinence, condoms, oral contraception),” “describe factors that lead to responsible sexual relationships,” and “explain the consequences of sexual decisions on the individual, family and community and “identify strategies to minimize potentially dangerous situations” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 1999, p. 11). Beyond the pathologized language of risk and danger, these objectives make no reference to desire and no reference to young women’s own highly individualized, embodied, and always messy sexual subjectivities.

In the 2015 HPE policy, sexual pleasure, such as female orgasm, or pleasure-seeking in a committed relationship, are again rendered invisible and are replaced by discussions of the dangers associated with becoming sexually active. Risk-taking behaviours are taken up in the objective where students learn to “apply their knowledge of sexual health and safety, including a strong understanding of the concept of consent and sexual limits, and their decision-making skills to think in advance about their sexual health and sexuality” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 107).

Teaching young people about consent is a relatively new concept in formal school-based sexuality education in Ontario. The inclusion of consent in the 2015 HPE policy is credited to two young women, Lia Valente and Tessa Hill. The students created a 20-minute documentary on rape culture as part of a media studies program in 2015 after their shock over Ontario’s 1998 HPE document’s lack of conversation about the topic. The students argued that omitting consent issues from the curriculum means kids “don’t respect their partner’s boundaries and they don’t know how to have safe sex” (CBC News, 2015). In December of 2015, they launched the We Give Consent campaign aiming to get consent made part of Ontario curriculum. Their petition to include consent in the curriculum received over 40,000 signatures and media attention across Canada (CBC News, 2015). Premier Wynne arranged a meeting to consult with the young people after hearing them on the CBC’s Metro Morning and informed them that the topic would be included in the 2015 curriculum.

These youth have been applauded for exercising agency within the education system. The framing of consent in the policy represents the most novel biopedagogy of personal responsibility and victimization as it assumes a female passivity and provides language that controls sexual interactions between young people. Yet this also places the onus directly upon students to control their sexual practices. Rather than giving voice to youth by constructing definitions of consent and pleasure in a reciprocal manner, the 2015 document assumes a basic definition that leaves no space for collaboration or discussion.

Fine and McClelland (2006) have explored the concept of consent through the ‘narrative of victimization’ long before it was discussed in mainstream North American education curriculum and in media. Based on a year-long ethnography in public schools in the United States, Fine (1988) previously argued that female adolescents have continued to be educated as though they were victims of sexual (male) desire and that consent has been organized around age and marital status; those women whom are older and married are the only consensual partners in a sexual relationship (p. 44). The result of such discourses is the robbing of sexual subjectivity and a safe space to discuss alternative sexual lifestyles for the school-aged person (Fine, 1988, p. 44). Over the past decade, understandings of sexual choice and consent have become more complex in detail; still, Fine’s arguments about the ‘missing discourse of desire’ and ‘sexual subjectivity’ are still relevant and important within North American educational contexts today.

Nonetheless, the introduction of explicit consent represents a positive movement for HPE curricula in Ontario. Young people are exposed at increasingly younger ages to highly sexualized images and sexual content far beyond their understanding and available 24/7 on the Internet, on their smartphones, and in the media. MediaSmarts, a non-profit charitable organization that focuses on digital and media literacy, released a document entitled Life Online. The national survey that informed this study was conducted in 2013 and included 5,436 Canadian youth. The survey found that 99% of Canadian youth have some kind of access to the Internet and that social media websites are accessed frequently for entertainment and contact with family and friends. Educating young people, even those in 91

elementary school, about consent is a vital endeavor, since it is sometimes not so clear. How these introductory conversations about consent have been introduced, however, proves too simplistic in nature and work to promote a persistent dialogue of sexuality and sexual pleasure as dangerous. The conversations of consent discussed in the 2015 PHE curriculum exemplify what Michelle Fine predicted some 25 years earlier as the path that school-based sexuality education would follow within a North American context. Stating that young people should have a “strong understanding of consent”, (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p.104) presents the concept within a narrative of victimization (primarily of girls) that may contribute to anxiety and fear.

Consent is discussed in the 2015 HPE document in a potential student response to the teacher prompt, “what can you to do protect yourself” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p.104). The potential response makes reference to the posting of sexualized online images where one must be “respectful online, respect others privacy, and avoid sharing or posting any images without consent” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p.104). A discourse of self-control and personal responsibility is being expressed in the language of protecting one’s self, avoidance of behaviors (posting sexualized images), and the respecting of one’s privacy. These discourses are also highly gendered in nature, as “selfies” or sexualized pictures are often sent by girls to boys; it is the girl that is again presented as a victim, instructed to avoid the dangers inherent in the posting of part of her (the victim’s) body to boys (the perpetrators) online. The negative consequences of posting sexual images feeds into discourses of protection and abstinence, exercised in previous sexuality policy and reiterated in conversations about consent in the updated curriculum.

Prior to the implementation of this document, Life Online reported large gendered differences in perceptions of online interactions between girls and boys. Girls found that there were more rules in place with respect to talking to strangers online, posting contact information, and getting together with someone they met online. They were also more likely to encounter rules about treating others with respect online and had greater parental control of their online usage

in comparison to boys. Though young people note these striking gendered differences in online behaviours, there is no mention of this in the curriculum. In the human development and sexuality section of the 2015 HPE policy, consent is discussed in greater detail, and it is included in the overall objective of the section (See Figure 1). Students will “apply their knowledge of sexual health and safety, including a strong understanding of the concept of consent and sexual limits, and their decision-making skills to think in advance about their sexual health and sexuality” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p.104). Consent is also discussed in a potential student response to a teacher prompt of “what should you keep in mind when making decisions about sexual activity?” The response,

Having a clear understanding of consent is important. When making decisions about sexual activity, both people need to say yes. Silence does not mean yes; only yes means yes. Consent needs to be on-going throughout the sexual activity.

Finally, when teachers ask what consent means to a student, another potential response is “it’s not just that neither partner has said no. It’s about both partners saying yes. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p.104). Language such as “personal consequences,” “high-risk behaviours” and “repercussions” suggests that personal responsibility is being placed on the young person to be ‘healthy’ by being responsible for maintaining a specific kind of sexual self, one that should remain wary of a myriad of risk factors and consequences of sexual activity. Within the biopower mode, awareness of these risks creates a biocitizen that is sexually aware of the dangers of unprotected sex and therefore, a contributing member of a healthy society. This renders pleasure invisible in biopedagogies of the sexualized teenage body that expects, albeit demands, abstinence, though this is not explicitly stated. The same language is displayed in the 2015 HPE document. The healthy living section of this document makes no reference to free-flowing conversation about pleasure, how to achieve pleasure, and what pleasure looks like and feels like in a committed and caring relationship.

Fine (1988) argues, “The language of self-control and self-respect reminds students that their sexual immorality breeds not only personal problems but community burdens” (p. 32). The tasks of the healthy biocitizen have diffused into the control and mediation of one’s sexual and reproductive behaviour in a form of self-surveillance presented in HPE policy and represented in the language discussed above. In the 2015 HPE documents, abstinence is presented as the most responsible choice; it represents self-control, trustworthiness, and self- esteem, all of which are deeply gendered, as it is only the female students who will lose their self-esteem (Connell, 2005, p. 259). Within the discourses of victimization and consent in the 1999 and 2015 HPE policies, there exists gendered, and de-sexualized language that serves the needs of government initiatives to maintain a generation of young people wary to the dangers inherent in unprotected sex outside of wedlock and outside of dominant heterosexual relationships. This leaves young persons devoid of agency in their own sexual journeys in this biopedagogy of control exercised on part of curriculum and policy writers.

The final section of this paper represents an awareness and call to readers to consider the capacity of young women to speak openly, explore and cocreate their own sexualities through locating and discussing what Fine (1988) calls the “missing discourse of desire.” Fine first traced this missing discourse of desire in U.S public schools in the 1980s, uncovering a “consequences” model of sexuality education. The result, she argued, was student’s inabilities to locate desire, pleasure of sexual entitlement in their lives. 20 years later, Fine and McLellan (2006) revisited missing discourses of desire in sexuality education. They found that the teaching ‘abstinence until marriage’ maintain missing discourses of desire and constrict the development of thick desire in young women.

The following section will provide an overview of the Brazilian Parametros Curriculares Nacionais (PCN) and will draw several interesting contrasts to the Ontario HPE curriculum that also became apparent in themes that developed from student responses. Most importantly, the PCN provide more exposure to sexuality and gender education and more inclusive definitions of health, sexuality, and gender.

4.7 The Parametros Curriculares Nacionais (PCN): An Overview and CFDA In 1996, the Secretary of Basic Education introduced the PCN into the Brazilian education system at all grade levels. Paulo Renaro Souza, the Minister of Education at the time, claimed that the policy was “indicating qualitative goals that would help the student confront the real work as a participative, thoughtful and autonomous citizen, knowledgeable about his rights and duties” (Betti, 1991, p. 239). The PCN overarching objectives were developed after consultation with specialists, mostly academics, in various fields of knowledge, including physical education. The parameters were to fulfill general and specific orientations in core subjects such as math, science, natural sciences, history, geography and art. There were also areas of the policy that covered “transversal themes,” including ethics, health, environment, sex education and cultural pluralism (Betti, 1991, p. 239). This document stressed the importance of the culture of the student and considered it a starting point in acquiring cultural and technical-scientific ideas.

The PCN guideline for physical education in Brazil includes objectives for participation, inclusion, coeducation, co-responsibility, and cooperation. Similar to the active participation strand in Ontario HPE policy, participation within the PCN involves

place[ing] oneself in a critical, responsible and constructive manner in the different social situations, using dialogue as a means to mediate conflicts and making group decisions which can be suggested by the students under the supervision of the teacher (PCN, 1996, p. 9).

Within the co-responsibility strand there are similar objectives to the healthy living strands in the 1999 and 2015 Ontario HPE curriculum. Within the co-responsibility strand, students are asked to “know our own body and care for it, valuing and adopting healthy eating habits and

doing physical activities as one of the basic aspects of quality life and act with responsibility in relation to one’s health and the groups health” (PCN, 1996, p. 9).

As discussed in Chapter Two, the PCN contain an elaborate section on gender and sexuality education that is to be taken up cross-curricularly. This marks a significant structural difference between the PCN and the Ontario documents. Sexuality and gender education at the high school level is delivered only in HPE classes in Ontario. As HPE is mandatory only until grade 9, young women age 14 -18 do not have access to gender and sexuality education if they have not registered for HPE in those years. Many Ontario high school students participating in this study chose to not take HPE past the mandatory grade nine credit.

The PCN recognizes the importance of these topics in high school curriculum and requires teachers to instruct them across all subjects and in all years. The policy connects transversal themes of “great sets of important and urgent social issues, which cannot be considered disciplines, but on the contrary, cross over the content of existing disciplines” (Costa & Magalhães, 2015, p. 470). Costa and Magalhães (2015) assert that issues such as ‘respecting others and the self’ and ‘sexual identity’ should be discussed in teaching of all disciplines with transdisciplinary exercised in the context of facing concrete social issues (p. 469). The issue, however, is that curriculum reform has not reached the classrooms of Brazil in the ways intended by the PCN.

Costa and Magalhães (2015) interviewed teachers to take a pulse on this issues in schools more recently. They found that the teachers taking part in their study felt as though they were controlled by a policy that they had no hand in creating. One teacher commented, “we have to show what we think because when we show ourselves we go against a system that’s making people, protagonists and educators, invisible…we can’t be more invisible than we are (Costa & Magalhães, 2015, p. 471). In addition to these teacher perspectives, the PCN are guiding documents, and states and cities have autonomy to pedagogy based on these guidelines, though it is not mandatory.

Betti (1991) argues that the majority of schools still practice a biological and behavioural approach to HPE that may not contain the emancipatory dialogue suggested by the PCN. In addition, some provinces have created and adopted curriculum that is an extension of the PCN. In Porto Alegre, where interviews took place, has its own set of curricular documents that guide HPE alongside the PCN. The PCN, then, was meant as a guiding document so that provinces could develop their own policy based on its principles.

The more recent PE policy in Rio Grande do Sul aims to address the body as in “culture and nature” simultaneously; thus, paying particular attention to the social and cultural constructs of the body, such as gender and cultural differences is essential to policy development (Betti, Knijnik, Venancio & Neto, 2015, p. 482). The conceptualization of the body as socially constructed is apparent in the newly developed PE curriculum in Porto Alegre (Betti, Knijnik, Venancio & Neto, 2015, p. 482). Betti, et al. (2015) have noted the challenges that an increasingly culturally diverse classroom poses for the field of HPE. They move beyond the concept of “the ‘disabled’ body and …constructs a culturally responsive teaching in which teachers are responsive to the cultural needs, interests, learning preferences and abilities of each student (Betti, Knijnik, Venancio & Neto, 2015, p. 482). Interestingly, this increased cultural diversity is echoed in Brazilian student responses in Chapter 5 as they take up the “changing face of Brazil’ in their responses to cultural diversity in the media. In addition, this new curriculum focuses attention away from older sport-focused models and towards the “principles of movement culture through its claims to develop autonomous citizens (Betti, Knijnik, Venancio & Neto, 2015, p. 482).

This research also explores the importance of social relationships amongst students in local geographic areas and within transnational cultural flows of meaning delivered in and through various media platforms. The Sao Paulo HPE curriculum, then, “stands as an example of a theoretical-methodological proposal that contributes to breaking down the limits of linearity, by explaining and making the connections between ‘body’, ‘movement’ and ‘culture’, ‘subject’ and ‘world’” (Betti, Knijnik, Venancio & Neto, 2015, p. 435). Betti, Knijnik,

Venancio & Neto (2015) succinctly summarize the overarching objectives of the Sao Paulo HPE curriculum through three recommended daily practices of HPE teachers: 1. Educating students for ethical and political dimensions: fostering the inter-relation between contents pertaining to PE and themes such as ‘leisure and work’, thereby providing incentive for the critical and autonomous manifestations of the movement culture;

2. Teaching in ways that consider students’ cultural diversity: diverse personal meanings must be taken into consideration, and even promoted in the sense of fostering criticism and autonomy given the homogenising cultural standards;

3. Enhancing students’ learning amidst the overwhelming presence of information and communication technologies, and all forms of social media: critical analysis of the different types of media therefore constitutes a key component in planning the pedagogical actions and contents of PE. The curriculum holds a critical view of the influence of the media on perception, attribution of value and the construction of manifestations of the movement culture.

These objectives, as mentioned, are taken up in student responses to their HPE experiences in Chapter 5 and will explored further.

4.8 Moving Forward: Suggestions for Future HPE Policy Development and Cross-Cultural Lessons Scholars have researched discourses of politicized pleasure in an attempt to evaluate sexual health education and to advocate for more effective sexuality education through the “pleasure project” (see, for example: Allen, 2005; Fine, 1988; Holland, Ramazanoglu, Scott, Sharpe &Thomson, 1992; Ingham, 2005). Arguments have centered on a more positive and holistic model of HPE that foregrounds the physical and emotional pleasure of sexual relationships and, in turn produces more equitable and inclusive outcomes for young people (Ingham,

2005). These scholars have voiced concerns about a “missing discourse of desire” in sexuality education and an avocation for the pleasure project in official health policy (Fine & McClelland, 2006; Tolman, 2002). Redressing the missing discourse of desire in Canadian and Brazilian HPE policy marks a starting point to begin more inclusive and mutually respectful conversations that take the onus off the individual and provide a forum to discuss a reciprocal definition of consent that includes students in the process of negotiating consent policy and education. Fine (1988) summarizes,

The absence of a discourse of desire, combined with a lack of analysis of the language of victimization, may actually inhibit the development of sexual subjectivity and responsibility in students. Those most ‘at risk’ of victimization through pregnancy, disease, violence, or harassment – all female students, low income females in particular, and non-heterosexual males … are those most likely to be victimized by the absence of a critical conversation in public schools …. Public schools constitute a sphere in which young women could be offered access to a language and experience of empowerment … “well educated’ young women could breathe life into positions of social critique and experience entitlement rather than victimization, autonomy rather than terror. (Fine, 1988, p. 49-50).

Jovchelovitch (2001) argues that when arenas for public conversation close, when spaces for dissent are infiltrated by surveillance or threats, and when the “fizz of dialogue” flattens, a sort of “natural cultural authority” takes hold and silences the masses (p. 289). The 2015 HPE policy, currently in place could be a result of such sentiments. The lack of open-ended discussion questions, the missing discourse of female pleasure, and the absence of determinants of health in sexuality objectives represent a cultural authority on the topics of sexuality education in Canada.

The determinants of health are included in the 2015 HPE curriculum, but they remain exclusively for considerations involving physical health. The introduction states that

such factors (income, education, gender and culture, physical and social environments, personal health practices) influence not only if a person is physically healthy but also the extent to which he or she will have the physical social and personal resources needed to cope and to identify and achieve personal aspirations. (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 6)

In terms of sexuality education in the 1999 HPE policy, the determinants of health are not considered, and a discourse of desire is absent. These oversights need to be addressed to contribute to curriculum policy that might allow for a more intersectional and embodied sexual subjectivity for young people regardless of class, race, gender, and sociodemographic status.

The language inherent in this introduction to social determinants of health is replete with neoliberal and healthist discourses grounded in personal responsibility as the young person is to achieve personal aspirations related to their healthy living goals. Providing students with an open forum to dissect and unravel their personal and embodied experiences regarding the social determinants of health would prove invaluable to their negotiations of identities in HPE class and beyond. The inclusion of the social determinants of health in the introduction of this curriculum does not indicate a thorough commitment on the part of the Ministry of Education to take up more nuanced perspectives of health and fitness. Young people rarely get opportunities to discuss pleasure and desire in open and safe forums that schools can potentially be. Edwards (2016) reminds us that,

when sex education positions young people as reckless, easily pressured, unknowledgeable or unwise to consequences’ rather than as human beings’ who seeks [a sexual] relationship and pleasure within it, they may be inclined to seek sexual knowledge by more informal means, such as friends or family. (p. 266)

We are doing young people a disservice, as many other avenues of information on sexuality may not be available or reliable, leaving them without any information on healthy sexuality. 100

This point is important, as Fine and McClelland (2006) point out that the radical growth curve of neoliberal reform has compromised the sexual subjectivities of those young women most vulnerable - LGTBQQ2 youth, Black and Aboriginal youth, those living in poverty and/or recently immigrated to Canada (p. 4). In Canada, for example, Rayside (2014) notes that the creation of inclusive schools has lagged behind changes that recognize sexual diversity across the nation. He advocates for policy that includes proactive responses to harassment based on sexual and gender nonconformity, ethno-racial differences, disability, Aboriginal status, and religion (p. 342). In addition to Rayside’s call for a more inclusive policy, I advocate for the inclusion of a discourse of desire that weaves together pleasurable experience for young women. The remainder of this section provides an overview of thick desire as a possible solution.

To eradicate the missing discourse of desire, Fine and McClelland (2006) propose a framework called “thick desire.” They argue that young women “are entitled to a broad range of desires for meaningful intellectual, political and social engagement, and the possibility of sexual and reproductive freedom” (p. 301). Beyond sexual and reproductive freedom, thick desire could also be extended into conversations about sexual orientation, racialized gender, and physical activity. Providing students with the opportunity to discuss thick desire requires that young women have the opportunity to imagine themselves as “sexual beings capable of pleasure and cautious about danger without carrying the undue burden of social, medical, and reproductive consequences” (Fine & McClelland, 2006, p. 301). They have access to information and health care resources and rely on a public safety net of resources to support youth and families, and they are protected from intimate and structural abuse and violence (Fine & McClelland, 2006, p. 301). Introducing thick desire into formal policy and biopedagogies could allow conversations about determinants of health to inform sexuality conversations. This would enable the educational, economic, social, and psychological health of the diverse group of young people to be better serviced in Ontario schools.

101

Finally, teaching about thick desire could allow teachers to take up the dangers associated with unsafe sexual behaviors and predatory online relationships; however, this would require an inclusive, understanding and all-encompassing approach about diverse sexual subjects to be pedagogically deployed. Involving and including a larger number of community resources, allowing students to have open and honest conversations as diverse sexual beings could open up new horizons for young women. Involving students in their own sexual education will likely prove ‘messy’ as the classroom becomes a more inclusive, but HPE and sexual education curriculum could move into more free-flowing discursive spaces. Hypothetically, for example, students might discuss sexual experiences that make a teacher uncomfortable and conversations between students might delve into topics that a teacher does not have much experience in, leaving them feeling uncomfortable taking these conversations up in a class where co-creation is occurring.

This would require training and experience on the part of the teacher; it will not likely happen quickly, however, do the benefits to the health of students far outweigh any loss of control felt by the teacher? Research has shown that when young people dismiss or question certain topics covered in health class, they position themselves as “sophisticated, embodied sexual subjects,” (Allen, 2005, p. 575), where the protective discourse becomes only a fraction of the full story. Embedding thick desire in sexuality and physical activity discourses would assist in creating an environment where students have this opportunity to become sophisticated sexual subjects.

4.9 Conclusions To conclude, exploring Ontario and Brazilian HPE curriculum through a feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) reveals the subtle controls that guide and coerce young persons into ‘ideal’ biocitizens, through both embodied practices and control of the body through diet, exercise and sexuality. The Ontario HPE curriculum maintains narrow, gendered parameters for one’s sexual and physical health that may incite negative outcomes for the young person who does not ‘fit’ within this model. Exploring biopedagogies of fitness and sexuality illuminates the exclusionary and anxiety-provoking language that deters students 102

from achieving true pleasure in both physical movement and safe sexual practices. These biopedagogies become even more apparent in the final chapter, which explores student opinions of their HPE experiences.

The PCN, Brazil’s core HPE policy, represents an example of an approach to gender and physical education that is more inclusionary and represents a wider variety of viewpoints about gender and physical education. Furthermore, sexuality education is embedded cross- curricularly and across all subject areas. This point highlights the importance placed on ensuring students receive proper gender and sexuality education throughout all grade levels. A discourse of pleasure for physical education and movement emerges in Brazil that is absent in Ontario student responses. Although healthist biopedagogies are displayed in the PCN, they are not a focus of HPE in Brazil, and students recognize doing health for the sheer joy of movement for oneself. The next chapter explores these themes in detail.

103

CHAPTER FIVE: The Shaping of the Female Student Subject in HPE: Resistance and Tension in Curriculum Narratives This chapter takes up young women’s perspectives of their HPE experiences in two urban high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. These experiences were collected through semi structured interviews in both locations. Young women’s issues, insecurities, hopes and concerns are conveyed to readers throughout this final chapter. Students taking part in these interviews disclosed personal and sometimes painful parts of their embodied pasts,25 and they were courageous enough to share these experiences with the adults who interviewed them. These personal issues ranged anywhere from disclosing mental health issues and disordered eating to bullying. Many of these young women divulged these experiences because they believed that disclosing their own issues and triumphs would benefit future generations. I was amazed at the interest in this project. This group of students display a commitment to change, advocacy and asserting agency that is encouraging and humbling. I am indebted to these young women for the thoughtful insights they provided.

In theorizing a concept of power, it is important to unpack how it is exercised through government initiatives, media, and schools. Power is utilized in this dissertation to theorize the dominant discourses that get circulated and re-circulated by power structures in Canadian and Brazilian societies. Therefore, I question power relations and the distribution of power in and through these student perspectives. This dissertation offers a poststructuralist application of power and values inherent in HPE and the effects on young women’s lives in hopes of influencing future curriculum development in Ontario and Porto Alegre, Brazil. I argue that power is subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, embedded in young persons’ lives in HPE, the

25 Two Ontario students divulged past incidences of disordered eating and psychological trauma attached to fitness addiction. In keeping with ethical protocol for this study, I reported these cases to the principal and school guidance counsellor. It so happened that these cases were already known by the school and my report became additional information for ongoing care for each student.

104

media, at home, and in social circles. It is my hope that this chapter reveals the embodied perspectives of young women as they negotiate agency beyond the conversations they participated in during these interviewers.

This chapter is organized by key themes that emerged through the data collection and analysis process. The first several themes are discussed within a framework of a missing discourse of desire in HPE. These themes include healthism and the personal responsibility of young women to achieve a ‘healthy’ body in HPE. Another theme that emerges is a new global biopedagogy in HPE that masks healthist rhetoric through a moderation narrative. Within this narrative, students articulate that bodies should be “not too fat, and not too thin.” This moderation biopedagogy appears to incite anxiety for young women to achieve a life lived in moderation. I will then move into a discussion of gendered and racialized discourses embedded in media (especially social media), narratives of the fit and healthy woman, and the effects on the young women exposed to these images.

Young women taking part in this study discuss intersections of gender and race in relation to depictions of the ‘healthy’ and ‘fit’ body in the media. Students also discuss in detail the absence of discussions on mental health and well-being in HPE and the need to include mental health in a holistic approach to teaching about the healthy body, mind and spirit in HPE. Many young women discuss the influences of their parents on how they internalize and embody ideas of health and fitness. Some parents, according to students, reinforce the idea of loving oneself at any size or shape, while others reinforce a range of normative body types that has long lasting effects on their children.

With sexuality education at the forefront of current public debate in Ontario due to the 2015 release of controversial new sexuality curriculum, Ontario students readily discuss sexuality education in detail in many of the interviews. The 2015 policy affecting elementary and high schools, addresses gender identity, consent and the fluidity of sexuality and gender. Porto Alegre young women speak mostly about their experiences in physical education, media and family influences on health, perspectives on consent and sexuality are purposely not included 105

in this analysis to keep consistency with the cross-cultural method. This chapter concludes with student perspectives about how HPE can better serve this generation of young people. The following section briefly describes the process by which data has been collected and analyzed.

5.1 Process of Data Analysis Interview transcripts play a vital role in research in spoken discourse, “distilling and freezing in time the complex events and aspects of interaction in categories of interest to the researcher” (Edwards, 1993, p. 10). Analytic codes were extrapolated through a combination of inductive and deductive coding. I began this analysis by doing a preliminary open or inductive coding of the interview transcripts and observed and recorded any patterns of ideas that emerged both within and between data collected from each location. I then moved into a deductive analysis of the themes that emerged during open coding, and I filtered codes into key themes for analysis.

Although many themes emerge throughout the data collection analysis, I focus on particular key themes to examine in greater detail. Seven themes were included in this final analysis. These themes included missing discourses of desire in HPE, self-acceptance and intrinsic motivation in Porto Alegre HPE experiences, healthism and pushing limits of the range of normative body types, moral imperatives of the healthy student in HPE, biopedagogies of moderation and the masking of healthism, the gendering of the body in media, and cultural and racialized representations in the media.

The focus on the select seven themes allows for a deeper analysis of the most frequently discussed issues presented by the young women in this study. Themes are discussed within larger biopedagogies of power and governmentality and will move beyond these biopedagogies of the fit and healthy body to quieter discourses of missing desire. This analysis weaves together the work of thick desire and biopedagogies to formulate student subjectivities surrounding gender and sexuality in Ontario HPE policy.

106

5.2 Missing Discourses of Desire in HPE This dissertation traces the missing discourses of desire in HPE policy and practice. This chapter extends this analysis through an exploration of student beliefs surrounding these discourses embedded in healthist notions of personal responsibility and ‘pushing one’s limits’ in HPE. Scholars have researched discourses of politicized pleasure in an attempt to evaluate sexual health education and to advocate for more effective sexuality education through the “pleasure project” (Allen, 2005; Fine, 1988; Holland et al. 1992; Ingham, 2005).

This work extends this pleasure project into physical activity narratives in HPE and applies Fine’s concept to a broader theoretical inquiry of desire in movement and free-play. I trace this very subtle discourse through healthism, biopedagogy, and personal responsibility in HPE. Redressing the missing discourse of desire in Canadian HPE policy extends the work of Fine (1988) and Connell (2009) and marks a starting point to begin more inclusive conversations that take the onus of responsibility off the individual while simultaneously providing a forum to discuss a more holistic, inclusive and enjoyable HPE experiences for young women. The following section addresses these discourses embedded in student perspectives of their embodied HPE experiences.

In Porto Alegre, participants reveal details that point to healthist biopedagogies in their interviews, although overall perspectives of health, fitness, and HPE are more holistic and grounded in pleasure and enjoyment. Students continuously reiterate that HPE is meant to develop teamwork and camaraderie amongst their peers. They allude to the overall development of the ideal citizen in Brazil and how HPE could assist in the moulding of this individual. Most importantly, and in contrast to Toronto youth responses, Porto Alegre youth participating in this study locate intrinsic, embodied pleasure in their HPE experiences. The following section takes up the responses of young women in Ontario that reiterate healthism and personal responsibility in HPE.

107

5.2.1 Healthism in Toronto and Porto Alegre HPE: Personal Responsibility – Pushing Limits and Embodied Perspectives

To summarize from Chapter Two, healthism is the belief that health can be achieved unproblematically through individual effort and discipline, directed mainly at regulating the size and shape of the body … it is a moral obligation (Crawford, 1980). Scholarship on healthism is embedded in current work on “surveillance health promotion” (Gastaldo, 1997) and, more recently, on the concept of biopedagogy (Wright, 2009, Rail & Jette, 2014). Healthist biopedagogies emerge as a dominant theme in both policy and student responses in Toronto and Porto Alegre.

The following section takes up some of these student responses and contributes novel and cross-cultural data to healthism and biopedagogy research in HPE. Toronto students communicate healthist, neoliberal beliefs about personal responsibility and the desire to “push limits” in these interviews. A theme that emerges alongside these healthist claims is that individuals do not need to be within a normative range of body sizes to be healthy. Many young women stress the importance of balance, which represents a biopedagogy of control.

When asked what HPE was supposed to teach her, Toronto youth Gabby, a grade 10 student, responded,

Gabby: I think it’s a good idea to do things like the 12-min run because I think it pushes you to your limits, personally I don’t prefer it.

Laura: What do you think it means to be a healthy person in HPE class?

Gabby: pushing your limits means to get out of your comfort zone, make you more wanting to do it, like even for yourself, like, it’s a step closer to being healthier, Like, let’s say, you run one week, or whenever you did the 12-min run and you did 12 laps, try pushing for 13 laps if possible … I think for the general population, like

108

not people who do sports outside of school, um, I think health class should be telling them to not be lazy and that you actually need to take responsibility for your own body and you need to, ya, take care of yourself, because in the future, the only thing that you can’t replace is your body, right? You can’t buy a replacement body part if you mess up through like smoking or drugs or bad eating habits and you become overweight or something.

Vivian, a grade 9 student from Toronto, responded to the same question,

Vivian: So, I don’t think that your body really matters too much. I mean, it just depends on how much you’re putting into it and if you actually tend to exercise daily or like a couple times a week. I don’t think it matters if you skip it or you’re overweight. Like, you can still be fit and be an overweight person... [HPE] just basically taught me that you should exercise every day, and just to keep yourself healthy and that you don’t do it for someone else, you do it for yourself. It doesn’t have to be something like over the top, oh you’re running 10 miles a day, and it can be just start out small and build up on that.

Gabby: (responds to Vivian) Yah, it should be a lifestyle kind of thing.

Laura: Do you think there may be another effect on girls for being fit and being healthy?

Vivian: It’s a lot of pressure. The food guide is not a lot of food. 5 servings of something, it’s, like, ‘no’… I think for a lot of people who I guess don’t think about this, it would make them kind of irritated if someone keeps shoving down their throat, you need to do this, do this, do this, or else you’re going to die five years earlier. Um, I think for the people who don’t really care about it themselves they’re just listening to what other people are saying, yaaah, it can get annoying I think and they’ll try to push it away and be like I don’t need that. 109

This conversation between Vivian and Gabby demonstrate neoliberal, healthist biopedagogies of the fit body. Both young women recognize that being healthy means one must not be ‘lazy’ and must ‘take responsibility for their own body.’ Vivian notes that one can be fit and overweight, but that it is important to exercise and try to stay in shape for yourself, and no one else. While one can be overweight, they cannot appear ‘lazy’ and must still be working out consistently for personal gains and health benefits. Vivian recognizes that healthy can represent different body sizes, though her responses still reiterates Gabby’s position that you must work out to maintain a healthy standard even if you are overweight.

In another interview, Sarah and Rebecca, both grade nine students in Toronto, discuss the same neoliberal discourse of personal responsibility and its’ effects. These student positions on health are intimately connected to body size and invoke feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. Sarah shares the following:

Sarah: She’s [Rebecca] is more conscious of her body...

Rebecca: I’m very conscious. I mean a lot of people, kinda, they don’t really think about what food might do. So, they might think, chips, okay, ya whatever I’ll eat it and maybe I’ll just work out and get rid of the calories, right? For me, it’s like why would I eat this when there are so many other things I’m doing to my body? Like, maybe I’m forming a habit, or maybe that might be that one meal that puts me over my goal weight, or I have like, a bit of a rough time with eating right now, I’m going through a rough patch. Um, something not many people know about but I am struggling with eating. Ms. Smith says I am on the verge of an eating disorder or I might be, because it’s gotten that bad, so that’s...

Laura: If you want to talk about this, and you don’t have to talk about this...

Rebecca: No, no, I don’t mind.

110

Laura: Okay, so where do you think this problem started for you?

Sarah: Well I’ve been there and I’ve gotten over it, and I don’t know for me, it was sort of like her, but I sort of go back and forth too, you know? But like, (laughs) for me it was different in that I just get to the point where I’ll worry about it to but at a certain point I’ll just be like "am I healthy?" I’ll enter all the information online and do the BMI thing. So, I’ve done that and I’ve shown her, this is it, this is what we are, we are considered healthy - were not overweight or underweight so that’s what I did, and I don’t know after a certain point I was just like “you know what, like, this isn’t, you’re just, you eat what you want, do what you want” because in the end what’s going to stop you, you’re going to have all this, there are people out there and I see it personally in my family because my dad has like diabetes right? So, there will be so much food but like he won’t be able to eat certain things, but I’ve seen it and I’ve seen his weight go up and down and I see this in my family, and I’ll be getting diabetes because it’s in my family from both sides so I know I’ll get it eventually. So, for me, it’s like, you know what, you’re young, you’re healthy, eat whatever you want, do whatever you want, don’t stop yourself from anything, because there is going to be a time when you want to do something and you won’t be able to, so do it now.

Sarah: … and healthy and what they do in health class in general is like okay, from elementary it’s like drink milk, eat your vegetables! Get all your five food groups! Okay! Then you get to high school, and it’s like, oh okay, take care of your body! Oh you’re growing up now! Oh puberty! Oh but like remember to eat healthy! Oh don’t eat too much! Don’t eat too many chips! Don’t, like, stress eat! Don’t do that! And then you get to high school and they’re like, oh okay, mental illnesses and all that, and um, and there’s all these eating disorders and there’s all these sicknesses and they’ll sort of forget about that and they’ll just do more less, oh okay, it’s here, and you already know about this and let’s move on to sports, again.

Rebecca responds, 111

I think a person who is very healthy, is a person who has a [healthy] body ... healthy like that, you know? Has no diseases or anything, and actually maintains the normal standards that medicine demands of you ... and you are also a psychologically healthy person, who is happy, good-humored, and I think that's it ... and have a good diet.

Rebecca struggles between two positions in these responses. On one hand, she has developed a serious disordered relationship with food and exercise; she monitors her food intake and exercise online in agonizing detail, yet she also suggests that at times she and her peers should just “do what they want” as one cannot prevent the onset of genetic diseases and unhealthy behaviours. Her anxiety is evident as she struggles with ingrained biomedicalized concepts of health that are clearly foregrounded in her dialogue during this interview. This anxiety revolves around healthist pressure to diet, fitness, and body size: a dominant theme that emerged in student’s responses in Ontario.

This social anxiety produced by self-surveillance of the body was also a major theme in interviews I conducted for my Master’s project, and I concluded from data analysis that anxiety about performance negated experiences of joy inherent in moving the body at one’s own pace (McIntyre, 2012, p. 45). A dominant theme evident from both of these projects is that when activity in HPE classes transitions from play to work, students develop anxious feelings towards health and physical activity. As discussed in Chapter 2, Frohlich et al. (2013) have documented the disappearance of free-play in children as critical to the development and physical health, and this project lends data to this conclusion. While Frohlich et al.’s (2013) study explored free-play with respect to children, discovering a joy in freely moving the body through providing young women with choice and flexibility in their HPE programming is a useful application for this project.

This project also contributes data to previous biopedagogy research (Beausoleil, 2009; Evans et al. 2016) that healthist discourses of the body “exhort people to establish relationships with their body based on fear, anxiety and guilt” (Gard 2011, p. 547). To move beyond these 112

negative relationships, students must locate agency within these systems of power and take control back of their own bodies through questioning norms and producing ideas that counteract such discourses.

Brazilian interviewers picked up on the same theme of moral responsibility and individual effect to achieve a ‘healthy’ body. One of the Brazilian interviewers reflected on and mirrored a similar strand of thought:

The idea that being healthy or having a healthy body depends on the effort and individual will of the person is also highlighted (in the interviews). As an initial impression of the interviews, in my view, the contradiction emerged that most of the girls positioned themselves critically in relation to the ideal body representation and media images, questioning the lean body as the standard and stating that it is important to feel good about your body, but at the same time they have shown a desire to have a body different from what they have, closer to the questioned "ideal" image.

These insights, then, were consistent between myself and the interviewers and youth in Porto Alegre. This highlights an important cross-culturally cutting theme of embedded neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility and a moral obligation to obtain a normative range of the ‘fit’ body by HPE and media standards. Porto Alegre student, Katie, responds to the question, what does ‘healthy’ mean to you?

A healthy person is a person who eats well, not necessarily a person who lives on a diet, but who has a nutritious diet, that does some type of physical activity, even if it is not the conventional type. In physical education the teacher tries to show us this. You do not have to be healthy by doing crazy diets and going to the gym ... it may suit what you think is best.

Another Porto Alegre student, Lydia responded to the question, “What is physical activity 113

supposed to teach you?”

The message I caught that the teacher went through, or tried to tell us, is that a healthy person is anyone who, in fact, people to be healthy they just need to move, that’s what I caught. If you keep in motion, whether with exercise, with training, any kind of sport, activity, that not only move the body, but also the mind.

These two students reiterate the Toronto student responses that a healthy person must be one that takes it upon oneself to move and “keep in motion,” and “eat well.” Interestingly, Porto Alegre youth also pick up on the theme that one need not do a specific physical fitness routine, or have a specific body, but must still try to be in shape through one’s own individual efforts. The moral imperative, and the subsequent anxiety that this produces, is also communicated by Porto Alegre youth. Lydia, a grade nine student, goes on to share that,

Ana-Paula: How do you feel about your body in HPE class? I feel, it depends, I have some ups and downs, there are days that I find myself super fit, superfortona [super strong], and others that I feel very unsuccessful and I have nothing [no benefits] to see, and wow, I lost all my athletic form that I had, and it keeps changing between those two.26

Lydia struggles, in a similar way to Toronto participants, with feelings of disappointment about her body in HPE. Whereas some days she feels happy about her body, other days she feels there is no progress at all. Alternating between these two embodied positions negates

26 Discussion over the term ‘superfontana’ is an example of one of the challenges of the trouble we encountered when translating Portuguese terms to English, as some of the time, there was not a direct translation. On a first draft ‘superfontana’ was translated to read ‘super athlete,’ though after discussion with Dr. Branco Fraga, it was decided that ‘super strong’ was a somewhat similar term to ‘fit’ in North American culture. These small nuances can alter the meaning of student responses, and it required several edits of these terms to extract the real meaning in several cases. In this case ‘superfontana’ did not translate properly to athletic performance and was instead intended to mean ‘strong’ or ‘strength.’

114

feelings of joy and self-worth in this young person’s HPE experiences. Porto Alegre student, Emily, shares a similar position when discussing an athlete’s body in the media: So, my idea of an athlete's body, because it is an athlete's body, at the same time motivates and discourages me, because I think I could someday have that body, and if I continue I can. Maybe I do not achieve it, because I stopped swimming so often, maybe if I reached the ultimate goal, it would be to have that form. That would come naturally if I continued to swim competitively.

Emily takes up a healthist position as she attempts to acquire the body of an athlete that swims and exercises. This position places physical activity as an end result of a specific normative body that was discussed by Toronto participants earlier in this section. Not only did young women locate neoliberal, healthist biopedagogies, they also took them up through a moral imperative to be healthy. The following section explores this theme in greater detail.

5.2.2 The Moral Imperatives of the Healthy Student in HPE

These student responses reveal how certain biopedagogical processes provoke moralistic and negative ways of thinking about the body, as Wright (2009) has previously observed. Wright (2009) argues that under the guise of ‘health’ we have entered a climate of health surveillance, with young people as objects of such surveillance. Just as Wright and Burrows (2007) have found in previous studies, these students attribute the status of their health and body to associated messages about moral worth. It is also apparent that there is a dizzying array of information on how to achieve this body in HPE class.

Grade ten Toronto student, Sarah, for example, shares, with a sarcastic tone, that these instructions have been communicated to her since she was a child in HPE class. Neoliberal biopedagogies of self-regulation, surveillance, and medicalization are at play in many of these student responses. As discussed in Chapter Three, Foucault (1978) argues that the life (bio) of young people is increasingly controlled via surveillance. This biopower and biopedagogy work is “explicit in the increasing observation, self-diagnosis and self-treatment

115

of bodies … and body examination extends to inner body examination (Rail & Jette, 2014, p. 328). Gabby demonstrates this point when she posits “you can’t buy a replacement body part if you mess up through like smoking or drugs or bad eating habits and you become overweight or something.” For Gabby, health is explicitly intertwined with not being or becoming obese, and to do so would be “messing up.” These student perspectives point to young women’s connections between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ bodies and eating behaviours, which follows Evans et al.’s (2016) contention that moral values and corporeal ideals have diffused into the collective consciousness of this generation. The data presented here confirm this consciousness as students grapple with these moral imperatives of the body.

Murray and Steinberg (2015) argue that Westernized societies have developed a moral imperative to educate young people to avoid deviating from the normative body size and shape. These moral imperatives begin with family and are reaffirmed through media and schooling. The student responses discussed earlier lend data to the development of ingrained biopedagogies that instruct students on personal responsibility delivered through the language and practice of HPE. Students are grappling with these concepts as they attempt to locate their own agency and opinions about monitoring their food intake, exercise, and relationship with their bodies. Some Toronto participants resist the dominant biopedagogy of the normative body. Kelly, a grade ten Toronto student, shares,

Kelly: if you’re overweight and happy, you’re happy and that’s okay and you’re also overweight, so this is about your physical body ... it’s like, you can be the happiest person and be overweight, right? And the fact that you’re happy is really, really good, right? That's amazing, that’s great. But if you’re overweight and that’s affecting your health overall because you can get sicknesses and stuff like that, right? But, it’s like, would you also want to be really skinny or really fit but mentally unhealthy right? So, you kinda, like you kinda have to be able to balance both, ‘cause if you’re just average, average body, average mental health, that’s what is healthy to me - to be able to balance both, your physical health and your mental health, that’s healthy.

116

Although Kelly recognizes that one can be happy if she is overweight, this comment is embedded within a neoliberal, moral imperative of self-control and responsibility. Kelly believes that an obese person may be happy but at the same time she may also be contributing to the deterioration of her overall health. This statement provides segue into a discussion of the second theme of this chapter; that is, the responsibility for individuals to find balance with regards to their weight, food consumption and exercise regime. Balance is a healthy component of one’s life, but it has replaced the “fat equals unhealthy” discourse with the moral imperative to achieve a narrowed range of preferred femininities in North American culture. Attempting to maintain this balance coincides with the capitalist, neoliberal obsession of monitoring one’s body through a dizzying array of avenues. As the young women taking part in this study spent their time speaking to this very precise moderation, a lack of intrinsic enjoyment escaped our discussions and was replaced with this moderated surveillance of one’s body. The following section seeks to unpack this moderation discourse in greater detail.

5.2.3 Not Too Fat, Not Too Thin: The New Global Biopedagogy in HPE and the Masking of Healthism

This biopedagogy of moderation cuts cross-culturally in student responses in Toronto and Porto Alegre, suggesting a globalization of this theme. In Porto Alegre student responses, however, this theme was intertwined with a discourse of pleasure in connection with one’s body and HPE experience. This moderation biopedagogy is problematic in that it narrows the acceptable parameters of what constitutes a healthy body. Beyond obesity rhetoric that the body cannot be too fat, it also cannot be too thin. Being skinny is often not a choice for many young women; they are small due to genetic factors, and gaining weight is often something they struggle with. Infusing a new moral imperative of moderation recognizes these young women as unhealthy and unable to uphold their duties as good citizens.

The concept of moderation may also play into the more curvaceous representation of women in the media that the young women alluded to in their responses. This concept of the curvy

117

woman in the media will be discussed in the next section of this chapter. How students negotiate the concept of ‘being healthy’ was intertwined with moderation in Porto Alegre student responses, though it became evident that these young women located a more positive experience than Toronto participants.

Porto Alegre student Danielle, for example, responded to the question, “what does it mean to be a “healthy person?”

Danielle: I think we learned that the sora [teacher] has this thing of making a debate much more philosophical-social. Being a healthy person is not necessarily that you only have a perfect body, but in addition, [that] you be a good person with the society.

Carrie: She [the teacher] explained that health is not really related to weight, as long as you are not in a very big weight that will be bad for your body and not very low, you do not need to have a sculptural body and things. So, you know, you have to relate good nutrition with physical activity and your life and everything will have results, improved school performance, improved mood, it is very important. She also made a break from "taboo," asking if a fat person is necessarily an unhealthy person, and had to answer "no," and spoke [to the] aspects that made a person healthy. It was pretty cool.

Alexandra responded to the question “what does it mean to be in good shape?” Alexandra: I think I already knew this, but what we learned in physical education classes, which is very important, is that, yes, you take care of your weight. You do not get either so thin nor too much fat ... be between...

This concept of “being between” was embedded in many of the interviews in Toronto and Porto Alegre. Alexandra said one cannot be “too fat or too thin,” contributing cross-cultural data to the moderation biopedagogy. I argue that “being between” may appear to represent more inclusive discourses of the body, but in actuality it promotes the creation of the healthy 118

bio-citizen and masks healthism discourses in the process through a commitment to healthy moderation practices. Becoming “between,” then, is a relational, embodied experience for young people that occur in a specific time and space of their lives.

The concept of liminality can philosophically assist an understanding of how young people come to occupy this embodied space between. Irigaray (1993) posits that “our becoming is a sensible, material relation with an other which simultaneously enables us to exceed ourselves, to engage with the mystery of the unknowability of the other” (p. 211). Engaging with peers, media and the greater community represents “an other” in which young people measure themselves in the liminal moment. This moment of contact with others and with virtual reality is what allows the young person to exceed themselves and become someone who has not yet been defined, and in this space, they can locate resistance (Irigaray, 1993). This biopedagogy of being between then, represents a moment in time when a person might become someone else, defined in very specific terms by the spaces occupied around him or her. This space also represents a moment where the interplay or structure and agency come to a head, and where resistance can be explored.

This moment or fissure in the space between might cause the young person to replace the act of simple pleasure in play with this idea of moderation or “being between”; how to achieve it, what you eat and the activity you must do to live the moderate lifestyle, embodied moment between who they are and becoming who they want to be. Students in Toronto did not shift past this idea of moderation and its connection to the appearance of the body, though Porto Alegre students shifted into discussions of pleasure and achievement of norms for affective motivation. Porto Alegre student, Naomi, for example, embodies the anxiety-producing effect of biopedagogies focused on the achievement of a specific body, and notes how her HPE teacher helped her to move beyond this concept to accept her body “whatever it is.”

Naomi: I feel it too; that the teacher was opening our minds to break some of the taboos related to the body. For example, [I] had things about my body that I felt a bit uncomfortable [with] at the beginning of the year and now I do not feel anymore … it's 119

my body, it's just me, and then I think a lot of people [in my class] end up thinking differently for a few years now and accept their body, whatever it is.

When asked if her life experiences influenced her participation in HPE class, Porto Alegre student Alicia speaks to pleasing people and the extrinsic factors that influence one’s perception of one’s health. She notes how she has begun to “think more on the inside” and “please myself just for me.” An interesting similarity between these two students’ responses is that both admitted to having a bad relationship with their bodies in the past but were negotiating acceptance of their bodies in HPE presently. Alicia and Naomi both discuss a missing discourse of desire as they move away from societal expectations of the healthy body and do “health” for affective motivations. Alicia thinks this makes health and fitness “cool,” and she enjoys working out. When asked what she thinks HPE class is supposed to teach her, Alicia responds,

I always hated my body … and I weighed a lot on pleasing people, but I started to think more on the inside and please myself just for me. So I feel very happy to be doing something for myself and doing that without having to think "bah, I have to look beautiful, I have to improve my body!" I do that because I really think it's cool and I really enjoy working out.27

Although healthist biopedagogies are evident in these Porto Alegre student responses, each young person recognizes the achievement of a physically fit body within more inclusive and less anxiety-producing narratives of individual difference. At the foundation of these students’ responses is the recognition and commitment to an affective motivation to participate in HPE and healthy eating practices. Locating this affective motivation assisted Alicia and Naomi in letting go of the anxiety that is created when one attempts to construct a

27 ‘Bah’ in the region of Rio Grande do Sul, is similar to the Canadian term, ‘eh.’ It is a slang term use to accentuate a point. In this instance it is used to accentuate the idea that this student believes she must look beautiful.

120

specific body (Wright, 2009). Both girls, however, recognize the struggles they encounter to get to this more enlightened and embodied perspective. Alicia divulges that she used to hate her body because she was constantly attempting to please others. Naomi admits that she was “a bit uncomfortable” with her body at the beginning of her HPE class but that her teacher helped break down some of the barriers that contributed to a negative body perception. I argue that for both young women, HPE classes where, ironically, catalysts in helping them to locate a pleasurable, embodied experience.

This concept of pleasure in movement embedded in Porto Alegre student responses differs significantly from Toronto students’ responses centered on achieving a normative body weight. Although Ontario youth recognized the embodied practice of moderation in the achievement of heath, health is often tied to external motivators, such as HPE, family, and media. Any space to achieve pleasure and joy in HPE gets replaced with this most novel biopedagogy of health. Rarely did Toronto students recognize the affective motivation of eating healthy and moving the body, and the increased focus on control of the body seemed to take up the space where pleasurable experience might occur in HPE. Happiness was not a word that crept into the Toronto student responses, as moral imperatives to achieve a healthy body occupied much of their thought processes.

Numerous studies (Jones, 2009; McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2003) document the effects that biopedagogies of personal responsibility have on young people. The consequences of these findings not only have emotional and social implications such as anxiety, depression, and decreased school performance, but numerous health implications due to the restriction of still-developing bodies. This embodied practice is also encapsulated within a gendered presentation; that is, what is considered a healthy body for young women differed significantly from what they considered is healthy for young men. This range of preferred femininities is confusing, exclusionary, and alienating for many of the young women taking part in this study and will be discussed in the next section about media.

121

5.3 The Gendering of the Body in Media This section takes up the gendering of the body in the media. The young women participating in this study discuss a very narrow range of normative body types that invokes a number of effects on young women. A dominant theme that emerges in this study is a shift from skinny to curvy representations of women in media. Grade ten Toronto student Gabby expresses her concern with this new range of what constitutes femininity after being asked what it means to be a “healthy” person,

Gabby: Ya, I just rant about the Kardashians for two minutes in English class.

Laura: Tell us more about your rant! (Laughs)

Gabby: I was talking about how in the media everyone really likes the hourglass figure or the really tall really skinny runway model and they don’t, while now there’s a movement about embracing curves, and like, plus sized models and things like that, but I just don’t like how they always say that athletes don’t have nice bodies because female athletes tend to be more muscular and so the media would call them, like, masculine, or not really embrace the work that was put in to that body. Female athletes want that, they don’t want people to look at them and say, I love your body for what it looks like, it’s what their bodies can do … I always think of Serena Williams, the tennis player, when I think of that, right, like she’s always eating so much fleck for looking masculine but yet she wins every grand slam tournament!

Gabby notes the narrow conceptual lines on which the feminine body is constructed: through the movement of “embracing curves” or the “tall, skinny runway model.” Gabby, along with many other young women in this study, makes reference to the reality television family, the Kardashians. The Kardashian sisters are known as being ‘sexy’ and curvaceous. Kim Kardashian, the eldest sister, has become a sex symbol for her generation and is famous for her large breasts and bottom, her tan skin and long dark hair. Within dominant public pedagogies, a girl must be positioned within this range of normativity if she is to remain feminine. 122

Gabby recognizes, then, that sex symbols such as the Kardashians are encased within a White, Western, heteronormative range of femininity, and that the body type of a female athlete, for example, who is more muscular or masculine, is viewed as less desirable in terms of feminine beauty. Gabby notes that female athletes actually aspire to this image so that they can do, and she makes reference to American tennis star, Serena Williams (See, for example, the cover of the New York Magazine, February 2015), as an example of this heteronormative matrix. Williams dominates the world tennis circuit, yet media attention often centers on her muscular body as masculine.

Racialized and sexist comments in social media responses by online trolls, anthropomorphize her muscular body by calling her an “ape” and “gorilla” and, as Kendall (2015) has observed, her biologically assigned sex is often questioned and policed. In 2014, a high-ranking tennis official addressed Serena and her sister Venus as the “Williams brothers,” and her last Wimbledon win invoked similar gendered and racialized body shaming (Kendall, 2015). It will be interesting to observe media commentary shifts on Serena’s body as she progresses through her recently announced pregnancy. 28 Theoretically, this body shaming of the Williams sisters reiterates how deeply ingrained performances of gender are in the public consciousness. Gabby voices resistance to this dominant discourse of gender and denaturalizes what constitutes femininity in public pedagogies.

28 As I was in the process of editing the dissertation, Serena Williams appeared pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Vanity Fair fashion director, Jessica Diehl commented on the shoot; “The thing we all agreed on is the fact that power, motherhood and athleticism are not mutually exclusive…in the past it has been about celebrating and showcasing the physique of an athlete, this time it felt more appropriate to bring in a bit of softness.” This comment on softness is reserved only for the pregnant athlete; meaning ‘hardness’ has been conveyed at other times. This softness implies a vulnerability that can only be reserved from woman, a version of female embodiment that follows the feminist critique that women’s bodies are “somehow more biological, more corporeal, and more natural than men (Grosz, 1994, p. 14). This is an interesting example, then, of the assumptions attributed to the female body that are contested in feminist theory. 123

These comments are sexist and racist, locating Williams as something “other than” woman. When women in sport must train to achieve success, they are often met by media criticism of their reputed sexual desirability. On the eve of William’s first Wimbledon match in 2015, the New York Times published an article on the body image concerns of female tennis athletes. The article quickly shifted from Serena’s success to Agnieszka Radwanska’s (14th ranked competitor at Wimbledon that year) desire to stay slender taking precedent over her desire to win. Her coach commented, “it’s our decision to keep her as the smallest player in the top ten because, first of all she’s a woman, and she wants to be a woman” (Kendall, 2015). The article included these complicated issues without an analysis into the heteronormative, sexist discourses that lie at the base of such sentiments.

Conversely, plus-sized models, such as Ashley Greene (See Sport Illustrated cover, 2016), have been celebrated in the media for embracing their curves. Ashley is considered outside of normalized images of femininity in media, but there now exists a space for the celebration of the bigger body. In Gabby’s words, “now there’s a movement about embracing curves, and plus sized models and things like that.” The narrow conceptual lines upon which this body is constructed is obvious, however, when drawing comparisons between Ashley and Serena. First, Ashley exudes the “soft,” “feminine” curves of the idolized female form. Her skin is flawless, her breasts are exposed and her hourglass figure is accentuated through her pose. Ashley’s ‘feminine form,’ therefore, is kept in check by media. These rigid gendered frameworks are taken up by scholars such as Holland, et al.’s (2015), that suggest media and policy discourses need to reflect a diversity of ways of framing various body sizes and shapes.

Jane, a grade nine Toronto student, brought a picture of one of the Kardashian family members to an interview. Jane notes that Kim Kardashian represents a dominant version of femininity in the media. She comments,

The Kardashians! I detest them! (Laughs) Basically these images are saying you look good if you look curvy. You don’t need to be curvy to look good in my opinion. I don’t think that should be in that category at all. I mean, I don’t think they are 124

naturally like that, personally. I mean, they shouldn’t be projecting themselves as oh, I’m like this, so you’re not so good. I guess because I’m not curvy, um, and I actually donated my hair to cancer [research] in grade eight, so I had like a pixie cut, but I just went full on pixie and that’s kinda when I changed a lot in that time. Cause a lot of people mistook me for a guy, cause like I wasn’t very curvy at all. And even in grade nine people mistook me for a guy… I guess it did kinda affect me a little bit because I was slightly offended that people couldn’t recognize me as a girl, because I do identify with being a girl. So, I don’t think I’ll cut my hair that short until I’ve developed at least a little bit more. Like so you can tell I’m a girl by not just looking at my hair, do you know what I mean?

Jane takes up numerous subject positions in this well-articulated response. First, she recognizes the normative range of femininity demonstrated through an image of Kim Kardashian, noting that most of their attributes are likely surgically enhanced to achieve such a look. Even though she resists this body through her own embodied charitable practices, such as cutting her hair off, she feels the pressure to grow her hair back until she developed curves. She wants to do this so that people won’t continue to mistake her for a boy when she identifies as a girl.

This is quite a telling statement with respect to the power that media images of femininity have on the young women taking part in this study. Not only do media depict a specific range of preferred bodies to these young women, but media also frame specific racialized qualities. The students taking part in this study spoke in detail about how “racialized gender” is delivered to them through media. The following section will take up student perspectives on racialized gender in the media.

5.4 Cultural & Racial Representations in the Media Cultural and racialized gendered discourses were discussed by young women in both Toronto and Porto Alegre in this study, suggesting a globalization of this theme. Skeggs (1997) argues that the working-class female body has traditionally been subject to the dominant gaze 125

of the middle class (p. 81). She suggests that the normative body is traditionally “White, desexualized, hetero-feminine and usually middle class” (Skeggs, 1997, p. 82). Conversely, the bodies of minority and lower class ethnic women are considered “beyond regulation and discipline required to be part of the social and cultural exchange” (Skeggs, 1997, p. 84), meaning that the lower class, ‘black,’ female body is considered out of control, non- normative and lacking in value (Atencio, 2010, p. 40).

The students participating in this study represented a wide range of racialized identities and cultures. In Toronto, I interviewed youth from families of Jamaican, Middle Eastern, Pilipino, European, and Asian descent. Most of these young women’s parents were born in their home country and immigrated to Canada before or shortly after their children were born. In Porto Alegre, interviewers observed “a certain diversity in the school and conducted interviews [with] Black girls, white, various ways of dressing, coloured hair.”

The students participating in this study selected an image that they thought represented the normative range of femininity in the media. Students took a moment during the interviews to locate an image on a computer or their phone that represented this norm from their perspective. Once they located an image, the image was discussed with the interviewer. The majority of students selected an image of a White, fit female and discussed their reasoning for selecting such an image. Many Toronto and Porto Alegre students also brought pictures of what they termed “mixed” women, who were a combination of different ethnic groups. This ‘mixed’ body came up numerous times in student responses and is discussed.

First, the most prevalent theme communicated by young women is that the acceptable range of femininity in the media is represented by White, thin, and unattainable standards for the average young woman. Interestingly, Porto Alegre youth speak much more about racialized gender in the media, whereas Toronto youth focus on the individual’s size and shape. This could also be attributed to Toronto youth being taught not to ‘see race.’ (Joseph, Darnell & Nakamura, 2012). This is even more likely in a multicultural city like Toronto, where cultural diversity is normalized and celebrated. The ‘cultural mosaic’ of Canadian society 126

helps to explain the naturalization of student responses with respect to cultural, ethnic and racial differences in media and school. Many Toronto youth in this study do not feel that a dominant race is being displayed in the media, although they agree with the Porto Alegre youth that there is a dominant body type that represents feminine. This section will first focus on Porto Alegre students’ perspectives of racialized gender. Nadia comments on her selected photograph,

This athlete is American, is of a Caucasian ethnicity ... she has dark hair that is not similar to mine. People similar to me and my family, my origin, I do not see much, because generally the media only conveys the common, more stereotyped, European appearance; round eye, slim appearance. They leave out other ethnicities, other groups, and these others should be more represented, since each one has its beauty.

Clarice, added that,

I think the media shows a lot of blonde, hot [women], that go to the gym, and we try to get [this way]. I'm small, and then, I just think they have to show other bodies, because it's always a White woman who likes the gym, then they could show people who are fatter, shorter, and taller.

Clarice and Nadia reiterate the range of preferred femininities delivered through media. Both young women make reference to models being fit, White and blonde. Clarice notes that she does not feel represented within the images she sees in the media, while Nadia adds that people who are “fatter, shorter and taller” should be included in these images. Some Porto Alegre youth brought pictures of individuals who were “Afro-descendant.” Sarah commented on the picture she selected,

Sarah: I identify myself a lot, even though I'm not so Black, because most of my family is Portuguese, I also identify with her, because Brazil is like that too, and she is the face of Brazil. I like the fact that she is not super lean, does not have a super 127

strong arm muscles. She is being a woman, with curves, but looks healthy. I do not know what I do not like, I do not like that she has no stretch marks, no cellulite, even I have!

Other young women in this study discuss the “face of Brazil” that Sarah discusses. The dominant theme emerging is that Porto Alegre has become a multicultural city. Several young women speak to the need for the media to be more inclusive of these new “faces of Brazil.” Rebecca, for example, shares,

I think it is necessary to include other ethnicities [in the media]. As an Afro- descendant woman, I would like to see this representation more, because in Brazil the majority are Afro-descendant, and not only that, we also [represent] as much as half of the people, Afro-descendents, and in the television we do not see this. It needs to have a racial quota in the soap operas to have someone Black appearing and is always doing some paper that is not. When he is a powerful person, he still appears in the headlines, "our Black person is powerful in the novel.” It does not have to be an exception, and not only the Blacks, since we have a lot of misrepresentation and we need representation of all ethnic groups [as well as] chubby, cheeky, skinny.

Porto Alegre youth, Kaitlin and Vivian, respond to the image of a white, blond and slender fitness model that they selected as ‘feminine’ by media standards,

Kaitlin: I do not think it represents a lot of people, because now [there is] is much immigration, so much travel, that there are few people as White as the people in the media. Things are not like that anymore, you know, we're not in the 15th century anymore, there's a lot of mixing, and that's a very cool thing.

Vivian: Mostly Brazil, which is a very mixed breed.

Kaitlin: Movies always have a stereotype of countries so we know where the guy is, 128

because there is no stereotype of Brazil, it's a lot of mixing. Vivian: we have Africans, we have Latinos, Spaniards, we have Italians, Europeans, Asians, a lot of people, you know, from the whole world and this is very cool.

Kaitlin and Vivian’s exchange confirms the increasing racial diversity in Porto Alegre that is not represented in the media. These young women are grappling with and reimagining their identities in the face of an increasingly globalized world and a mediascape that has not kept up. As Kaitlin shares, in Brazil today, “there is a lot of mixing, and that’s a very cool thing.” Also apparent in these responses are the intimate ties between race, body size/shape, and body dissatisfaction, as young people construct the complexities of their changing identities, race, ethnicity and body size and shapes and connect to the idea that media intimately influences their embodied perspectives.

The young women taking part in this study from both Toronto and Porto Alegre, rarely make reference to negative (or positive) experiences of race in HPE classes. This finding follows Douglas and Halas’s (2013) call for more diversity with respect to race, diversity, and whiteness delivered in university curriculum in Canada. This study found that course offerings delivered in HPE faculties in Canadian universities were lacking in core courses that explored diversity and race. These finding inform the lack of attention or conversation about race displayed by the young women taking part in this study. In my own experience, my preservice education program did not address racial differences beyond teaching multicultural games and making reference to noting the diversity of our classrooms. Beyond this recognition, little instruction was given on how to create inclusive and caring spaces with respect to racial and cultural difference.

Future HPE teachers and professionals are shaped by postsecondary course experiences and take this into their practice as teachers. Douglas and Halas (2013) found that preservice teachers may get some experience teaching multicultural games, but most university instructors reported that they did not include race or Whiteness as a core theoretical concept in their courses (p. 468). Many instructors noted that they did not feel they had the time, 129

expertise, or confidence to deliver curriculum on race from a theoretical perspective. This lack of attention to race in pre-service education curricula “limits the depth and breadth of learning that takes place and becomes more problematic when physical education students begin their practica in diverse schools” (Douglas & Halas, 2013, p. 468).

Following these findings, it is not surprising that race was rarely discussed in student’s responses related to HPE class in Toronto. This absence of conversations about race in young women’s HPE experiences indicates a serious lack of attention to issues of diversity in high schools in Toronto and Porto Alegre. Preservice teachers are not receiving proper core philosophical education on racialized or gendered bodies in their university preparation. This represents a major area of weakness, as many of the classrooms they teach in are multicultural (Douglas & Halas, 2013). Students, then, most likely did not attach racialized gender to their educational experiences, as it was a missing discourse that was overlooked by their classroom teachers.

5.5 Self-Acceptance and Intrinsic Joy in Porto Alegre HPE Experiences Young women in Porto Alegre believe that more racial diversity is needed in the media, but they do not seem to be adversely influenced by the images they brought to their interviews for this study. A theme of self-acceptance emerged in the interviews. Through the rejection of mainstream media norms, young women in Porto Alegre contribute similar perspectives to studies of Latina females who embody beauty and movement that differ from rigid depictions in the media (Nichter, 2000). This theme builds on these earlier studies and exists in contrast to Toronto youth’s embodied practices of media. This theme of self-acceptance suggests that differing definitions of beauty exist between these two countries. Rubin, Fitts, and Becker (2003) found similar sentiments with Latin American women, suggesting that by rejecting mainstream representations of beauty one is able to ‘stay true to oneself’ and maintain personal and cultural embodied practices that reinforce positive relationships with health and body (p. 55). Porto Alegre student, Julia, shares,

130

In physical education classes, people discussed what would be the ideal body, which in fact does not exist. As long as you are well, working to stay healthy, regardless of the form you will achieve, you will have an ideal body, and the media should also show this; this more human, less artificial side and the paths that have to be traveled to reach this ideal body, which is not only to get a photo and have the ideal body.

Julia notes that there is no ideal body, but only a healthy body, and her friend, Clare, agrees and contributes a suggestion for media images in Brazil,

I think that here in Brazil it is important to have examples of a fuller woman because the Brazilian woman, in the majority of cases, there is more thigh, more butt, not necessarily do not have cellulite. She looks like it gives a little bit, for sure!

When asked what the selected image told these young women about the body and fitness they responded:

Clare: I liked this one, where people are happy. This one with her running with the little dog, drinking water.

Julia: or the one with the child has so many pictures! I do not know … I think those people are doing physical activities and happy. I liked this bike too! I think it's kind of getting out of the house, doing outdoor exercise that makes people happy, more content, and helps in health.

Comparatively, Toronto students did not choose images that represented an individual participating in physical activity for the pure, intrinsic joy of it. Porto Alegre students, Clare and Julia, however, recognize the intrinsic value of doing something for the love of it, as opposed to the achievement of a body acceptable by societal standards. Healthism discourses expect young women to achieve this specific body and coerce the individual into believing

131

that this should be done for one’s own good. Students’ internalizations of media narratives in Porto Alegre are also obvious in their responses that locate pleasure and joy in HPE. The Porto Alegre youth participating in this study present a unique connection that extends beyond intrinsic motivation towards an intrinsic enjoyment of moving the body in HPE. Julia summarizes this theme well,

I always hated my body a lot and because people spoke like I had to be a certain way, I weighed a lot on pleasing people, but I started to think more on the inside and please myself, just for me. So, I feel very happy to be doing something for myself and doing that without having to think, “bah, I have to look beautiful, I have to improve my body!” I do that because I think it’s really cool and I really enjoy working out.

Julia recognizes the pressures to look a “certain way” and to please people, although she moves through these issues to locate enjoyment and pleasure with respect to being fit and healthy. She goes on to note how her teacher is an advocate for various body sizes and promotes students to participate in physical activity for the “love of it.” This difference in motivation for students in Toronto and Porto Alegre is a striking one and offers an important point of entry for understanding why young women do or do not participate in healthy active lifestyles.

In Canada, healthist biopedagogies delivered in HPE can be overwhelming for students. Standardized testing, such as the ‘Beep Test’ and health classes that measure nutrients down to the calorie are examples of these kinds of biopedagogies. At a time when young women are constructing their identities, information about the gendered and racialized culture and what constitutes socially acceptable by HPE and media standards can deter from participating in HPE. These findings could be partially attributed to the principle of inclusion in the PCN policy. Within this document learning and evaluation targets the inclusion of young people in the “culture of body movement, through concrete and effective participation and reflection” (Brazil, 1998, p. 19). 132

This document also “seeks to reverse the historical area of selection, which distinguishes between apt and inapt individuals for bodily practices, a practice that resulted from an exacerbated valorization of performance and efficiency” (Brazil, 1998, p. 19). This distinction between “apt and inapt” seems to be blurred in student responses, as they consider movement for affective motivation. This finding suggests that at least some of the teachers working with these youth have been following the pedagogical concept of inclusivity outlined in the PCN. This inclusivity objective aims to enable young people to enter into a more all-encompassing and inclusive culture, or the ‘body culture,’ by having students participate in the learning process “through experiences related to the cultural heritage of the body” (Brazil, 1998. P. 18). The document states that it is

necessary to lessen emphasis on physical fitness and… [include] all human dimensions in each bodily practice. Critical analysis and the attempt to overcome this view point to the need to also take into consideration the cultural, social, political and affective dimensions, present in the living body, that is, the body of people who interact and move as social subjects and citizens. (Brazil, 1998, p. 29)

This movement away from the valorization of physical fitness might explain these student responses that take up HPE as an enjoyable, embodied social and emotional experience.

The following section offers recommendations for locating pleasure and participation in HPE from the perspective of the young women taking part in this study. Discussing these student perspectives assists in denaturalizing dominant ways the gendered and racialized body is taken up in HPE and media and may create a space that is more inclusive of a variety of bodies, sexualities, and identities.

5.6 “You Do You:” Locating Student Resistance and Agency in HPE The students participating in this study have a number of recommendations for future policy and practice in HPE. Locating agency within this system is important to students in both 133

settings, and many divulge that sharing these insights is the primary reason why they were keen to participate in the interviews. The biopedagogies that circulate around students do so in ways that enable and constrain. Students are affected by neoliberal discourses about feminine bodies within the structures of school and media, but they also resist these constructs through various subject positions. This section attempts to locate this agency within these structures and provides voice through recommendations offered by the young women participating in this study. Several students want to see change in their final years of taking HPE, while others want their little siblings and cousins to observe these changes in the future.

Whatever the motivation, locating agency and voice is important to the majority of young women taking part in this study; therefore, the final section of this chapter is devoted to capturing the themes that emerged with respect to student resistance to dominant conceptions of the body, health, and fitness in HPE and media. Providing all of the recommendations offered by students is outside of the scope of the current project; however, I want to briefly offer two additional themes that emerged in these interviews.

First, students in both Toronto and Porto Alegre spoke in detail about the inclusion of mental health and a holistic approach to HPE that explores mind, body, and spirit. Anna, a Porto Alegre student, in response to the question, “what does it mean to be healthy person?” shared,

Anna: I think it’s taking care of your body, kind of eating, doing physical activities, doing all of that, but also taking care of your mental health, because that counts a lot … from the moment your mental health is bad, your body will not work properly.

Toronto student, Kelly, responded to the same question,

For me, healthy is not always the way your body looks, it’s also mental health. It’s more the mental health aspect, ‘cause if you have like an amazing body, like muscular 134

and fit, but your mental health is not so good, like, it’s tough because you won’t be healthy for long, right? Like maybe people look at you and say, ‘holy crap, this girl is so healthy,’ right? Then you look at yourself and you’re not enough, and you look in the mirror and you’re just like, ‘no.’ so, it’s more of a mental health aspect. If you’re happy with the way you are than you are overall healthier than someone who is fit but mentally not well.

Toronto student, Jane, responded to the question, “What do you think physical education is supposed to teach you?”

In terms of the mental aspect, no. I think they should take many classes just explaining what mental health is and how it effects people; how we should cope with stuff like that, because, like, there’s a lot of student that like, have a lot of issues that I know of in this school. And why? It’s because of school and stress.

Second, young women in Toronto spoke about the importance of teaching about gender, sexual consent, and how teachers should go about doing this in an accessible way. When asked about what HPE was supposed to teach them, Rebecca and Sarah entered into a conversation about the inclusion of consent in the 2015 HPE documents.

Rebecca: I know a lot of parent that say kids are too young [to learn about consent] but they are going to learn eventually. I would rather have my child learn about sex in school from, like, educated teachers than when they grow up and are a teenager and pick up things from friends or the media and stuff. I think kids have to learn it eventually, you might as well teach them the right way.

Sarah: Ya, I feel like some people can teach their children, but a lot of families don’t talk about it, so, like, it’s a really good resource for students to have, especially when they’re younger so they understand more … I feel like the majority of parents who

135

would not consent to their children being taught this are the ones who, um, wouldn’t talk about it.

Rebecca: I also think consent is a good idea because the scenarios we’ve done in class and stuff, these are really possible scenarios for high schooler and stuff if they are at parties and drunk or whatever. I think it’s important to learn about consent for your own safety, so you don’t end up getting in trouble.

Though mental health and consent were not dominant themes that emerged in this study, I thought it important to include some of the opinions and recommendations that the students provided throughout the interview process.

5.6.1 - A note on Boys and the “Double Bind of Masculinity”

It is important to recognize that this study is primarily focused on individuals who identify as girls; however, I would like to note that young boys are under increasing pressure to possess the normative male body (Atkinson, 2008). A good deal of gendered body image literature has been centered around girls, yet boys are also increasingly subject to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy practices to maintain an unrealistic range of masculinities that promotes both the social pressure to be thin as well as muscular (Stout & Frame, 2004). Stout and Frame (2004) argue, “boys learn early on that their identities are closely tied with the physical characteristics that they see in body builders and athletes” (p. 180). Norman (2009) argues that young men are confronted with competing discourses of masculinity that pressure them to “transform their bodies into culturally recognizable ideals, while at the same time remaining distant and aloof to the size, shape and appearance of their bodies, that creates a “double-bind of masculinity” (p. 430). Atkinson’s study on men and plastic surgery in Canada reveals that males’ collective sensibilities are shifting, symbolizing how men are negotiated dominant structures of masculinized identity performances (Atkinson, 2008, p. 68; Kehler & Atkinson, 2010).

136

These studies suggest that boys and men “take up, deploy, and perform discourses of normalcy, healthy active living, heterosexuality and individualism as technologies of the self” (Norman, 2009, p. 430). Atkinson argues that there has been a general tendency in literature on men to view gender identity along “very narrow conceptual lines,” where constructions of masculinity are either drastically alternative or rigidly hegemonic in nature (Atkinson, 2008, p. 69). In actuality, masculinized gender performances are far more nuanced and complex than this dichotomy allows. Grade ten Canadian student, Gabby, uses the example of ex-Olympian, Kaitlin Jenner as a testament to the range of gendered norms constructed for boys and men when discussing media ideals:

I think when someone is born a certain gender and they don’t feel comfortable in that gender, it’s like let’s say Kaitlin Jenner for example, k? Born a man, and I’m guessing was raised in an ideal that’s like you’re supposed to be athletic and absolutely into sports right, so, he or she may have felt like I don’t want to be a man though? Like, why am I being pushed to do this if I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin, right? So, it’s hard for people to come out like that because you have your parents and everyone around you like no, no, no if you’re born a certain gender then you have to stay that your whole life and people aren’t as open about it, right?

This young person recognizes the culturally ingrained notion that “all boys must be athletic and absolutely in to sports” even if they do not ‘feel comfortable in their own skin’. Though this study did not engage in these important issues, future research directions might include those who identify as boys in a similar structured study, contributing further data to studies such as the Life Activity Project (Atencio, 2010).

5.7 Conclusions To conclude, participants in Toronto and Porto Alegre take up and embody healthist, biomedicalized discourses of the body engaging in media and HPE. These students reiterate neoliberal, heteronormative discourses that perpetuate a specific size and shape achieved 137

through individual effort as good citizens. Student responses confirm that biopedagogies and public pedagogies attempting to produce the heteronormative female subject elicit a whole range of outcomes and negative embodied realities for youth taking part in this study. In Toronto, the consequence is a missing discourse of desire that negates intrinsic, embodied pleasures for students in their HPE experience. Porto Alegre students also display healthist biopedagogies of the body in HPE and consume them in the media, although a theme of self- acceptance and pleasure emerged that was absent from Toronto student responses. Porto Alegre youth recognize a more diverse vision of the female body that celebrates difference, whereas Toronto students discuss a theme of moderation. This biopedagogy of moderation narrows positive embodied practices. The effects of those embodying these discourses can be debilitating for youth and redressing them in policy and practice is imperative. The final and concluding chapter of this dissertation will offer recommendations and considerations for future policy and practice in HPE in Toronto and Porto Alegre.

138

CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSIONS

6.1 Study Purpose and Research Questions The purpose of this study has been to examine how 14-18 year old female-identified students in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil conceptualize, experience and embody gendered and racialized identities and relationships within health and physical education (HPE) and media. Cross-cultural work in education is important since healthist policy is no longer influenced by value systems within a country’s political borders. Policy creation is now cocreated through complex processes that span across nations in globally networked spaces. These mediascapes become more interconnected for young women who observe and consume the same or similar globalized images and media.

Given these global changes in media, the values delivered in policy have become a dominant concern of governments around the world in a neoliberal project to create citizens that embody the values of the government (Petherick, 2013). This study unearthed numerous similarities and divergences in policy and student perspectives that contribute an important and novel data set to the field and will be summarized in this chapter.

Results from interviews in Toronto reveal that young women experience HPE within neoliberal and healthist biopedagogies. I borrow from Fine, who suggests, a “missing discourse of desire” (1988) in sexuality education. I assert in this study, that the missing discourse of desire can be extended into movement and biopedagogy literature to further unpack dominant discourses in HPE. There exists a masking of healthism through a moderation biopedagogy. These biopedagogies are intertwined with gendered and racialized identities delivered through media. Comparatively, Porto Alegre youth locate desire and self- acceptance in their gendered HPE experiences. This divergence in north/south student responses offers an important contribution to HPE and policy studies and a call to action for policy makers and teachers to infuse pleasure into student experience. These conclusions

139

flow from the purpose and research questions that formed the rationale and purpose for this study.

Particular research questions pursued include:

6.2 Overview of Study Findings To address these research questions, this study has involved 20 youth in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and 20 youth in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil in interviews. Young women spoke to a range of understanding about the gendered body delivered in HPE and media. In Toronto, young women embodied a healthist perspective focused on moderation and maintaining a very specific body because of a moral imperative to do so. Striving to maintain this range of normative femininities had a whole range of effects on these individuals as they grappled with bodies that they believed existed outside of the range of normative femininities in HPE and media. A theme of moderation also emerges, and young women speak about one being able to be overweight if they maintain a healthy lifestyle, work out, and show that they are displaying a consistent personal commitment to health and wellness. I called this the masking of healthism, as a surface analysis may recognize a 140

movement towards acceptance of various bodies. On a closer inspection, however, students still discussed a range of normative behaviours delivered to them through various power structures. These behaviours are heavily gendered and racialized in nature.

Students in Toronto tend to speak about a narrow range of femininities celebrated in social media and HPE. Most girls taking part in this study note a narrowed range of preferred femininities in the media with a focus on White, lean, and sometimes “mixed” individuals. In Porto Alegre, students also discuss the moral responsibilities surrounding healthism in their HPE experiences; however, their responses are grounded in a discourse of pleasure and reveal more intrinsic motivations than revealed in Toronto student responses. Students in Porto Alegre often claimed to do physical activity “for the love of it” and sought to maintain healthy eating habits because it “felt good.” These responses rarely came up with Toronto students. This striking difference raises an issue about how the Canadian system is teaching girls about embodied practices regarding health and fitness. Negating students of pleasure in the Ontario curriculum, whether deliberate or not, may deter them from doing physical activity as adults.

Racialized gender was discussed in detail by Porto Alegre youth in their understandings of the dominant representations of ‘girl’ in the media. Students in Porto Alegre recognized a dominant race in media narratives and often discussed not feeling they could achieve beauty standards of the “mixed” person in media. Porto Alegre youth addressed racialized gender in much greater depth in their responses, whereas Toronto youth focused on a normative size and shape in the media. Many of these students discuss a “face of Brazil” that has come to represent a multicultural population in a changing demographic in Porto Alegre. The dominant theme that emerged was that Porto Alegre has become a multicultural city, yet media representations were not representative of these changes. Several young women speak to the need for the media to be more inclusive of these ‘faces of Brazil,’ and they seem eager to have a space to construct these ideas further. A major recommendation for future Brazilian HPE policy development, then, is the inclusion of critical media and social media literacy so youth have the opportunity to take up ranges of normalized femininities. 141

Conversely, Toronto youth were more focused on a narrow range of acceptable sizes and shapes as opposed to race. Many Toronto youth felt that their race/ethnicity was represented in media. Perhaps this is due to that fact that Toronto is more multicultural than Porto Alegre. Interestingly though, young women in Porto Alegre note the changing patterns of multiculturalism in their city. Neither Porto Alegre nor Toronto youth speak to racialized gender in their HPE experiences. This is a telling finding, as it shows that perhaps neither Ontario nor Brazilian HPE policies provide the guidelines to demand curriculum, spaces or opportunities for girls to take up embodied, racialized perspectives of the body.

When prompted about learning fitness and how this may vary for different racial/cultural groups, one Toronto student, Nadia, responded that “culturally, um, it was never taught in school, but I don’t think that would be considered culture. That was more curriculum and is different from culture.” This young person, then, does not see the inextricable links that could be developed between her ethnocultural culture background and the Eurocentric curriculum she receives in schools. Discussing racialized gender in schools is a project well suited to critical media, health literacy, and social media literacy studies; this is a key recommendation that flows from this project.

As a physical and health educator and researcher, I have a vested interest in young women maintaining appropriate levels of fitness into their adult lives. I undertook this study because I felt that HPE in Ontario was lacking in the delivery of enjoyable and personally fulfilling experiences for girls. I wanted to conduct this cross-cultural analysis with Porto Alegre girls to uncover any contradictory or complimentary relationships that could assist in informing policy and practice that are more inclusive and enjoyable in both nations.

This former point is important in practical application as the 2016 Annual Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, a report widely held as the most comprehensive assessment of youth physical activity, recently assigned a D- grade to youth, attributing inactivity to a “sleepidemic” (ParticipACTION Canada, 2016). This suggests that kids are 142

now too tired to get enough physical activity during the day. In 2015, inactivity was attributed to the “the protection paradox,” that is, that parents’ intense focus on intervening in their child’s lifestyle to make sure they are healthy, safe, and happy (ParticipACTION Canada, 2016). This D- grade was given for both Sedentary Behaviours and Overall Physical Activity, citing that only 5% of 12 – 17-year-olds get the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day and spend 9.3 hours of their day being sedentary (ParticipACTION Canada, 2016). The 2015 report found that 24% of 5 – 17-year-olds in Canada meet the Canadian Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines for Children and Youth, which recommends screen time of no more than 2 hours per day (“ParticipACTION Canada, 2016).

For the past 4 years youth in Canada have received a D- grade in their physical activity behaviours, though numerous recommendations have been implemented and practiced in school physical education classes over this period. This dissertation explores why policy and government-sanctioned recommendations, such as the ParticipACTION recommendations fall short by uncovering the more complex reasons why youth are disengaging from physical education on a national and international level. Biopedagogy and healthism research assists in challenging these neoliberal discourses by recognizing the absence of racialized, gendered and socioeconomic dimensions of the young person. Providing critiques of the ‘truths’ associated with obesity literature draws our attention to the body as a “site where social meanings become embodied and in doing so changes consciousness, identities and subjectivities” (Wright, 2009, p. 5).

Youth participating in this study have confirmed my scholarly and professional HPE educator concerns that HPE policy, curriculum, and practice are falling short in Canada in terms of providing an enjoyable corporeal experience. Students in Canada communicate anxieties about trying to embody an unobtainable range of images and about the unhealthy tactics they have undertaken to achieve elusive norms. Continuing to uncover the power dynamics behind these experiences is imperative to get at the foundational issues of control and the narrow conceptual and cultural lines upon which the female body is constructed. The following section provides a brief summary of how I approached this task in each chapter. 143

6.3 Chapter Summaries Chapter One outlined the core philosophical and practical place of education in modern societies. Specifically, I introduced the concept of gender as a deliberate practice shaped and reshaped by a dominant range of normative femininities in a given society. Eventually gender becomes a performance where the body leads and the individual acts without much thought (Butler, 1990). The importance of cross-cultural educational research was explored and the research purpose and questions were introduced. The HPE field has sparse literature on north/south cross-cultural comparisons; therefore, this project offers novel perspectives from two distinct cultures and provides a study of relevance to a diverse audience.

Chapter Two provides a literature review that takes up the history and political context of HPE and sexuality curriculum in Canada and Brazil. These histories are framed within Foucault’s concept of biopower and governmentality to illuminate the subtle and explicit ways that power diffuses into school policies and practices. The sensitizing concept of biopedagogy is utilized to take up practices associated with the body both in the HPE classroom and in media consumption. This concept is unpacked further in Chapter Five as students discussed the effects of specific biopedagogies on their embodied experiences in HPE. I argue that critical media literacy and exploring thick desire and pleasure in HPE is imperative for future policy and practice that will contribute to embodied pleasures for young women. Chapter 2 and 5 contributed important cross-cultural comparisons in two distinct societies and educational systems. Exploring cultural transmissions of values in one particular city may fall short in providing a sound analysis of HPE.

Chapter Three provides the epistemological and methodological approaches that guide this dissertation. I speak to the importance of reflexivity and positionality in cross-cultural research. The limitations of a specific subject position in transnational research are further discussed in the limitations section of the conclusion. The theoretical framework that guides this study is situated within feminist poststructural theory. The methodological approaches include critical discourse analysis and critical feminist discourse analysis. This approach to policy analysis has yet to be implemented in a cross-cultural, English language, HPE study of 144

this kind. It is my hope that this chapter offers sound guidelines and practices for using this powerful method in HPE studies. Data for the project are analyzed and coded through the voice of the young women taking part in the study and the shaping of HPE through formal policy documents in Canada and Brazil.

Chapter Four begins broadly by providing a brief history of policy analysis in education and a conceptual framework for cross-cultural critical policy analysis. This conceptual framework offers an example of sound comparative policy work within the poststructural project and lays a foundation for future work of this kind in the HPE field. This dissertation utilizes critical discourse analysis and feminist critical discourse analysis to unhinge the dominant biopedagogies of the fit and healthy body in HPE in Porto Alegre, Brazil and Toronto, Canada.

The final section of this chapter provides recommendations for future HPE policy development that includes discourses of politicized pleasure in physical activity and sexuality lessons. This suggestion follows recommendations from previous scholars (Allen, 2005; Fine, 1988; Holland et al., 1992; Ingham, 2005; Oliver, Larkin, Flicker, van der Mulen, 2015) who call for more inclusive and holistic models of sexuality education in school curricula. A novel contribution of this project is the inclusion of politicized pleasure into physical education and embodied practices surrounding the gendered body in HPE. I argue that this is imperative to assist youth in developing more positive relationships with their bodies and for inter embodiment. Chapter Four provides more in-depth recommendations for ways to achieve this objective in HPE.

Chapter Five offers student perspectives about their HPE and media experience in a cross- cultural context. A significant finding includes the missing discourse of desire in Toronto students’ embodiment of gender in HPE and media. Students in Porto Alegre locate pleasure in their embodied HPE experiences, and this offers an important cross-cultural lesson for future curriculum development in Ontario. Biopedagogies of moderation were communicated by Toronto and Porto Alegre youth. I argue that this finding of “being between,” though it 145

may appear to represent more inclusive discourses of the body, actually promotes the most novel creation of the healthy biocitizen. This novel brand of healthism spans Toronto and Porto Alegre and must be addressed in future HPE policy and practice.

6.4 Recommendations The students participating in this study offer a number of recommendations for future policy and practice in HPE. Locating agency within this system has been important to these students, and many divulge that sharing these insights was the primary reason why they were keen to participate in these interviews. This section will weave together student recommendations with my own insights in an attempt to cocreate meaning with participant and researcher as outlined in Chapter Two. Several students want to see change in their final years of taking HPE, while others want their little siblings and cousins to observe these changes in the future. Whatever the motivation, locating agency and voice is important to the majority of girls taking part in this study; therefore, the final section of this chapter is devoted to capturing the themes that emerged with respect to student resistance to dominant conceptions of the body, health, and fitness in HPE and media.

Chapter Two combines a critical media literacy approach and Fine’s concept of thick desire to study conceptions of gendered bodies in HPE and media. Social media do not need to be a negative source of information of gendered norms for girls; rather, students can use these platforms to contest images and content. Educational policy, curriculum, and teacher practices need to incorporate conversations about social media content to provide opportunities for young women to deconstruct and rebuild inclusive images. Such exercises afford students agency and control over embodied practices. As discussed earlier, exemplars of such alternative messaging have been created through various campaigns, such as the campaign, Like a Girl, by the Always feminine products company (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs). While this campaign is more inclusive than previous print and broadcast media, interventions such as this could be more effective if created by the girls themselves.

146

Critical media literacy education provides young women with the opportunity to create alternative messages. The focus on exposing the power relations that underpin the hegemonic normative bodies in HPE and media is at the core of this pedagogical approach. Critical media literacy education can build upon the inclusion of health and physical literacy in the Ontario HPE policy to include alternative ways of thinking about the body. Health and media literacy education tends to promote healthist assumptions that young people must make positive and good decisions for their health (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 6). Infusing critical media literacy with health and physical literacy and providing alterative messages to biomedicalized, healthist, Eurocentric, and heteronormative gendered discourses would be one strategy to foster conversations in class about the factors that influence the perceptions girls harbour about their bodies.

One such area that needs more attention, for example, is the inclusion of more social determinants of health beyond gender alone, such as race, ability, age, socio-economic class, sexuality, and faith, which is of prime importance. Although social determinants of health are included in the updated 2015 documents, they are mentioned only briefly in the introduction. Thus, critical student engagement that involves an assessment of social determinants is typically not pursued, whereas personal responsibility and a moral obligation to achieve a healthy body is. I argue this moral obligation to achieve a specific healthy gendered body, in the absence of conversations about larger issues such as the social determinants of health, can deny students the experience of embodied pleasure in HPE. Pleasure is an embodied, all- encompassing experience; yet many girls taking part in this study were not able to experience pleasure in their HPE experiences. Creating dialogue about thick desire and pleasure in future policy may assist in this project and ultimately encourage students to find an intrinsic, pleasurable experience in HPE and physical activity.

To develop inclusive sexuality policy, empowerment and pleasure must be embedded in conversations about danger and desire for young women. Free-flowing conversation need to be included in the new HPE curriculum as discourses that have been silenced become a “dense transfer point for relations of power” (Foucault, 1980, p. 103). Government 147

initiatives to provide more ‘inclusive’ forms of sexuality education through teaching about gender identity and consent provides a neoliberalist biopedagogy of the fit and sexually responsible young person marking this dense transfer point in current HPE policy, and a missing discourse of desire that is silenced in this process. The concept of thick desire and pleasure also contributes data to discovering more embodied subjectivities for young women in their HPE experiences.

Though sometimes theories of discourse and critiques of gender provide sound platforms to theorize girl’s constructions of racialized and gendered embodiment, a limitation of some theories lies with their privileging of the discursive and a failure to accommodate the weightiness of the gendered body (Colebrook, 2000). Colebrook (2000) suggests that Butler’s account of the body “conflates the being of a thing with the mode in which it is known” and this flight from the materiality of the body has focused attention away from lived material bodies (p. 78).

A common critique of poststructuralism is the absorption into theories of discourse and performativity, encouraging followers to “neglect the influence of the material, economic and structural factors in the operation of power/knowledge” (Hall, 1997, p. 51). Satina and Hultgren (2001) found that the bodies of girls have “traditionally been relegated to absent entities within the learning environment, including in physical education” (p. 521). They argue that a meaningful education is one that embraces embodiment and various learning styles so that the needs of all students are met and cultural stereotypes and preconceptions of society are eradicated (Satina & Hultgren, 2001, p. 521).

A theoretical recommendation, then, is a commitment in HPE to a ‘pedagogy of embodiment’ in which students are encouraged to develop an awareness of their bodies, which is particularly important for female youth who have traditionally been “limited in the physical endeavours by culturally imposed gender role restrictions” (Satina & Hultgren, 2001, p. 521). Locating embodied practices, then, could offer young women an alternative space to take up discursive practices of gendered identities and locate the materiality of their own bodies in HPE class. 148

6.5 Limitations of Study As discussed in the Chapter Three, crossing borders can prove to be a complex adventure in educational research. Language and cultural barriers have been confronted on many levels during this project. The cocreation of data presented challenges in translating words such as ‘fit,’ ‘ideal,’ and ‘body image.’ Brazilian interviewers note that they felt confined to interview questions and were unable to question certain student responses beyond these questions. Infusing this study with Brazilian researchers’ intellectual perspectives was essential to ensure authentic data was being delivered through this study.

To counteract these barriers further, the POLIFE’s research team and I regularly convened via SKYPE to discuss data and analyze student responses. This exercise proved beneficial and allowed me to become more self-reflexive in interpreting data in both cultural contexts. Nonetheless, it is difficult to write from a lens that is completely dissociated from one’s own intellectual biography, and this was a limitation of this cross-cultural project. The meaning given to particular student positions was situated within my own cultural positioning. This proves to be a limitation in cross-cultural projects written from the viewpoint of one researcher. To overcome this barrier, this study borrowed from Stanley (1990) the concept of including the “intellectual biographies” of the various researchers contributing to this study. Both interviewers in Brazil, therefore, included an intellectual biography and summary of reflections along with student data.

In additional to cross-cultural barriers that existed, the students who participated in this study were only a small cross-section of the diverse set of young women that inhabit urban centres in both countries. These 40 girls cannot be considered statistically representative of the larger populations in Toronto and Porto Alegre. In Toronto, interviews took place in two schools with similar cultural and sociodemographic populations, to keep consistency between Canadian student responses. In Porto Alegre, interviews took place in a public school and an “alternative” school, which is considered a private school environment. Therefore, the responses between these two schools differed considerably, as students received different 149

instructions and hailed from a different socioeconomic status than their public-school counterparts. To approach this limitation, I sought to explore in-depth understanding of shared aspects of these young women’s social lives. Focusing on shared cultural experience replaced the need for representation with the potential to expand the number and diversity of participants in future work.

Another limitation was that I did not include interviews with other key players in policy and media. I also did not include young people who identified as male, non-binary, or transgendered. For the scope of this project, I focused on analyzing policy and gaining perspective about practice from girls, as the primary objective was to provide insight into ways that HPE experiences could be modified to be more inclusive and enjoyable for this group. Working with these young women provided a multilayered and focused analysis that fit within the scope of the project. Future work, however, might include a wider range of participants.

6.6 Practical Contributions It is my hope that this project provides insight into the dynamics of power that shapes the young body in HPE in Toronto and Porto Alegre. Unearthing the conceptual lines upon which the gendered body is constructed may begin conversations about inclusivity and broader acceptance of diverse bodies. This acceptance may contribute to young women locating intrinsic, pleasurable experiences with respect to both physical activity and sexuality in the future.

In terms of practical contributions, this dissertation provides a “critique of truth” and power embedded in HPE policy and public pedagogies in Canada and Brazil. This is the first study of its kind to utilize cross-cultural analysis to uncover contradictory and complementary relationships between student perspectives in HPE in two distinct cultures. Using the concept of policy and education as the “cultural transmission” of values, this study offers insight into the cultural fabric of Porto Alegre and Toronto through the perspective of youth. Most importantly, data from young women suggest that there is a missing discourse of 150

pleasure and desire in Canadian HPE policy and practice. Porto Alegre students speak more to the intrinsic and pleasurable benefits of participating in physical activity, whereas Toronto youth focused on biomedicalized and healthist biopedagogies of the fit and healthy body. This focus moves attention away from the inherent pleasure in play and creates numerous negative effects for girls. Given the recent inactivity levels of young people in Ontario, providing alternative methods of promoting a healthy, active lifestyle must be explored. Policy recommendations are included in Chapter Two of this dissertation. To summarize, these recommendations include:

1. Future policy development in Canada (Ontario) and Brazil should include critical media literacy, critical health literacy and social media literacy in a cross-curricular manner; 2. Future policy should include the social determinants of health in HPE overall and specific objectives in Canada and Brazil; 3. Students in Canada and Brazil should be provided with the opportunity to explore the concept of pleasure in sexuality education and be provided with a variety of diverse opportunities to experience personalized pleasure in physical education; 4. Future HPE policy and practice should include objectives that explore social media as a site for resistance to dominant body norms in Canada and Brazil; 5. Future Brazilian and Canadian HPE policy should include objectives related to consent that are gender-neutral and recognize the gendered constructions victimization.

Important contributions are made in uncovering policy language that promotes healthist and biomedicalized biopedagogies of the fit and healthy body. The policy analysis chapter of this dissertation notes similarities and differences between Brazilian and Ontario HPE policy and how these policies are actualized and embodied by young women. Interviewing girls in conjunction with policy analysis provides a thorough glimpse into the current state of HPE in Canada and Brazil and, therefore, can offer important data for future policy development in both countries. Feminist poststructural and feminist postcolonial theory were well suited for 151

uncovering these objectives. Feminist poststructural theory allows for a thorough exploration into the power struggles that construct the body as sexually specific and sociocultural. Teasing apart these narratives through policy and student perspective allows for valuable insights to be unearthed through this lens. This research, therefore, has practical application for the educational research community, policy and government agencies, and community and school programming initiatives.

6.7 Future Research Directions This comparative project can be expanded in several directions. Future research could involve interviews and observation of teachers in practice extending the work of Petherick in the PCS field (2013). Many students speak to teacher practices varying greatly from policy, so a study that explored both policy and teacher practices would prove beneficial to account for these discrepancies. In Ontario, this research direction would be particularly useful as teachers begin to deliver the modified curriculum in elementary and high schools. Another potential research direction could involve interviews with youth in elementary schools to account for the foundational instruction they receive during these formative years.

Interviews could also be conducted with policy writers and key informants of information on HPE and physical activity initiatives. Interviewing these key informants could inform on the range of normative femininities/masculinities embedded in policy and may open up possibilities for them to reconsider their positioning on moral imperatives and personal responsibility in HPE. Future work could also include interviews with Trans youth and youth who identify as boys.

Future research could also focus greater attention to social determinants of health on a cross- cultural scale. I have included briefly the absence of the social determinants of health in this policy analysis, but future work could explore, in depth, possibilities for the inclusion of class, race, and sociodemographic status in policy and practice. This work is best accomplished through a more thorough investigation into intersectionality theory which was

152

not thoroughly explored in this study. Intersectionality, as described by the term’s founder, Kimberlé Crenshaw (2017), is a lens through which to uncover where

power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things (p. 1).

Intersectionality theory was originally introduced into social theory in the late 1980s by Crenshaw as a lens through which to describe and deconstruct bias and violence against Black women. Crenshaw (1989) asserts that there has been a tendency to treat gender and race as mutually exclusive categories of experience (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 139). The original goal of Crenshaw’s work, then, was to examine how this tendency is “perpetuated by a single-axis framework that is dominant in antidiscrimination law and that is also reflected in feminist theory and antiracist politics” (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 139). Over the past several decades the term is now at the forefront of national conversations about identity politics and racial justice.

Racialized gender was a concept that began to emerge but was not fully unpacked in this study. I was grappling with the intersectional nature of racialized gender that the young women brought up in conversations about media, and I spent a good deal of time reflecting on these insights during the writing process. Future work could deploy intersectionality as a lens to study how gender, class, sexuality and race are experienced along multiple axes of oppression. Following Crenshaw’s assertion, that intersectionality work should be introduced in public education to invoke real change, future research directions could include hands-on tools such as art or social media campaigns to illuminate how young women are experiencing systemic institutional harm. Crenshaw’s team, for example, is currently working with local communities and advocates to develop “ways they can better see these problems and better intervene in advocacy” (Crenshaw, 2017, p. 1). This project could be

153

extended into physical education and media studies to further unpack the intersectional nature of young women’s identities in multicultural, urban centres such as Toronto.

6.8 Concluding Remarks It is not new information that youth in post-industrialized nations have been targeted by government initiatives as inactive and contributing to unhealthy practices (Wright, 2009). The current Canadian Tire “Bring Back Play” campaign and the well-known “Body Break” production in the 1990s in Canada are examples of such initiatives. Youth have been targeted as inactive and unhealthy for countless reasons ranging from a dependence on technology to lack of sleep (ParticipACTION Report Card, 2016). Sedentary lifestyles originate from more complex issues that are not being explored by government or implemented in policies. Youth participating in this study illuminate how a complex set of factors contribute to their anxiety and lack of involvement in HPE and physical activity.

Furthermore, future policy and practice in HPE must consider the complex intersections of race, gender and individual differences related to ability, faith, sexuality, and so on, in order for school boards to create curriculum and media that can coproduce activity content with youth input that may be inclusive and enjoyable from the perspective of diverse youth. Current HPE practices contribute to many girls experiencing negative feelings towards their own bodies and toward HPE classes and curriculum. This study has uncovered the processes by which young women have taken up gendered and racialized bodies in HPE and media. Removing the ludique (pleasure) through neoliberal reform in HPE has been reiterated within this study. It is my hope that this study has contributed important insights to the community of inquiry in HPE with an aim of creating more holistic, student-centered policies and practices for young women on a transnational scale.

154

REFERENCES Adam, M. (1997). The Trouble with Normal. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.

Alcoff, L. (2006). Visible identities: Race, gender, and the self. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Allen, L., & Carmody, M. (2012). ‘Pleasure has no passport’: Re-visiting the potential of pleasure in sexuality education. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 12, 455–468.

Allen, L. (2005). Sexual subjects; young people, sexuality and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Alvesson, M., & Billing, Y. (2009). Understanding gender and organisations. 2nd ed. London: UK: Sage.

Angrosino, M. V. (2005). Recontextualizing observation: Ethnography, pedagogy, and the prospects for a progressive political agenda. In Denzin N.K, & Lincoln Y.S. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 729–745). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Andsager, J. (2014). Research directions in social media and body image. Sex Roles, 71(407), 407–413. doi:10.1007/s11199-014-0430-4

Armstrong, D. (1993). The rise of surveillance medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, 17(3), 394–404. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10933329

Atencio, M. (2010). The Life Activity Project in the American inner-city: Multi-ethnic young people's engagements with health discourses. In J. Wright & D. Macdonald (Eds.), Young people, physical activity and the everyday (pp. 150–161). NY: Routledge.

Atkinson, M. (2008). Exploring male femininity in the ‘Crisis’: Men and cosmetic surgery. Body & Society, 14(3): 67–87.

Atkinson, M. (2012). Qualitative research on sport and physical culture. London, U.K. Emerald Group.

Auger, J., & Krug, K. (2013). Under the rainbow: A primer on queer issues in Canada. Toronto: Fernwood.

Ayo, N. (2010). Understanding health promotion in a neoliberal climate and the making of health conscious citizens. Critical Public Health, 22(1), 95–105. doi: 10.1080/09581596.2010.520692

155

Azzarito. (2009). The rise of the corporate curriculum. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the 'obesity epidemic' (pp. 183–196), NY: Routledge.

Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What's the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, Australia: Pearson Education.

Ball, J.S. (1994). What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes. Discourse, 13(2), 10–17. doi: 10.1080/0159630930130203

Beausoleil, N. (2009). An impossible task? Preventing disordered eating in the context of the current obesity panic. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (eds.). Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic.’ London and New York: Routledge.

Berstein, B. (2001). From pedagogies to knowledges, in: A. Morais, & B. Neves, & H. Daniels (Eds.), Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy. The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research. New York, Peter Lang.

Betti, M. (1998). A janela de vidro: Esporte, televisao e educaca o fısica. Campinas: Papirus.

Betti, M. (1991). educação física e sociedade: a educação física na escola Brasileira de 1º e 2º Graus. São Paulo, Brasil: Movimento.

Betti, M., Knijink, J., Venancio, C., Neto, L. (2015). In search of the autonomous and critical individual: a philosophical and pedagogical analysis of the physical education curriculum of Sao Paulo (Brazil). Physical education and Sport Pedagogy, 20(4), 427-441.

Billings, G., & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97(1). 47–68.

Bordo, S. (1993). The male body: A new look at men in public and private. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bourke, B. (2014). Positionality: reflecting on the research process. The Qualitative Report, 19, 1–9.

Brazil. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatıstica/IBGE, Ministerio da Educaca o Desporto,Secretaria de Educacao Fundamental. (1997). Parametros curriculares nacionais: Educacao Fısica. Brasılia-DF: MEC, SEF.

Burrows, L., & Wright, J. (2007). Prescribing practices: Shaping healthy children in schools, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 15: 83–93. Doi: 10.1163/092755607X181685

156

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, London.

Butler, J. (1999). Revisiting bodies and pleasures. Theory, Culture & Society 16(2), 11–20.

Calmore, J. (1995). Racialized space and the culture of segregation: "Hewing a stone of hope from a mountain of despair. (Symposium - Shaping American Communities: Segregation, Housing & the Urban Poor). University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 143, (5). 1233–1272.

Campos, P. (2004). The Obesity Myth. Gotham: New York, NY.

Capparroz, F. (2003). “O que não pode ser que não é o que não pode ser que não é”. In: Bracht, Valter, Ricardo. (Org.) A Educação Física no Brasil e na Argentina: identidade, desafios e perspectivas. Campinas: Autores Associados.

Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough. N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press

Cliff, K., & Wright, J. (2010). Confusing and contradictory: Considering obesity discourse and eating disorders as they shape body pedagogies in PHE. Sport, Education and Society, 15 (2), 221–233. doi: 10.1080/13573321003683893

Colebrook, C. (2006). Deleuze: A Guide for the perplexed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Connell, E. (2005). Desire as interruption: Young women and sexuality education in Ontario, Canada. Sex Education, 5(3), 253–268. doi: 10.1080/14681810500171433

Cosentino, F., & Howell, M. (1971). A History of Physical Education in Canada. Toronto, Ontario: General Publishing.

Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 7, 663–680. Doi:10.2190/3H2H-3XJN-3KAY-G9NY

Crenshaw, K. (2017, June 8). Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later. Colombia Law School. Retrieved from http://www.law.columbia.edu/news/2017/06/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8), 139-171.

157

Creswell, J. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

da Silva, D. (2013). Sex education in the eyes of primary school teachers in novo hamburgo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Reproductive Health Matters, 21(41), 114-123.

Darnell, S., Joseph, J., & Nakamura, Y. (2012). Race and sport in Canada: intersecting inequalities. Toronto. ON: Canadian Scholars Press.

Del Priore, M., & V. A. Melo, (Eds.). (2009). A historia do esporte no Brasil. Sao Paulo: Unesp.

Diem, S., Young, M., Welton, A., Cummings, K., & Lee, P. (2014). The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(9). 1068–1090. doi: 10.1080/09518398.2014.916007

Dieter, N. (2005) Elections in the Americas: A data handbook (Vol II). Germany: University of Heidelberg Press.

Douglas, D., & Halas, J. (2013). The wages of Whiteness: Confronting the nature of ivory tower racism and the implications for physical education. Sport, Education and Society. 18 (4), 453–474. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2011.602395

Dwyer, S., & Buckle, J. (2009). The space between: On being an insider-outsider in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(1), 54- 62. Doi: 10.1177/160940690900800105

Easton, D. (1953). The political system: An inquiry into the state of political science. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Edmonds, A. (2010). Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press.

Edwards, J. (1993). Survey of electronic corpora and related resources for language researchers. talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Edwards, N. (2016). Women’s reflections on formal sex education and the advantage of gaining informal sexual knowledge through a feminist lens. Sex Education, 16(3), 266–278.

Ehrlich, S., Meyerhoff, M., & Holmes, J. (2014). The feminist foundations of language, gender and sexuality research. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

158

Elster, J. (1986). Introduction. In J. Elster (Ed.), Rational choice. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

Ember, C., & Ember, M. (2009). Cross-cultural Research Methods. Alta Mira Press: Lanham, MD.

Evans, B. (2006). “I’d feel ashamed:” Girls’ bodies and sports participation. Gender, Place and Culture, 13(5), 547–561.

Evans-Agnew. R., Johnson, S., Lui, F., & Boutain, D. (2016). Applying critical discourse analysis in health policy research: Case Studies in Regional, Organizational, and Global Health. Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 0(0), 1–11. Doi: 10.1177/1527154416669355

Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London, UK: Pearson ESL.

Fairclough, N. (2008). The discourse of new labour: Critical discourse analysis. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor & S. J. Yates (Eds.), Discourse as data: A guide for analysis (pp. 229–266). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London. UK: Longman.

Fine, M. (1988). Sexuality, schooling, and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire. Harvard Educational Review, 58, 29–53.

Fine, M., & McClelland, S. (2006). Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these years. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 297. Doi:http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.17763/haer.76.3.w5042g23122n

Forbes, L., & Livingston, D. (2012). In E. Singleton, A. Varpalotai, (Eds). Pedagogy in Motion: A community of inquiry for human movement studies (pp. 55-80). London, Canada: Althouse Press.

Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Vol. I: An introduction. New York: Random Books.

Foucault, M., 1980: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972- 1977 (ed. C. Gordon). Brighton: Harvester.

Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.),Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality, with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault (pp. 87–104). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 159

Frohlich, K., Alexander, S., & Fusco, C. (2013). All work and no play? The nascent discourse on play and pleasure in health research. Social Theory and Health, 11(1), 1– 18. Doi:10.1057/sth.2012.18

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum: New York, NY.

Garcia Selgas, F. (2014). Gender embodiment as gender-enacted body: A review of intimate partner violence and gender embodiment perspectives. Gender Issues, 21(1), 31– 46. Doi: 10.1007/s12147-014-9124-z

Gard, M. (2008). When a boy’s gotta dance: New masculinities, old pleasures. Sport, Education and Society, 13, 181–193. doi:10.1080/13573320801957087

Gard, M. (2011). Truth, belief and the cultural politics of obesity scholarship and public health policy. Critical Public Health, 21(1), 37-48.

Gard, M., & Wright, J. (2001) Managing uncertainty: Obesity discourses and physical education in a risk society. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 20, 535– 549. doi: 10.1080/13573321003683893

Gasper, D., & Apthorpe, R. (2000). Discourse analysis and policy discourse. Sydney, Australia: Five Houses International.

Gastaldo, D. (1997). Is health education good for you? Re-thinking health education through the concept of bio-power. Foucault, Health and Medicine. London: Routledge.

Gerdin, G., & Pringle, R. (2017). The politics of pleasure: an ethnographic examination exploring the dominance of the multi-activity sport-based physical education model. Sport, Education & Society, 22(2), 194-213.

Giroux, H. (1990). Perspectives and imperatives curriculum theory, textual authority, and the role of teachers as public intellectuals. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 5(4), 228– 240.

Giroux, H. (2010). Lessons from Paulo Freire. The chronicle of higher education. Oct.17 2010. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Lessons-From-Paulo- Freire/124910/

Goellner, S., Votre, S., & Pinheiro, M. (2012). ‘Strong mothers make strong children’: Sports, eugenics and nationalism in Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sport, Education and Society, 17, 555–570. doi:10.1080/13573322.2011.561307

160

Gramorelli, L., & Neira, G., (2010). Ten years of national curriculum parameters: The practice of physical education in its authors’ perspective. Movimento, 15(4), 107– 126.

Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University.

Hall, S. (1997). Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. London, UK: Sage.

Halse, C. (2009). Bio-citizenship: Virtue discourses and the birth of the bio-citizen. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the 'obesity epidemic' (pp. 45–59). New York, NY: Routledge.

Harris, M., & Sunderland, N. (2012). Photo elicitation: Commonalities and uniqueness in cross cultural descriptions of a multicultural mental health service. Multimodal Communication, 1(2), 163-179.

Harwood, V. (2009). Theorizing biopedagogies. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the 'obesity epidemic' (pp.15–30). New York, NY: Routledge.

Hatim, B., Mason, I. (1997). The Translator as communicator. New York, NY: Routledge

Hoechsmann, M., & DeWaard, H. (2015). Mapping digital literacy policy and practice in the Canadian education landscape. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/publication-report/full/mapping-digital- literacy.pdf

Holland, J., Ramazanoglu, C., Scott, Sharpe, S & Thomson, R. (1992). Risk, power and the possibility of pleasure: Young women and safer sex. AIDS Care, 4(3), 273–283. hooks, B. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Hutchinson Grondin, M. (2015). More than plumbing: The history of sexual education in ws Ontario, 1960–1979. Electronic thesis and dissertation repository. 3457. Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3457

Illich, I. (1975). The Medicalization of Life. Journal of Medical Ethics, 1, 90-91. doi: 10.1136/jme.1.2.90

Ingham, R. (2005). ‘We didn’t cover that at school:’ Education against pleasure or education for pleasure? Sex Education, 5(4), 375–388. Doi: 10.1080/14681810500278451

Irigaray, L. (1993). An ethics of sexual difference. (C. Burke & G. C. Gill, Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 161

Johnston, R. J., & J. D. Sidaway (2004). Geography & geographers: Anglo-American human geography since 1945, (6th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Jones, T. (2011). A Sexuality Education Discourses Framework: Conservative, Liberal, Critical, and Postmodern. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 6(2), 133-175.

Jones, T. (2009). Framing the framework: Discourses in Australia’s national values education policy. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 8(1), 35–57

Jorgensen, M., & Phillips, L. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method (1st ed.). London, UK: Sage.

Jovchelovitch, S. (2001). Social representations, public life and social construction In: Deaux, K., & Philogene, G., (Eds.). Representations of the social: Bridging theoretical traditions. London, UK: Blackwell.

Kehler, M., & Atkinson, M. (2010). Boy bodies: Speaking the unspoken. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Kellner, D. (1995). Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern. Routledge: London, UK.

Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2007). Critical media literacy, democracy, and the reconstruction of education. In D. Macedo & S. Steinberg (Eds.), Media literacy: A reader (pp. 3– 23). NewYork, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Kendall, E. (October, 2015). Female athletes often face femininity police – especially Serena Williams. The Guardian. Retreived from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/14/serena-williams-female- athletes

Kidd, B. (1996). The struggle for Canadian sport. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Kincheloe, J. L., & McLaren, P. (2005). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed. pp. 303–342). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kunz, E. (1991). Educacao fısica: Ensino & mudanca. Ijuı: Unijuı.

Kunz, E. (1994). Transformacao didtico-pedagogica do esporte. Ijuı: Uniju.

Lazar, M. (2014). Feminist critical discourse analysis. In The handbook of language, gender and sexuality (2nd ed., pp. 180–200). John Wiley & Sons, Los Angeles.

162

LeBesco, K. (2011). Neoliberalism, public health, and the moral perils of fatness. Critical Public Health, 21(2), 153-164.

Leeman, J., Sommers, J., Vu, M., Jernigan, J., Payne, G., Thompson, D., & Ammerman, (2012). An evaluation framework for obesity prevention policy intervention Preventing Chronic Disease, 9, Retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd9.110322.

Lenskyj, H. J. (2008). Women’s issues and gender relations. In J. Crossman (Ed.), Canadian sport sociology (pp. 99–115). Scarborough, Canada: Thompson-Nelson.

Leonard, M., & Knight, M. (2015). Look and Tell: Using Photo-Elicitation Methods with Teenagers. Children’s Geographies, 13(6): 629–642.

Livingstone, S. (2014). Developing social media literacy: How children learn to interpret risky opportunities on social network sites. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 39(3).

Lorde, A. (1980). Uses of the erotic: The erotic as power. Paper presented at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mt. Holyoke College.

Lupton, D. (1999). Risk and Sociocultural Theory: New Directions and Perspectives.

MacNeill, M., & Rail, G. (2010). The visions, voices and moves of young 'Canadians:' Exploring diversity, subjectivity and cultural constructions of fitness and health. In J. Wright & D. Macdonald (Eds.), Young people, physical activity and the everyday (pp. 175–193). New York, NY: Routledge.

Manovich, L. (2009). The practice of everyday (media) life: From mass consumption to mass cultural production? Critical Inquiry, 35,319–331. doi:10.1086/596645

McCabe, M., & Ricciardelli, L. (2003). Sociocultural influences on body image and body changes among adolescent boys and girls. Journal of Social Psychology, 143(1), 5–26. doi: 10.1080/14681810500278451

McDowell, L. (1999). In and out of place: Bodies and embodiment. In Gender, identity and space: Understanding feminist geographies. (pp. 34-70). Minnesota: University of Minneapolis Press.

McIntyre, L. (2012). An analysis of the Ontario health and physical education curriculum – through the eyes of Toronto Youth. Toronto, Canada. University of Toronto Press.

MediaSmarts. (2014). Young Canadians in a Wired World: Life Online. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/pdfs/publication- report/full/YCWWIII_Life_Online_FullReport.pdf 163

Millington, B. (2017). Fit for prosumption: interactivity and the second fitness boom, Media, Culture and Society, 38(8), 1184-1200. Doi https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716643150

Mills, C. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Murray, S. J., & Steinberg, D. L. (2015). Autopoiesis/ethopoie- sis: Bioconvergent media in the age of neoliberal biopolitics. MediaTropes, 5, 125–139.

Neff, J. (2013). Dove: The evolution from ‘Evolution:' Eight years later, how Unilever brand scored another viral hit. AdAge.com.Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/news/dove-evolution-evolution/241971/

Nichter, M. (2000). Fat talk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Norman, M. E. (2009). Living in the shadow of an "obesity epidemic": The discursive construction of boys and their bodies. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy dissertation. University of Toronto, Canada.

Norman, M. (2013). “Dere’s Not Just One Kind of Fat”: Embodying the “Skinny” Self Through Constructions of the Fat Masculine Other. Men and Masculinities, 16(4), 407-431. doi: 10.1177/1097184X13502662

Negra, D., Pike, K., & Radley, E. (2013). Gender, nation, and reality TV. Television and New Media, 14(3), 187-193.

Nutbeam, D. (2000). Health literacy as a public health goal: a challenge for contemporary health education and communication strategies into the 21st century. Health Promotion International, 15(3). 260–289.

Oliver, V., van der Muelen, E., Larkin, J., Flicker, S. (2014). If you teach them, they will come: Providers reactions to incorporating pleasure into youth sexual education, 104(2), 142-147.

Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (1929). The Ontario curriculum. Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (1999). The Ontario curriculum: Health and physical education. Toronto, Canada: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (2002). The Ontario Curriculum: Health and physical education. Toronto, Canada: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

164

Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (2010). The Ontario Curriculum: Health and physical education. Toronto, Canada: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training . Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (2015). The Ontario Curriculum: Health and physical education. Toronto, Canada: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training.

Palmary, I. (2011). “In your experience”: Research as gendered cultural translation. Gender, Place & Culture, 18(1), 99–113.

Participation Canada. (2016). The participation report card on physical activity for children and youth. Retrieved from https://www.participaction.com/en-ca/thought- leadership/report-card/2016

Paul, D. (2005). Rescaling International Political Economy. Routledge: London, UK.

Perloff, R. (2014). Social media effects on young women’s body image concerns: Theoretical perspectives and an agenda for research. Sex Roles, 71(11), 363–377. Doi: http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1007/s11199-014-0384-6

Petherick, L. (2013). Producing the young biocitizen: secondary students’ negotiation of learning in physical education. Sex, Education and Society, 18(6). 711–730. Doi: 10.1080/13573322.2011.605116

Plowman, L., & Stevenson, O. (2012). Using Mobile Phone Diaries to Explore Children’s Everyday Lives. Childhood, 19(4). 1–15.

Prunty, J.J. (1985). Signposts for a critical educational policy analysis. Australian Journal of Education, 24(2), 133–140.

Rail, G. (2012). The birth of the obesity clinic. Confessions of the flesh, biopedagogies and physical culture. Sociology of Sport Journal, 29(2). 227–253. Doi: https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1123/ssj.29.2.227

Rail, G. et al. (2010). The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects. Social Theory and Health, 8(3), 259–279. Doi: http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1057/sth.2009.10

Rayside, D. (2014). The Inadequate Recognition of Sexual Diversity by Canadian Schools: LGBT Advocacy and its Impact. Journal of Canadian Studies, 48(1), 190-225.

Rich, E., Evans, J., & De Pian, L. (2011). Children's bodies, surveillance and the obesity crisis. In E. Rich, L. Monaghan, & L. Aphramor (Eds.), Debating obesity: Critical perspectives (pp. 139–163). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

165

Rail, G., & Jette, S. (2014). Reflections of biopedagogies and/of public health: On bio-others, rescue missions, and social justice. Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies, 15(5), 327–336. Doi: doi: 10.1177/1532708615611703

Rasmussen, M. (2012), Pleasure/desire, sexularism and sexuality education. Sex Eduation, 12(4), 469-481.

Rist, R. (1994). Influencing the policy process with qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin &Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 545–557). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing educational policy. London, UK: London. Routledge.

Rodrigues, A. (2002). Gênese e sentido dos parâmetros curriculares nacionais e seus desdobramentos para a Educação Física escolar brasileira. Revista Brasileira de Ciências do Esporte, Campinas, 23(2), 5–147.

Rothenberg, B. (July, 2015). Tennis’s Top Women Balance Body Image with Ambition. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/sports/tennis/tenniss-top-women-balance-body- image-with-quest-for-success.html

Rubin, L., Fitts, M., & Becker, A. (2003). “Whatever feels good in my soul”: Body ethics and aesthetics among African American and Latina Women. Cult Med Psychiatry, 27(1), 49–75. Doi: http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1023/A:1023679821086

Satina, B., & Hultgren, F. (2001). The absent body of girls made visible: Embodiment as the focus in E=education. Studies in Philosophy of Education. 20(6). 521–534. Doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00333.x

Shilling, C. (2008). Body pedagogies, obesity discourse and disordered eating. In J. Evans, E. Rich, B. Davies & R. Allwood (Eds.), Education, disordered eating and obesity discourse (pp. ix-xv). New York, NY: Routledge

Schneider, A., & Ingram, H. (1990). Behavioral assumptions of policy tools. Journal of Politics, 52, 510–529.

Shilling, C. (2009). Body pedagogics, society and schooling. In J. Evans, E. Rich, B. Davies, & R.Allwood (Eds). Education, disordered eating and obesity discourse: fat fabrications, New York, NY: Routledge.

166

Scheinder, O., Neto, A., Dos Santos, W., da Silva, M., & Votre, S. (2016). American influences in Brazilian physical education: Clues in the specialized periodical press (1932-1950). Sport, Education and Society, 21(2), 1053–1070. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2014.979145

Singleton, E., & Varpalotai, A. (2012). Pedagogy in motion: A community of inquiry for human movement studies. London, Ontario: Althouse Press.

Skeggs, B. (1997). Formations of class and gender. London: Sage.

Skrabanek, P. (1994). The death of humane medicine and the rise of coercive healthism. Suffolk, UK: The Social Affairs Unit.

Stanley, L. (1990). Moments of Writing: Is there a feminist auto-biography. Gender and History, 2, 58–67. Doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.1990.tb00079.x

Statistics Canada. (2006). 2006 census survey. Retrieved from statcan.ca/census- recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/index.cfm?Lang=E

St. Pierre, E. A. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 477–515.

Stout, E., Frame, M. (2004). Body image disorder in adolescent males: Strategies for school counsellors. Professional School Counselling, 8(2), 179–190.

Sykes, S., Wills, J., Rowlands, G., & Popple, K. (2013). Understanding critical health literacy: a concept analysis. BMC Public Health, 1–10. Doi: doi.org/10.1186/1471- 2458-13-150

Takahashi, F. (2017, May 22). Discussion in Brazil, Curriculum Base Faces Obstacles in the USA. Folha De S. Paulo.

Taylor, C. (2014). Michel Foucault: Key Concepts. New York, NY: Routledge.

Taylor, S. (1997). Critical policy analysis: Exploring contexts, texts, and consequences. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 18(19), 23–35. doi: 10.1080/0159630970180102

Temple, B. (1999). Diaspora, diaspora space and Polish women. Women’s Studies International Forum, 22(1), 17–24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277- 5395(98)00096-X

Theberge, N. (1987). Sport and women’s empowerment, Women’s Studies International Forum,10(4), 387–393. Doi: 10.1016/0277-5395(87)90056-2

167

Tolman, D. L. (1994). Doing desire: Adolescent girls’ struggles for/with sexuality, Gender & Society, 8, 324–342. Doi: 10.1177/089124394008003003

Tolman, D. L. (2002). Dilemmas of desire: Teenage girls talk about sexuality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Tremblay, M. (2004). The Need for Directly Measured Health Data in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 95(3), 165-168.

Tremblay M., & Willms, J. (2001). Secular trends in the body mass index of Canadian children. CMAJ, 163, l429-1433.

Trebels, A. (2003). A concepcao dialogica do movimento humano. In Educacao fisica critic emancipatria, edited by E. Kunz and A. H. Trebels, 23–48. Ijuı. Unijuı.

“Trolling.” (2004). In Urbandictionary.com. Retrieved from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling

Urbandictionary.com (2004). Trolling. Retrieved from http://urbandictionary.com

Wright J. (2009). Biopower, biopedagogies and the obesity epidemic. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the 'obesity’ epidemic; Governing bodies. London, UK: Routledge. van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (p. 352). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Weimer, D., & Vining, A. R. (2011). Policy analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman.

Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. Farnborough, UK: Saxon House.

Wolcott, H. (1999). Ethnography: A way of seeing. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

World Health Organization. (2015). Global recommendations on physical activity for health. Retrieved from whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599979_eng.pdf?ua=

Wright, J., & Halse, C. (2015). The healthy child citizen: Biopedagogies and web-based health promotion. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 35(6), 837–855. Doi: 10.1080/01425692.2013.800446

168

Young, I. (1990). Throwing like a girl. I. Young (Ed.), throwing like a girl (pp. 141–159). Bloomington, Indiana: U.P.

169

Appendix A – Combined Letter of Recruitment and Parental/Guardian Consent Form

Dear Parent/Guardian,

I am a PhD student in the Graduate Faculty of Exercise Science at the University of Toronto, and a teacher in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). I am studying how students at

[insert school name] understand their physical and health education (PHE) classes, their experiences in terms of their gender and culture, and the influences media messages may have.

This study is open to students who are not currently in one of my classes, have not been previously taught by me, and will not be taught by me in the future. The TDSB and the school principal have given permission for this study to be carried out in you child’s school. I am writing to request your permission for your child to take part in this study that will involve an interview with me.

There will be 1-2 interviews with your child that will take place at school during a lunch hour or during a spare period or after school so that the interview will not interfere with regular classes. I will be hosting all interviews and sparking a discussion with your child by asking questions about PHE courses. This interview will be audio-taped unless your child requests that the session or a portion of the session not be recorded. A healthy snack will be provided for your child during this interview.

170

Participation in this study is voluntary and will neither affect your child’s attendance in class, nor his/her evaluation by the school. Information and opinions collected in these interviews will not be linked to your child’s name. Research transcripts and reports will NOT use actual names; instead, pseudonyms (fake names) will be assigned to each participant to enhance anonymity. The research results will be written up with a focus on key ideas, rather than specific points that might identify a particular participant. The only exception to this promise of confidentiality is that if your child/ward reveals s/he is being harmed or harming others, I have a duty to report this to the principal.

At any time during the research process you or the research participant can contact me for further clarification of the research process. If your child chooses to withdraw from the study,

I will ensure that none of the responses they provide will be included in any of the data write up or the final project and their audiotaped interview will be deleted from my files permanently. Aside from my PhD supervisor, I will be the only person who will have access to the raw collected on audio tapes, and in transcriptions of the interviews; these documents will be protected by storage in a locked cabinet at the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport at the University of Toronto and within encrypted digital files on my password protected laptop and USB key. I will destroy all raw data at the completion of the data collection process of this study and will store data collected in this study for 7 years after the completion of the

PhD.

171

Please indicate whether you permit your child to take part in this interview by signing the attached consent form. Keep one copy for your records, and return one copy of the consent form to me. A summary of the research results can be requested at the completion of this study.

If you have questions about the rights of your son/daughter and/or how he/she has been treated as a research participant, you may contact the University of Toronto Office of Research Ethics at [email protected] or 416-946-3273.

Sincerely,

172

Parental/Guardian Consent Form

I understand this study is about how students understand their physical and health education classes, their experiences in terms of their gender and culture, and the influences media messages may have.

I understand the information collected in these interviews will be kept confidential in terms of not revealing my child/ward’s name and that pseudonyms will be used in the final project.

I understand the researcher has a duty to report any disclosures of bullying, child abuse/neglect or any other statements deemed to be detrimental to the emotional, physical and psychological health to the principal or child welfare professionals.

I agree to allow ______to take part in.

(Student’s first and family name)

(please check all that apply :)

□ the group discussion

173

□ observation of lunchtime and after school physical activities

I do not wish______to take part in this study

(child’s name)

□ I confirm that my child is NOT currently enrolled as a student in one of Laura Elliott’s

classes.

□ I have been given a copy of this consent form.

□ I would like to receive a summary of the research results

e-mail : ______.

Parent or Guardian’s name (please print): ______

Parent or Guardian’s signature: ______

Date : ______

Please return completed forms by: ______

174

Appendix B – Combined Letter of Recruitment and Student Assent

Dear Student,

I am a Doctoral student in Exercise Science at the University of Toronto. I am studying how

your physical and health education classes at school and your media choices affect your

understandings of gender. This study is open to students who are not currently in one of my

classes, who have not been taught by me in the past, and will not be taught by me in the future.

I am writing to request your permission to take part in an interview with me that will take

about an hour at school during lunch, spares or directly after school. This research will not

interfere with your studies and will NOT affect your grades in any way. Each interview will be

audio-taped unless you request that the session or a portion of the session not be recorded.

Your name will not be used in this discussion and your real name will not be put on the

audiofile label or in any reports.

Participation in this study is voluntary and will NOT affect your attendance in classes or your

evaluation by the school. All information collected will be strictly confidential in terms of not

being associated with your real name. I will replace your actual names in all research reports

with a pseudonym (fake names) that you choose at the time of the group discussion. The

information and ideas gathered during the discussions will be written up in a manner that will

NOT identify any particular participants. The only exception to this promise of confidentiality is that if you reveal that you are being harmed or harming others, I have a duty to report this to

175

the principal. Aside from my supervisor, I will be the only person who will have access to the data collected as it will be kept securely in password protected encrypted computer files (any hard copies will be locked in a file in my university office in room 405 of the University of

Toronto’s Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport. I will destroy all electronic and hard copy data files (both audiofiles of the group discussions and typed transcripts) seven years after the completion of my PhD degree.

At any time during the research process you can comment, request changes to your previous responses, and/ or request to have your responses deleted from transcripts of the group discussions. If for any reason, you wish to withdraw from participating in the study, you can request this at any time with no negative consequences.

Please indicate on the attached “Student Assent” form whether or not you will be taking part in this study. I will keep a signed copy and you can keep the second. If you would like to receive a summary of the research results, please let me know and I will be happy to provide a report to you.

If you have questions about your rights and/or how you have been treated as a research participant, you may contact the University of Toronto’s Office of Research Ethics at [email protected] or 416-946-3273.

176

Student Assent Form

I agree to ______to take part in an interview with

Laura Elliott

(Student’s first and family name)

□ I confirm that I am NOT currently a student of Laura Elliott’s

□ I confirm that I have NOT currently been taught Laura Elliott’s

□ I confirm that I will NOT be taught by Laura Elliott in the future (I am in grade 12 and will

not be returning to Marc Garneau next year)

□ I have been given a copy of this assent form.

I understand this study is about how I understand my experiences in physical and health education classes, and the influences these classes and media messages may have on me.

I understand the information collected will be kept confidential and that my real name will never be used in the final project.

I understand participation in this interview is completely voluntary, and will NOT affect my grades.

177

I understand I can drop off of this study at any time and if I do my comments will be removed from the audio-tape and any notes the researcher has written.

I understand the researcher has a duty to report any disclosures of bullying, child abuse or neglect to the principal or child welfare professionals.

Student’s name (please print): ______

Student’s signature: ______

178

Appendix C – Semi-Structured Interview Questions

1.) What type of activities do you do in PHE class?

a. Which of these activities do you enjoy the most?

b. Which do you enjoy the least?

2.) What do you learn in PHE class about what it means to a ‘healthy’ person?

3.) What do you think PHE class and health class is supposed to teach you?

a. What is its purpose?

b. Do you think it accomplishes its goal?

4.) What does it mean to be a healthy boy/girl?

a. What have you learned about being a healthy boy or girl?

b. Where else do you learn about being a healthy person besides PHE class?

c. In the culture of your family, what does it mean to be healthy?

5.) What does it mean to be ‘fit?’

a. Does this differ for boys and girls?

b. What have you learned about being ‘fit’ in PHE classes?

6.) How do you feel about your body in PHE class?

a. Are you able to accomplish the goals set out for you by your teacher?

7.) Do you think that your cultural background influences your experience in PHE?

8.) If you could change anything about your PHE classes, what would these changes be?

Instructions for our second interview on (date and time and location]:

9.) What do media teach you about your body and fitness?

a. Do you learn about the same things in PHE class?

179

b. In your family?

c. From your Friends?

10.) What kind of social media do you use? Which one do you use the most?

11.) You brought an image to our interview that you believe represents the ‘ideal’ healthy and

‘fit’ body to you. Why did you choose this particular image? What do you like/dislike about

this image?

12.) What would you change in the media with regard to this image? Is there anything you

believe it missing from these pictures that you would like to see included?

13.) What ethnicity/race do these images represent? Do you feel your race/ethnicity in

represented in these images?

14.) Do these images motivate you or deter you from maintaining a healthy, active lifestyle?

15.) Have your PE teachers addressed these images? If so, what have you discussed/learned about

media and your body in class?

180

Appendix D – Oral Recruitment Script

Hello everyone! I am here today to invite you to participate in a project I am completing for my PhD in physical education at the University of Toronto.

I am carrying out a study to learn about what young people experience in health and physical education classes, what media you consume and how this affects gender and culture. This is your opportunity to talk about what you believe is working and what can be improved upon in your physical education classes.

As a participant in this study you will participate in a 1-hour long interview with me during either lunch hour or after school in a school location. You may withdrawal from the interview at any time with no penalty to your grades in physical education or any other classes. All information you share will not be linked with your real name; the confidentiality of your real name will be kept by you choosing a pseudonym (fake name) that I’ll use in my research reports.

If you decide you would like to participate, that would be wonderful! Please take a copy of the information letter and consent forms for yourself and your parents to sign. I will return to your class in the beginning of next week to collect these forms. At that time, I’ll inform you of the location of our interview. A healthy snack will be provided at the interview!

I appreciate your time and consideration for my project and hope you have a great class!

181

Appendix E – UFRGS Ethics Approval

182

Appendix F – University of Toronto Ethics Approval

183

Appendix G – TDSB Ethics Approval

184