Students\u27 construction of the body in physical education

Recently, physical education researchers have been concerned about the results of national studies reporting young people\u27s low level of participation in physical activity and health problems associated with inactivity. In general girls are less active than boys, and youth from low socioeconomic classes are less active and are more likely be unhealthy than middle or upper class youth. Blacks have the highest risks of health problems and the highest levels of physical inactivity. Among a number of recommendations included in Healthy People 2010, physical education has been identified as a fundamental site for addressing today\u27s challenges. According to physical education researchers, one way to address these issues is to continue investigations that examine the body from a socially constructed perspective and explore how social constructions of the body relate to individuals\u27 participation in physical activity. From this theoretical view, racialized and gendered ideologies about the body may encourage or constrain individuals\u27 participation in physical activity. Feminist post-structuralist and post-modernist theories have been utilized to further this research line. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how high school students constructed meanings about the body and how these meanings related to their participation in their physical education classes. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were employed. The quantitative method entailed the administration of a survey to assess the importance of Bodily Meanings and Discursive Constructs to 529 high school students in three public schools in the southeastern area of the United States. An ethnographic design was employed in four 9th grade physical education classes in two public high schools. This qualitative phase included an observational period of the classes and formal interviews with 28 high school students and three physical education teachers. Findings in this study provide evidence of gender and racial differences in high school students\u27 construction of meanings about the body and demonstrate these gender and racial differences were influential in students\u27 participation in physical education classes. Suggestions are provided for reconceptualizing the physical education curriculum by destabilizing the gendered and racialized body and degendering and deracializing physical education practices

Representing valued bodies in PE: a visual inquiry with British Asian girls

Background: Status or value in sport and physical education (PE) contexts is often associated with performances of highly proficient sporting bodies, which produce hierarchies of privileged and marginalised gendered and racialised positions. This may be communicated through text and images shared within school, physical cultures and media that young people consume. Understanding how students make sense of constructions of valued bodies in PE, and how this affects their sense of self, can assist in creating spaces for young people to experience alternative narratives. Focus: The paper’s aims are to explore varying ways British Asian girls visualise and make sense of themselves as active or sporting bodies, and what this means for their (dis)engagement in physical activity. Theoretical framework: This study draws on a feminist poststructuralist approach concerning the ways in which young people create multiple subject positions through negotiating or rejecting verbal and visual narratives about physical activity and girlhood. Methods: The data draws from a one-year collaborative visual ethnography conducted with 25 students aged 13–14 in a predominantly British Asian urban secondary school in the UK. In this research, student-participants were included in the data production through being asked to create photographs over a two-week period that represented their views of valued bodies in physical activity contexts in and out of school. Focus group interviews used participant-driven photo elicitation techniques to talk through the images. Findings: In this paper, two British Asian girls’ photos enabled them to talk about, analyse, and reflect on valued or sporting bodies that they saw in visual media. The girls illustrated their performances of constrained or empowered physicalities, within a physical culture that values, among girls, racialised performances of active but feminised bodies. Many girls placed their physical activity significantly in school, and saw sporting bodies as male and elite. Where students do not associate people like themselves as sporting bodies, there may be implications for their continued involvement in physical activity. At the same time, girls were physically activity outside of school despite not seeing themselves as sporty. Reflecting on the invisibility of minority ethnic women in sports media, this research suggests that greater representation may enable young minority women to see themselves and people like them as valued bodies in sport and physical activity

Prevalence of anisakid parasites in fish collected from Apulia region (Italy) and quantification of nematode larvae in flesh

Abstract Anisakis spp. and Hysterothylacium spp. are nematodes that commonly parasitize several fish species. Nematode larvae can be recovered in coelomic cavity and viscera, but also in flesh and have an important economic and public health impact. A total of 1144 subjects of wild teleosts, 340 samples of cephalopods and 128 specimens of farmed fish collected from Apulia region were analysed for anisakid larvae detection by visual inspection of coelomic cavity and viscera and by digestion of the flesh. No nematode larvae were found in farmed fish and cephalopod molluscs. All examined wild-caught fish species were parasitized, except for 5 species for each of which only a few subjects belonging to the same batch were sampled, therefore the results are just indicative. A total of 6153 larvae were isolated; among these, 271 larvae were found in the muscular portion. Larvae were identified by morphological method as belonging to the genera Anisakis (97.2%) (type I and type II) and Hysterothylacium (2.8%). Both nematodes could be found in all fish species, except for round sardinella (Sardinella aurita), infected only by Hysterothylacium spp. and for Mediterranean scaldfish (Arnoglossus laterna), little tunny (Euthynnus alleteratus) and chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) infected only with Anisakis spp.. A sample of 185 larvae was sent to the National Reference Centre for Anisakiasis (C.Re.N.A.) of Sicily for identification at the species level: 180 larvae belonged to the species A. pegreffii and 2 larvae to A. physeteris. The remaining 3 larvae were identified at genus level as Hysterothylacium. Statistical indices such as prevalence, mean intensity and mean abundance were calculated. Chub mackerel (S. japonicus) was the species with the highest prevalence and mean intensity. Moreover, the average and the median values of larvae per 100 g of edible part for each fish species were determined to estimate the consumer exposure to Anisakis spp.. The obtained values were then recalculated by referring to the edible part of all specimens (infected and non-infected) forming a single parasitized batch, getting more realistic and objective data useful for risk assessment. Our results indicate that the consumption of raw or undercooked wild fish caught off Apulian coasts could result in the acquisition of anisakiasis; on the contrary, farmed fish and cephalopods appear to be safer for the consumer

Representing valued bodies in PE: a visual inquiry with British Asian girls

The paper's aims are to explore varying ways British Asian girls visualise and make sense of themselves as active or sporting bodies, and what this means for their (dis)engagement in physical activity. This study draws on a feminist poststructuralist approach concerning the ways in which young people create multiple subject positions through negotiating or rejecting verbal and visual narratives about physical activity and girlhood

Responsible Girlhood and 'Healthy' Anxieties in Britain: Girls' Bodily Learning in School Sport

This chapter situates public health concerns around childhood obesity within a broader trend towards 'healthification.' I draw on scholarly research on the body and schooling as well as on longitudinal research into girls' sports involvement in the UK in order to make sense of how young girls construct themselves as 'healthy subjects' and perform 'successful girlhood'. I understand 'risk' as a regulatory discourse which constructs specific versions of girlhood as acceptable, desirable, and importantly responsible in ongoing efforts to avoid certain dangers, such as obesity. I consider the ways in which obesity as a 'discourse of anxiety' came to regulate girls' activities and available identities in school and in relation to dieting regimes and advertising campaigns

Girls looking for a ‘second home’: bodies, difference and places of inclusion

This visual ethnographic research aimed to further understandings of ethnic-minority girls' emplaced embodiment by investigating the link between girls' physicality and their views of physical activity spaces in their communities. The research was conducted in a school located in an urban multicultural context in the Midlands region of the UK. Participants were 20 girls (19 ethnic-minority girls; 1 white girl) aged 14–15 from two single-sex physical education classes