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Space is a crucial part of the battle for control and surveillance of individuals and not for domination (Elden and Crampton, 2007). According to Bourdieu (1984), ‘all social space is made up of multiple competing, intersecting and hierarchically positioned fields with their own distinctive features’. Physical spaces within schools are not already there space is a social construction that embodies pedagogic thinking and assumptions about distance and hierarchy.
The Changing Room
Secondary physical education ‘ is the subject that makes and breaks students for better and for worse. Many students’ dislike of physical education started from the uniform and the control the teachers had over implementing the uniform standards (Flintoff and Scraton, 2001). Not only that, for most secondary students, PE changing rooms were the place where the most bullying occurred (Jim©nez-Barbero et al., 2020). Students had to change out in the open with all their peers crammed into a small, cold, and tile-floored changing room, with no means to hide their semi-naked bodies, which sometimes put off some students from being PE (O’Donovan et al, 2015). This often left students feeling uncomfortable due to body consciousness (Flintoff and Scraton, 2001), and for some, these negative experiences contributed to the development of self-perceptions of inferiority and negative body image (Stankov et al., 2012).
David Buckingham (2007) defines identity as something unique to us individually and that has similar and different attributes as others. Similarly, Erik Erikson (1968) states that adolescence is a significant period for identity formation ‘ Young people become self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses and become confident in their qualities that are unique to them. Bauman’s (2013) theory of liquid modernity is a growing belief that ‘change is only permanence and uncertainty the only certainty’. This implies that nothing is stable and change can happen very quickly in any situation ‘ Students changing from their uniform into their PE kit are changing from their own identity into a different one to become part of a ‘team’; they are changing from being an individual into becoming united with others. This supports the ideas of Foucault as he depicts that identity is not fixed and not defined by what we first consider; we are able to make decisions on what we do and how we do it. This links to O’Donovan and Kirk (2007) as they state that adolescent females wear earrings and makeup to be part of a ‘girly’ identity group and that their appearance reasserts their ‘membership’ of this identity group. It can be said that there are clearly defined roles based on gender, sexuality, and gender as adolescents have made themselves a reflexive project for themselves (Giddens, 1984).
As aforementioned, students in the changing room are metaphorically taking off their own identity to become united as part of a ‘team’. Students have the ability to make their school uniform somewhat unique, for example, jewelry, watches, wearing their hair down, rolling their skirts up, etc. However, with the school PE uniform, there were few ways in which students could be unique. School rules dictated that pupils must wear the correct PE uniform, no students could wear any jewelry and all hair had to be tied up (O’Donovan and Kirk, 2007). Students were taking off all aspects of their uniqueness and becoming the same as everyone else ‘ they had no clear physical self-identity. Foucault stated that the self is not a fixed identity and can change in different situations (Bevir, 1999). On the other hand, some students saw the PE kit as a means to blend into the background, feeling more confident in themselves as they looked the same as everyone else. Within the changing room, students’ bodies were open to objectification from other students (O’Donovan et al, 2015) and their levels of physical capital were determined by judging their bodies against socially constructed ideals (Fisette, 2011). Bourdieu’s notion of physical capital is the social formation of bodies by individuals (Shilling, 1991, Bourdieu, 1978). This links with the works of Foucault (1979) as he states that ‘schools are primarily institutions that produce and reproduce socially constructed meanings of the body’.
‘Where there is power, there is resistance’
Power within the changing room comes from both parties, the teachers and the students. Quarmby et al,. (2019) state that physical education has a clear hierarchical structure, with the teachers holding the most power to determine the rules. The changing room represents a transitional space in terms of the power dynamic between the pupil-dominated spaces and teacher-dominated spaces (O’Donovan et al, 2015). Bourdieu (1985) suggests that due to differing power dynamics, dominance and subordination were determined by the various forms of capital, including physical capital.
Lewis (2014) states that for the teachers, it was crucial that students wore the correct uniform to partake in physical education. However, implementing rules in relation to the uniform led to disagreements between pupils and teachers. According to the Department for Education (2021), having the correct uniform within physical education provides a sense of belonging and identity and it sets an appropriate tone for education. Many of the changing room interactions between the pupils and teachers were dominated by attempts to bypass the rules set relating to uniform and overall appearance in physical education (O’Donovan and Kirk,2007). It can be explained that the attempts in negotiation regarding the PE kit were due to the uniform being far from the ‘ideal’ image that counts for physical capital within the peer group (Holroyd, 2003). Many school uniform regulations state that no pupils were allowed to wear jewelry and had to tie long high back, however, due to these rules, set a resistant culture within the changing rooms (O’Donovan and Kirk, 2007). Foucault’s notion that ‘where there is power, there is resistance’ has been reinforced here due to females’ motivation to disobey their teacher and the rules implemented due to their desire to express their femininity through their appearance (Foucault, 1978, O’Donovan and Kirk, 2007). Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is a society consisting of objective structures and determined and isolated individuals (King, 2000). All clothes that we wear are part of our habitus, therefore the clothes that we wear when partaking in PE are part of our habitus.
Teachers have power over students by enforcing the uniform, however, students have some power over their teachers when they don’t bring the correct uniform. Foucault’s concept of bio-power, the ‘statistical political control over life itself’, is shown here as students are attempting to rebel and have power over their own bodies (Nail, 2016). The changing room is where the first interaction of the lesson takes place and can affect the levels of participation of a student who has been warned about incorrect uniforms (O’Donovan and Kirk, 2007). In other cases, students who turned up in the wrong kit provided a source of frustration to the teachers who felt annoyed by pupils not turning up in the appropriate kit (Lewis, 2014). Demotivated behaviors in students can be demonstrated through failure to turn up to lessons with a full PE kit (Ntoumanis et al, 2004). Teachers would make students get the spare kit out of the lost and found box ‘ this portrays the hierarchical power of the teachers over the students as students have lost control and no power. The lost and found box would have clothes that many students have worn; students would use masking agents such as deodorants to hide the smell, which is an example of bio-power as they are changing the smell of the kit to suit them. The body politics of the spare uniform can have a positive or negative effect on the students as smell is both ’emotive and evocative’ according to Lefebvre (1991). Other students would write fake notes to give to teachers, in some instances ‘ to avoid any gaze upon the body in the changing room, students resort to strategies such as sitting out of PE altogether.
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