Complicity and Reproduction in Teaching Physical Education

This paper draws on data collected from a life history study to consider the social significance of masculine identity in teaching physical education (PE). Using Connell's (1995) theoy of multiple masculinities and gender power relations from a critical post-structuralist perspective, notions of hegemonic masculinity are problematized. It is argued that complicity to a hegemonic norm represents a form of masculine teaching identity that facilitates the reproduction of hegemonic forms of masculinity and patriarchy in PE and school sport. The data illustrate that in managing their masculine teaching identities to accommodate the social expectations placed upon them, the participants draw upon their background experience and in so doing shift their teaching identities towards a complicit masculine teaching identity. Although unintentional this situation represents a dilemma that serves to perpetuate a link between generations of PE discourse and practice helping to reproduce and legitimize hegemonic masculinity and the gender order in physical education.