Social Justice in Physical Education: A Thematic Analysis of Pre-Service Teachers’ Open-Ended Responses

Abstract

Social justice has become a cornerstone of contemporary educational systems, serving as both an ethical principle and a criterion for evaluating equity in learning opportunities. In the field of Physical Education (PE), its bodily and relational nature makes social hierarchies regarding ability, gender, and body image highly visible. This study adopted a qualitative descriptive design to explore how pre-service PE teachers conceptualize social justice and how they envision its didactic implementation within the Spanish curricular context. The findings provide a critical roadmap for teacher education programs, suggesting that fostering social justice requires moving beyond theoretical discourse toward specific pedagogical tools that address power dynamics and inclusion within Physical Education contexts.

1. Introduction

Social justice has become a pivotal concern within contemporary educational systems, serving not only as an ethical principle but also as a fundamental criterion for assessing equity in learning opportunities. Research in educational leadership and policy has shifted from normative declarations toward more concrete inquiries into how school organizations sustain or obstruct practices that reduce inequalities (Chaaban et al. 2025; Glowach et al. 2025). In this transition, social justice is intrinsically linked to decisions regarding curriculum, assessment, participation, and resource distribution, as well as the professional cultures that either legitimize or marginalize certain student trajectories.

Teacher education represents a particularly sensitive node in this agenda. A recent review describes how social justice-oriented programs must integrate the development of critical knowledge, sustained reflection, and applicable pedagogical tools, while simultaneously warning of persistent tensions: conceptual ambiguity, resistance, emotional burden, and friction with traditional school expectations (Hosseini et al. 2025). These tensions are critical as they influence how pre-service teachers define “being fair,” which issues they recognize as injustices, and what actions they deem legitimate within the classroom.

Within this framework, Physical Education (PE) occupies a unique position. Due to its bodily, relational, and public nature, PE makes social hierarchies and norms regarding ability, gender, body image, leadership, and participation highly visible. This visibility can transform PE into a fertile ground for educating citizenship and recognition, but it can also become a site for reproducing inequalities if pedagogical routines are not problematized (Garratt and Kumar 2019).

At an international level, scholars have emphasized the need to revitalize the social justice agenda in PE amidst a global context marked by persistent inequalities and cultural transformations regarding body and identity. From this perspective, social justice in PE cannot be limited to inclusive discourse; it must translate into curricular and pedagogical decisions that effectively expand students’ access, participation, and agency (Azzarito et al. 2017).

Nevertheless, moving from general frameworks to daily practice is complex. Studies in the Health and Physical Education (HPE) field underscore that “context matters”: policies, resources, school cultures, and professional traditions condition which forms of justice are possible and which remain out of reach. In this sense, social justice is understood as a situated practice, where teachers’ intentions clash with institutional constraints and logics of performance, control, and normalization (Linnér et al. 2022; Gerdin et al. 2025).

To increase the operability of this approach, various pedagogical frameworks have been developed to articulate repertoires of action. A prominent example is the proposal of nine “pedagogies for social justice in HPE,” which integrates relational strategies (belonging, trust), pedagogical strategies (democratized participation, task adaptation), and critical strategies (questioning inequalities) (Gerdin et al. 2021). Complementarily, conceptual and practical repertoires have been proposed to organize teaching actions and detect recurring gaps. The “A-Z of Social Justice in PE” provides a language—including entries such as care, dialogue, belonging, or voice—to turn principles into instructional decisions and to identify when social justice is reduced to generic inclusion without addressing power relations (Landi et al. 2020).

Crucially, a critical approach to social justice in PE necessitates moving beyond the mere ‘inclusion’ of marginalized groups to an interrogation of the structural power and unearned privilege that permeate the gym. As suggested by the existing literature, teacher education must address how bodily, gendered, and ableist norms are maintained through institutional practices that privilege certain identities, ensuring that social justice is not reduced to a generic discourse but rather addresses the underlying power relations that sustain inequality (Landi et al. 2020; Gerdin et al. 2021).

In parallel, several research lines have connected social justice with pedagogical models and critical educational traditions. In PE, the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) approach has been explicitly reformulated from a social justice perspective (SJ-TPSR), emphasizing agency, shared responsibility, and participation conditions for all students (Scanlon et al. 2024). In the Spanish context, the feasibility of TPSR for promoting social justice has been explored, revealing both possibilities and limitations linked to curricular and cultural conditions (Jiménez-Parra et al. 2025).

Other recent contributions have highlighted the relevance of “Freirean” perspectives in conceptualizing social justice within game and sport-oriented models and hybridizations, emphasizing dialogue, problematization, and a critical reading of the experience (Ginciene and Luguetti 2025). Furthermore, scholars have proposed widening the focus to address conflict, harm, and reparation, suggesting restorative justice as a transformative practice in PE scholarship (Hemphill 2025). In alternative provision settings, research has also shown how spatial organization, stigma, and segregation can generate specific forms of (in)justice linked to PE (Maher et al. 2025).

Despite the advancement of these frameworks, a decisive question remains for initial teacher education: how do pre-service PE teachers understand social justice and how do they envision its didactic implementation? Early conceptualizations guide the selection of objectives, tasks, assessment criteria, and pedagogical relationships; therefore, understanding these perspectives is key to designing formative experiences that move beyond the declarative level and respond to the complexity of the approach (Hosseini et al. 2025). This study addresses this need by analyzing pre-service teachers’ responses to dilemmas and open-ended questions regarding social justice in PE.

In the Spanish context, this gap is especially relevant. While the current curriculum offers opportunities for a more inclusive and socially committed PE, much of the social justice language remains implicit and depends on the pedagogical competence of teachers to materialize it in practice. Therefore, examining pre-service teachers’ responses allows for the identification of both initial consensuses and formative “blind spots” that should be addressed in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). The Spanish context is particularly critical for this inquiry, as recent legislative reforms (LOMLOE) have mandated equity without providing explicit pedagogical pathways. This creates a unique opportunity to examine whether macro-level policy shifts are effectively reshaping professional identity or remaining as discursively adopted but pedagogically unapplied frameworks.

From a curricular and pedagogical standpoint, the field now offers an increasingly operational repertoire to guide analysis. Pedagogies for social justice in HPE, SJ-TPSR proposals, “Freirean” approaches applied to hybrid models, and restorative perspectives converge on several design keys: relationships, redistribution of power, dialogue, fair assessment, and student agency (Gerdin et al. 2021; Scanlon et al. 2024; Ginciene and Luguetti 2025; Hemphill 2025). This repertoire is particularly useful for transitioning from abstract definitions to observable instructional indicators in the PE classroom.

Furthermore, research has shown that social justice in PE is deeply contextual: it depends on material conditions, available space, school culture, curricular pressure, and how teachers negotiate these constraints in daily practice. This situated perspective necessitates an analysis not only of what pre-service teachers declare as an ideal but also of how they imagine its implementation under real teaching conditions (Linnér et al. 2022; Maher et al. 2025).

Recent literature in PETE emphasizes that social justice is not merely incorporated as theoretical content but as a process of professional identity reconstruction. In this transition, resistances, emotional discomfort, and difficulties in translating conceptual frameworks into concrete didactic decisions emerge, especially when privileges, bodily hierarchies, or assumptions of pedagogical neutrality are challenged (Dixon 2025; Febria Friskawati 2025; Hosseini et al. 2025).

However, despite this theoretical density, there is still a lack of studies that synthesize these multiple perspectives into insights regarding how new generations of teachers in Spain transition from theory to specific didactic intent. This lack of focus often results in conceptual dispersion, where social justice is recognized as important but its operationalization remains vague. This study addresses this gap by providing a focused analysis of pre-service teachers’ perspectives within the current Spanish educational reform. Despite these theoretical advancements, a ‘translation vacuum’ persists: we understand the theories of justice, but we lack insight into how these are filtered through the novice teacher’s identity. This study addresses this need by identifying the specific ‘blind spots’ where current policy intent clashes with pre-service teachers’ pedagogical conceptualizations.

The aim of this study was to analyze how pre-service Physical Education teachers conceptualize social justice and which strategies they consider relevant for addressing it in their teaching practice. The relevance of this inquiry lies in the need to clarify whether the recent Spanish legislative emphasis on equity is being translated into a clear professional identity among future teachers, or if there is a disconnect between macro-level policies and micro-level perceptions. To bridge this gap and provide a focused analysis within the current educational reform, the following research questions were formulated:

• How do pre-service teachers define social justice in Physical Education, and which dimensions do they prioritize in their conceptualizations?
• Which situations do they perceive as most frequent or problematic regarding injustice in Physical Education?
• What didactic, organizational, and evaluative proposals do they put forward to prevent or mitigate situations of injustice in Physical Education?

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Study Design

This study adopted a qualitative descriptive design (Sandelowski 2010), based on open-ended responses to a structured questionnaire. The methodological objective was to understand how pre-service Physical Education (PE) teachers conceptualize social justice and how they translate these conceptualizations into pedagogical decisions (task design, group organization, intervention in critical incidents, assessment, and barrier management). Data were analyzed using a hybrid thematic analysis (deductive-inductive), which is well-suited for identifying patterns of meaning in textual data while allowing for the emergence of unanticipated themes (Braun and Clarke 2006, 2021; Saldaña 2016).

Although the instrument utilized a structured sequence, it functioned as an asynchronous, open-ended qualitative interview. By providing participants with a ‘reflexive itinerary’ of prompts, this method encouraged narrative elaboration and introspection, yielding data of equal depth to semi-structured interviews while minimizing the influence of social desirability bias.

2.2. Context and Participants

A convenience sample was obtained within the framework of a Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) program at XXXX University, Spain. The participants consisted of 62 pre-service teachers enrolled in the second year of a degree in Sport Sciences. All participants were taking coursework related to Physical Education pedagogy and had not yet completed formal school placement experiences at the time of data collection. Therefore, their responses should be interpreted as early-stage professional conceptualizations, shaped mainly by their initial university training, previous personal experiences as Physical Education students, and general exposure to sport and physical activity contexts, rather than by sustained teaching practice.

The inclusion criteria were: (a) being enrolled in the relevant second-year course within the Sport Sciences degree, (b) attending the session in which the open-ended questionnaire was administered, (c) voluntarily agreeing to participate, and (d) completing the instrument individually and anonymously. No personal identifying data were collected, and responses were recorded using alphanumeric codes (e.g., P01, P02).

Although a convenience sample was used, the size (n = 62) is substantial for a qualitative study of this nature. Data saturation was monitored during the analysis; it was observed that after analyzing approximately 45–50 responses, no significantly new themes or conceptual categories emerged, suggesting that the sample size was sufficient to capture the breadth of the phenomenon within this specific context.

2.3. Instrument

The questionnaire comprised 12 open-ended questions structured as a ‘reflexive itinerary. Rather than covering an exhaustive list of topics, the instrument was designed to elicit meaningful qualitative data by moving from general conceptualizations to situated pedagogical dilemmas. This structure required participants to not only define social justice but to justify their instructional decisions (e.g., regarding assessment, group management, and conflict resolution) in specific scenarios. This approach was intentional: by presenting dilemmas rather than generic prompts, the instrument surfaces internal contradictions and identifies the gap between declared values and pedagogical practice.

The sequential design of this questionnaire was strategically developed as a ‘reflexive itinerary.’ By moving from abstract definitions to situated dilemmas, the instrument was designed to surface conceptual tensions and internal contradictions within the participants’ discourse. This structure allowed for a degree of analytical depth by identifying discrepancies between declared values and proposed pedagogical actions, even in the absence of real-time probing. The construction of the instrument was informed by recent literature on social justice in PE and teacher education, particularly the need to operationalize social justice through observable and situated instructional decisions (e.g., pedagogies and curricular tensions linked to social justice in HPE/PE).

For example, in the ‘definitions’ block, participants were asked: ‘How would you define social justice within a PE context?’. In the ‘fair assessment’ section, a prompt included: ‘How can a teacher ensure assessment criteria do not marginalize students with lower motor skill levels?’. To ensure external content validation, the instrument underwent a formal Expert Panel Review. Three senior researchers in PE pedagogy independently assessed the items for clarity, relevance, and potential bias. This procedure led to the refinement of two questions to minimize social desirability bias, thereby ensuring the instrument’s validity through external expert critique prior to administration.

Prior to its administration, the questionnaire was reviewed by the teaching research team to ensure semantic clarity, suitability for the educational level, and alignment between the questions and the study objectives. Given the open-ended nature of the instrument, content validity was prioritized through expert review and internal consistency between the theoretical construct and the questions (Tracy 2010).

2.4. Data Collection Procedure

The questionnaire was administered individually under standardized conditions for the entire group (identical instructions, format, and access). Participants were instructed to provide specific examples whenever possible and to exclude any personally identifiable information. Responses were exported to a spreadsheet format for preparation, cleaning, and anonymization. Subsequently, the textual corpus was organized by question and participant, preserving the linguistic integrity of the content (without grammatical corrections) to avoid the loss of interpretive nuances.

2.5. Data Analysis

The analysis was carried out in several phases, following the logic of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006, 2021) and systematic qualitative coding procedures (Miles et al. 2014; Saldaña 2016):

• Familiarization with the Corpus: This involved repeated reading of the full responses, identification of recurring ideas, and the development of analytical data regarding initial patterns and potential interpretive tensions.
• Initial Coding: A hybrid coding approach was applied:

  ▪

  Deductive: Using an initial set of codes aligned with expected dimensions of social justice in PE (conceptualization, experiences of inclusion/exclusion, equality–equity, instructional design, student agency, assessment, and barriers).

  ▪

  Inductive: Allowing for the emergence of new codes when meanings were identified that were not captured by the initial framework. The coding unit was semantic (segments with complete meaning), and a single fragment could receive multiple codes where appropriate (Miles et al. 2014).

The process followed an iterative, rather than sequential, logic. We began with the deductive framework as an initial organizational structure; however, to ensure this did not overshadow participant perspectives, we employed a ‘data residue’ approach: any segments that remained unassigned after the deductive pass were systematically analyzed to generate inductive codes. These emergent codes were scrutinized for cross-participant patterns before being integrated into the final codebook. This recursive dialogue between theory and data ensured that the final categories were both theoretically grounded and empirically authentic (Miles et al. 2014; Saldaña 2016). Development and Refinement of the Codebook: Operational definitions for each code were established (what it is), along with inclusion/exclusion criteria (when to apply/not apply it) and representative examples. This process was iterated until conceptual stability was achieved and overlaps were minimized (Saldaña 2016).

• Generation of Themes and Subthemes: Codes were organized into dimensions (higher-level themes) and subthemes (mid-level themes) to represent the structure of the phenomenon. Each theme was reviewed for internal coherence (data “fit” together) and external differentiation (no duplication of themes).
• Descriptive Quantification: Absolute frequencies (fa) and percentages (%fa) were calculated for descriptive purposes to provide a transparent overview of the data landscape across the sample. In alignment with reflexive principles, these figures were used as a navigational aid rather than a measure of “importance” or “truth.” This quantification was systematically accompanied by verbatim quotes, ensuring that the analysis prioritized the interpretation of meaning and the identification of nuanced patterns over the mere counting of responses (Braun and Clarke 2021).
• Selection of Quotes and Search for Disconfirming Cases: Two to three quotes per subtheme were selected, prioritizing variety and illustrative power. Additionally, a deliberate search for disconfirming cases (responses that contradicted or challenged the dominant pattern) was conducted to enhance interpretive credibility and avoid a one-dimensional reading of the corpus (Lincoln and Guba 1985; Tracy 2010).
• The analysis was managed using spreadsheet matrices (anonymized data, code matrix, frequency tables, and a quote repository) and a version-controlled record of the codebook as part of the audit Trail.

To ensure analytical rigor, the concept of ‘intuitive understanding’ was operationally defined as a non-formalized comprehension of social justice rooted in personal moral values and prior school experiences. This is manifested in the data through three observable indicators: (a) a focus on interpersonal fairness and visible equality, (b) the absence of structural or sociopolitical terminology, and (c) a reliance on ‘common sense’ pedagogical solutions rather than formalized theoretical frameworks.

2.6. Trustworthiness and Quality Criteria

Qualitative quality strategies were applied in alignment with classic trustworthiness criteria and the “big-tent” focalization for high-quality qualitative research (Lincoln and Guba 1985; Nowell et al. 2017; Tracy 2010):

• Credibility: Ensured through internal triangulation (using absolute and percentage frequency tables combined with multiple representative quotes per subtheme). Specifically, the inclusion of disconfirming cases served to challenge our initial assumptions as PE educators, ensuring the findings represent the complexity of the participants’ discourse rather than a sanitized narrative.
• Dependability: Maintained through an audit trail. In this study, this involved documenting the evolution of the codebook through three iterative versions and conducting a stability review where coding decisions were cross-checked against the established inclusion/exclusion criteria.
• Confirmability: Supported by the use of analytical memos. Given our dual role as researchers and PE teacher educators, these memos were critical for identifying and bracketing our pedagogical biases, ensuring that the interpretations remained strictly traceable to the participants’ written responses.
• Transferability: Addressed through a detailed description of the educational context, the instrument, and the dimensions analyzed, allowing readers to assess the applicability of the findings to comparable teacher education and school Physical Education settings (see

  Table 1. Study Rigor and Quality Strategies.

  Criterion	Strategy	Operationalization
  Credibility	Internal triangulation of evidence	Use of frequency tables (fa, %fa) combined with multiple quotes per subtheme to support interpretations.
  Credibility	Disconfirming cases	Reporting examples that challenge the dominant trends to avoid a one-dimensional reading of the phenomenon.
  Dependability	Audit trail	Systematic record of the process (codebook, coding matrix, document versions, and supplementary spreadsheets).
  Dependability	Stability review	Implementation of human double-coding; an additional consistency check was performed through rule-based comparisons.
  Confirmability	Reflexivity	Use of analytical memos to track the researchers’ positioning and control for interpretive biases.
  Transferability	Contextual description	Detailed description of the sample (pre-service teachers), the task (12 open-ended questions), the educational setting, and administration conditions.

  ). While the findings are situated within a single PETE program, transferability is supported through ‘thick description’ of the context, participants, and the specific Spanish legislative framework (LOMLOE). This allows readers to identify the degree of congruence between this study and other teacher education settings. Rather than seeking statistical generalizability, this work aims for ‘naturalistic generalization,’ providing insights that may resonate with similar European contexts facing the tension between traditional PE and social justice mandates.

The authors, acting as PE teacher educators, recognize that their professional positioning may influence data interpretation. To mitigate this, a critical distance was maintained through peer debriefing and the active search for ‘disconfirming cases’, responses that contradicted the researchers’ expectations, ensuring that the findings represent the participants’ voices rather than the authors’ pedagogical ideals.

2.7. Ethical Considerations

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Alicante (protocol code and date of approval UA-2024-10-01_1). Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study. All data were processed anonymously to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of the participants, in compliance with data protection regulations.

3. Results

Each dimension combines a frequency table from the dataset (n = 62) with a concise interpretive synthesis and selected illustrative excerpts. The tables provide a transparent overview of the coded patterns, while the accompanying narrative highlights the main meanings emerging from the corpus. Frequencies are used only as a descriptive aid and should not be interpreted as indicators of thematic importance.

3.1. Conceptualization of Social Justice in PE

Participants’ definitions of social justice in Physical Education were organized around four interrelated ideas: equality and non-discrimination, access to opportunities and resources, inclusion and participation, and equity through adaptation. Overall, social justice was mainly understood as a moral and relational principle, linked to ensuring that all students are treated with respect, are not discriminated against, and have opportunities to participate meaningfully in PE (

Table 2. Conceptualization of Social Justice in PE: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Equality and non-discrimination	D1_Equality_non_discrimination	34	54.8%	Social justice understood as equal treatment, absence of discrimination, and equivalent opportunities.
Opportunities and resources	D1_Resources_opportunities	25	40.3%	Social justice linked to access to resources, materials/facilities, and opportunities to learn/participate.
Inclusion and participation	D1_Inclusion_participation	16	25.8%	Social justice defined as ensuring meaningful participation and belonging (ensuring no one is left out).
Equity and adaptation	D1_Equity_adaptation_needs	14	22.6%	Social justice understood as equity: adjusting tasks, supports, or expectations to individual needs and starting points.

).

The most frequent pattern was the association of social justice with equality and non-discrimination (54.8%), followed by references to opportunities and resources (40.3%). This suggests that participants tended to begin from a broad normative understanding of justice, centered on equal treatment and access. For example, P08 defined social justice as “seeking that balance where we are all valued and respected”, while P22 emphasized that all students should have “the same opportunities to learn, practice, enjoy, and perform a sport”.

However, fewer responses explicitly referred to equity and adaptation (22.6%), which indicates that the transition from moral agreement with social justice to specific pedagogical decisions was still developing. In this sense, participants recognized the importance of fairness and inclusion, but their conceptualizations were more often expressed through general principles than through detailed references to task design, assessment, power relations, or differentiated support. This pattern is consistent with research suggesting that pre-service teachers often approach social justice first through intuitive notions of equality and respect before developing more complex pedagogical understandings of equity in PE (Azzarito et al. 2017; Gerdin et al. 2021; Hosseini et al. 2025; Linnér et al. 2022; Philpot 2025).

3.2. Experiences of Justice and Injustice in PE

Injustice in PE was perceived as an issue embedded in everyday routines rather than an abstract concept. As shown in

Table 3. Experiences of Justice and Injustice in PE: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Assessment and grading perceived as unfair	D2_Unfair_assessment	23	37.1%	Accounts where assessment/grading is perceived as punitive, decontextualized, or performance-centered.
Skill-based hierarchies and comparison	D2_Skill_hierarchies	15	24.2%	Accounts of injustice linked to level differences, previous sports experience, and labeling (talented vs. non-talented).
Exclusion and belonging (teams)	D2_Exclusion_team_selection	13	21.0%	Accounts of exclusion or discomfort associated with team selection, peer-led picking, and being “left for last.”
Functional diversity, injury, or limitations	D2_Disability_injury	7	11.3%	Accounts where disability, injury, or limitations condition participation or lead to unfair treatment.
Competition as a source of inequality	D2_Excessive_competition	5	8.1%	Accounts where competition or the emphasis on winning generates exclusion, pressure, or unfair treatment.
Body, weight, and body image	D2_Body_weight	4	6.5%	Accounts where body/weight or body shame influence participation and perceived justice.

, ‘Assessment and grading’ (37.1%) and ‘Skill-based hierarchies’ (24.2%) were the primary concerns. Participants frequently criticized performance-centered evaluations; for instance, P12 challenged the fairness of uniform basketball testing because ‘not all students find it easy’ (Table 3).

Participants often criticized evaluation systems based exclusively on physical performance, technical achievement, or comparison between students. For instance, P12 described as unfair the idea of assessing all students through the same basketball competition because “not all students find it easy”. Similarly, P27 recalled a running test in which the most athletic student obtained the highest grade “almost without effort”, whereas other students were disadvantaged by their starting point.

A second relevant pattern was the presence of skill-based hierarchies and exclusionary group dynamics. Participants referred to situations in which students with lower motor competence, less sport experience, higher body weight, or functional limitations were exposed to comparison, exclusion, or reduced participation. Team selection appeared as a particularly sensitive routine, since being chosen last or being grouped according to ability was perceived as damaging for belonging and self-esteem. These findings suggest that small organizational decisions in PE can reproduce broader inequalities if they are not intentionally designed from an equity perspective (Garratt and Kumar 2019; Gerdin et al. 2021; Landi et al. 2020; Linnér et al. 2022; Maher et al. 2025).

Analytically, these findings suggest that pre-service teachers perceive injustice not as an isolated pedagogical error, but as a structural component of the traditional PE ‘habitus’, where the visibility of the body and sporting performance acts as a primary vehicle for social stratification.

3.3. Teacher Responses: Intervention and Coexistence

Teacher responses to injustice focused on ‘Dialogue and reflection’ (67.7%) and ‘Norms and safe climate’ (50.0%), positioning social justice as a practice of climate regulation (see

Table 4. Teacher Responses: Intervention and Coexistence: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Dialogue, reflection, and explanation	D3_Intervene_dialogue	42	67.7%	Intervention proposals based on talking with the group or students involved, reflecting, and explaining.
Norms, respect, and safe climate	D3_Norms_respect	31	50.0%	Proposals focused on establishing classroom norms, respect, emotional safety, and a positive climate.
Immediate intervention (stopping the activity)	D3_Stop_activity	18	29.0%	Proposals to halt the activity to cut off an unjust dynamic and act in the moment.
Repair/Restorative	D3_Restorative_repair	9	14.5%	Proposals with a restorative logic: acknowledging harm, repairing, mediating, and rebuilding relationships.

). P36 exemplified this by suggesting ‘stopping the game’ to address unacceptable attitudes. However, the lower frequency of ‘Restorative repair’ (14.5%) indicates a reactive rather than a structured restorative approach to conflict (Hosseini et al. 2025).

Participants commonly proposed talking with the group, making students aware of the consequences of exclusion, and using conflict as a learning opportunity. P36, for example, suggested stopping the game, discussing what had happened, and making clear that certain attitudes were unacceptable before resuming the activity. This type of response shows that participants recognized the teacher’s responsibility to intervene when relational harm appears.

At the same time, the emphasis on norms, respect, and safe climate (50.0%) suggests that participants viewed social justice as dependent on the creation of emotionally secure learning environments. However, restorative or repair-oriented responses were less frequent (14.5%), which may indicate that participants were more familiar with stopping or correcting unjust behavior than with developing structured processes of mediation, reparation, and relationship rebuilding. This pattern points to an important training need in PETE: future teachers require not only ethical sensitivity, but also practical repertoires for transforming conflict into restorative and pedagogically meaningful processes (Gerdin et al. 2021; Hemphill 2025; Hosseini et al. 2025).

3.4. Equality–Equity Criterion

The equality–equity tension was the most clearly identified conceptual dilemma in the corpus. Most participants explicitly recognized that treating all students in the same way does not necessarily produce fair learning conditions. Instead, they associated fairness with the need to adapt tasks, expectations, supports, or assessment criteria to students’ starting points and needs. This tension appeared in 79.0% of responses, making it one of the central findings of the study (see

Table 5. Equality–Equity Criterion: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Equality–Equity tension	D4_Equality_vs_equity	49	79.0%	Explicit recognition that equality and equity are not equivalent and require teacher judgment.

). P10 expressed this idea clearly by arguing that if a student has a difficulty that prevents them from performing an exercise correctly, “it is fair to adapt it to their needs”. This type of response reflects an emerging understanding that equity requires teacher judgement and differentiated pedagogical action. This tension reveals that the struggle for social justice is grounded in a conceptual friction: the participants recognize the moral necessity of equity but fear that departing from ‘uniform treatment’ undermines the perceived objectivity of academic rigor.

Nevertheless, participants did not always specify how such differentiation should be implemented in practice. Their answers show that equity was accepted as a principle, but not always accompanied by concrete criteria for deciding when, how, and to what extent tasks, rules, or assessment procedures should be adapted. This finding is especially relevant for PETE because it suggests that future teachers need explicit training in how to translate the equality–equity distinction into defensible instructional decisions (Gerdin et al. 2021; Linnér et al. 2022; Philpot 2025).

3.5. Instructional Design for Participation and Inclusion

Participants also proposed preventive strategies aimed at making PE lessons more inclusive from the outset. These strategies included rotating roles, planning teams deliberately, adapting task difficulty, using progressions, and promoting cooperation. Unlike the more reactive responses described above, these proposals suggest that some participants understood equity as a design condition rather than as a later correction.

Roles and rotation of responsibilities were the most frequent design strategy (46.8%), followed by planned groupings and teams (41.9%) (see

Table 6. Instructional Design for Participation and Inclusion: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Roles and rotation of responsibilities	D5_Rotating_roles	29	46.8%	Use of roles and rotation to distribute protagonism and power in teams and tasks.
Planned groupings and teams	D5_Planned_groupings	26	41.9%	Proposals to form groups/pairs deliberately (teacher-led, random, balanced) to prevent exclusion.
Adaptations, variants, and progressions	D5_Adaptations_levels	11	17.7%	Adjustment of difficulty, variants, and level-based progressions to sustain equity without stigmatization.
Cooperation and peer support	D5_Cooperation	9	14.5%	Cooperative proposals to ensure participation and shared success (cooperative challenges, helping).

). These proposals indicate that participants recognized that participation and power are distributed through lesson organization. P31, for example, referred to the need to choose methodologies consistent with inclusion and to create diverse teams in sport-based activities. This reflects an awareness that group formation, task roles, and participation structures are not neutral pedagogical decisions.

Adaptations, variants, progressions, cooperation, and peer support appeared less frequently, but they are particularly relevant because they move social justice from discourse to task design. These responses suggest that inclusion is not only a matter of attitude or classroom climate, but also of modifying rules, materials, levels of challenge, and forms of collaboration so that all students can participate meaningfully. In this sense, instructional design becomes a central mechanism for operationalizing social justice in PE (Gerdin et al. 2021; Landi et al. 2020; Scanlon et al. 2024).

3.6. Student Voice and Agency

Student voice appeared as a less frequent but analytically important dimension. Participants who referred to student decision-making did not usually present it as unrestricted freedom, but as a regulated form of agency within pedagogical and coexistence criteria. Student voice and regulated decision-making appeared in 24.2% of responses (see

Table 7. Student Voice and Agency: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Student voice and regulated decision-making	D6_Student_voice	15	24.2%	Mechanisms to include student voice in decisions, with structures to avoid dominance.

). P10, for instance, suggested using simple choice-based dynamics so that all students could participate in decisions. This type of proposal indicates that some participants understood agency as a structured process in which students can express preferences and participate in decisions without allowing dominant voices to impose themselves on the group.

This finding is relevant because it avoids a simplistic interpretation of social justice as merely “letting students choose”. Instead, it points toward a more pedagogical understanding of democratic participation, where student agency requires structure, guidance, and safeguards against new forms of exclusion or hierarchy (Gerdin et al. 2021; Ginciene and Luguetti 2025; Scanlon et al. 2024).

3.7. Fair Assessment in PE

Fair assessment is linked to progress and participation without eliminating the need for explicit and understandable criteria. The use of rubrics, self-assessment and co-assessment is cited as a practice to increase procedural justice, although its potential depends on how criteria are defined and whether diverse trajectories are recognized (see

Table 8. Fair Assessment in PE: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Assessment focused on progress and participation	D7_Assessment_progress_effort	42	67.7%	Assessment based on progress, effort, attitude, and meaningful participation, avoiding the penalization of initial inequalities.
Criteria/rubrics and transparency	D7_Criteria_rubrics_transparency	14	22.6%	Mention of explicit criteria, rubrics, or evaluative transparency.
Self-assessment and co-assessment	D7_Self_co_assessment	4	6.5%	Proposals for self-assessment and/or co-assessment as part of a fair evaluation process.

). This combination aligns with literature that recommends shifting the focus from absolute performance toward learning evidence, engagement, and contextualized improvement (Philpot 2025; Gerdin et al. 2021; Jiménez-Parra et al. 2025).

3.8. Barriers and Needs

Participants identified several barriers that may hinder the implementation of social justice in PE. These barriers included competitive school cultures, resistance to change, limited resources, insufficient spaces, high student–teacher ratios, lack of time, curricular pressure, and the need for more specific training and tools.

Competitive culture (54.8%) and limited resources (38.7%) were the dominant barriers (see

Table 9. Barriers and Needs: Subthemes and Frequencies (n = 62).

Subtheme	Code	fa	%fa	Definition (Summary)
Competitive culture and resistance	D8_Barriers_competitive_culture_resistance	34	54.8%	Barriers associated with a competitive culture and resistance to change (school, families, peer group).
Resources, spaces, and ratios	D8_Barriers_resources_ratio	24	38.7%	Barriers due to lack of materials, facilities, space, or high student–teacher ratios.
Training and tools	D8_Need_training_tools	17	27.4%	Need for specific training, instructional resources, and tools to implement social justice in PE.
Time and curriculum	D8_Barriers_time_curriculum	16	25.8%	Barriers due to lack of time and pressure from content/curriculum requirements.

). These constraints function as a ‘neutralizing force’ against ethical commitments, leading to a form of pedagogical entrapment: future teachers may endorse social justice discursively but perceive its implementation as unrealistic under current structural conditions (Linnér et al. 2022; Maher et al. 2025). The distribution of these barriers indicates that the implementation of social justice is perceived as an ‘extra-curricular effort’ rather than a core didactic element, suggesting that institutional constraints (time, ratios, and culture) function as a neutralizing force against individual ethical commitments.

The need for training and tools (27.4%) is especially important because it connects the previous findings with PETE responsibilities. Participants often valued social justice but anticipated difficulties in applying it under real teaching conditions. Taken together, these barriers suggest a form of pedagogical entrapment: future teachers may endorse social justice at a discursive level, but structural constraints and limited practical repertoires can make its implementation appear uncertain, risky, or unrealistic. This reinforces the need for teacher education to provide concrete routines, examples, protocols, and assessment strategies for socially just PE (Dixon 2025; Gerdin et al. 2025; Hosseini et al. 2025; Linnér et al. 2022; Maher et al. 2025).

3.9. Interpretive Tensions in Pre-Service Teachers’ Reasoning

Discordant cases were examined to avoid presenting the corpus as homogeneous and to identify tensions in participants’ reasoning. These cases showed that support for social justice coexisted with doubts about teacher authority, feasibility, assessment rigor, and the limits of adaptation.

Rather than being treated as outliers, these cases help clarify the complexity of pre-service teachers’ professional thinking. Some participants defended the need for common rules and equal duties, while also recognizing that certain students may require differentiated responses. Others questioned purely performance-based assessment and emphasized progress, effort, and participation. These tensions show that participants were not simply positioned either for or against social justice; instead, they were negotiating how fairness, rigor, inclusion, and classroom control can coexist in PE.

The analytical value of these cases lies in showing that social justice in PE is not implemented through simple agreement with inclusive values (see

Table 10. Discordant Cases and Interpretive Tensions.

Dimension	Contrast	Participants	Quote
Equality/Equity Criterion	Strict Equality (Little room for adjustments)	P61	“Yes, but with nuances… in general terms, rules and things must be the same for everyone… [but] as a monitor for children coming from foster care, many have attitudes of superiority… I have very clear rules: no sitting, no swearing… I treat them all equally, but when children arrived later and disrupted the group, I had to treat them differently at first, moving to a more authoritarian attitude where it was clear we are all equal in rights and duties…”
Equality/Equity Criterion	Strict Equality (Little room for adjustments)	P14	“I believe that treating everyone the same would not be the most fair, since each person has specific needs… For example, in a group where some aim for health and others for high performance, it wouldn’t be fair for either to do the other’s training. The ideal solution would be to organize exercises with a middle ground for both groups.”
Assessment	Performance/Technical-centered Assessment	P62	“For me, fair assessment in PE values individual progress, effort, attitude, and participation over absolute physical performance… To avoid punishing initial inequalities, I would base the grade on personal evolution and the learning process, not on comparing marks or innate abilities.”
Assessment	Performance/Technical-centered Assessment	P20	“Fair assessment should value not only physical performance but also effort, individual progression… and participation. To avoid punishing initial inequalities, I would take into account the starting level of each student… using varied instruments like observation and rubrics, and not just physical tests.”

). It requires the ability to manage dilemmas: equality versus equity, competition versus inclusion, performance versus progress, and autonomy versus teacher guidance. These tensions suggest that PETE programs should explicitly address the practical and ethical conflicts that future teachers are likely to encounter when trying to transform social justice principles into daily pedagogical decisions.

These cases suggest that, in initial teacher education, it is essential to explicitly address the dilemmas of ‘equality vs. equity’, ‘competition vs. inclusion’, and ‘performance vs. progress’, providing classroom criteria and examples that allow for the promotion of social justice without trivializing disciplinary content. This interpretation is consistent with recent reviews on the emotional and pedagogical tensions in social justice-oriented training, which show that teacher responses oscillate between inclusive intentions and practical uncertainty when conflicts, resistances, or contextual limits arise (Hosseini et al. 2025; Dixon 2025).

Far from being mere outliers, these discordant cases represent a ‘counter-narrative’ to the dominant meritocratic discourse prevalent in PE. While the majority of the cohort aligns with traditional views of performance-based assessment, these specific participants demonstrate an incipient ‘agentic resistance.’ Their perspectives suggest that the path toward socially just PE is not a uniform progression, but rather a site of struggle where some pre-service teachers begin to consciously decouple ‘rigor’ from ‘competitiveness.’ Analyzing these cases reveals that the internal friction within the PETE program is not a failure of the curriculum, but an indicator of an emerging critical consciousness that challenges the status quo.

4. Discussion

The findings reveal an ‘intuitive–normative’ understanding of social justice in PE, perceived primarily as a moral obligation of ‘kindness’ and ‘fair play’ (Philpot 2025). This is clearly reflected in the discourse of participants like P08, who defined social justice simply as “seeking that balance where we are all valued and respected”, reinforcing the idea that initial conceptualizations are rooted in interpersonal ethics rather than structural change. While this represents a necessary professional starting point (Hosseini et al. 2025), the high reliance on ‘dialogue’ and ‘classroom climate’ (67.7%) suggests a lack of structural depth. This ‘pedagogical uncertainty’ explains why future teachers struggle to challenge systemic inequalities, as their conceptualizations remain at a discursive level without a corresponding technical–pedagogical repertoire.

The mapping of injustices, specifically skill-based hierarchies (24.2%) and punitive assessment (37.1%), reveals that the PE classroom acts as a ‘social laboratory’ where hierarchies are publicly rehearsed. By identifying that these injustices are embedded in the ‘micro-design’ of routines (e.g., team selection and public display of performance), our data suggests that future teachers recognize the harm caused by competitive cultures but feel ill-equipped to dismantle the historical rituals that transform biological differences into social stigmas (Linnér et al. 2022). This disconnect reinforces the need for a framework that prioritizes the deconstruction of privilege as a prerequisite for didactic transformation (Azzarito et al. 2017; Gerdin et al. 2025).

Equity is understood by participants as a proactive design condition rather than a merely reactive response. While the interventions in D3 (e.g., ‘stopping the activity’, 29.0%) represent a reactive management of conflict, the repertoire identified in D5 (Instructional Design) reveals a proactive logic. The fact that 46.8% of participants proposed ‘roles and rotation’ and 41.9% advocated for ‘planned groupings’ as a priori conditions indicates that social justice is being positioned at the pre-impact phase of teaching. This shift is exemplified by participants like P31, who explicitly tied methodology to intended outcomes: ‘First, I would choose a methodology that makes sense with where I want to go (in this case inclusion)… Teams must be diverse.’ This evidence suggests that for a significant portion of the students, social justice is not merely an ad hoc ‘patch’ for exclusion, but a structural requirement programmed through the deliberate manipulation of pedagogical variables such as groups, roles, and tasks.

The concept of ‘regulated agency’ emerges as a bridge between student autonomy and teacher responsibility. This interpretation is directly grounded in the responses within dimension D6 (Student Voice), where 24.2% of participants suggested mechanisms for student participation. Crucially, their proposals do not advocate for an absolute or unstructured agency; instead, they describe a form of participation that is carefully framed by the teacher to avoid new asymmetries. For instance, P10 describes a system of choosing options by moving to different sides of the gym (‘those who want this, go to the right…’). We interpret this as ‘regulated’ because the teacher provides the structure and the options, while the ‘agency’ lies in the students’ power to choose within those bounds. This finding suggests that pre-service teachers view social justice as a democratic process that requires a strong pedagogical scaffolding to prevent the dominance of more influential students over the group.

A major finding of this study is the explicit recognition of the Equality–Equity tension (79%), which exposes the core of the pedagogical struggle. Participants oscillate between formal equality and substantive equity, haunted by a ‘meritocratic ghost’, the deeply rooted belief that rewards and status are earned through individual work within a uniform system. This ‘ghost’ is not a mere lack of will, but a structural fear that individualizing tasks might compromise excellence (Gerdin et al. 2021), reinforcing a discourse where equity-based adjustments are often perceived as a dilution of academic rigor rather than a necessity for inclusion (Dixon et al. 2025). This tension is captured in the reflection of P10, who argued that while uniformity is expected, “it is fair to adapt it [the task] to their needs” when a student faces difficulties, a perspective that directly challenges the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Relatedly, this tension feeds into an interlocking system of ‘pedagogical entrapment’, where the pressure of competitive culture (54.8%) and assessment anxieties justify a retreat to traditional, performance-centered practices. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: contextual barriers (time, ratios, and resources) are not just external obstacles but relational logics that actively stifle the ability to envision a ‘third space’ beyond the binary of performance and inclusion. By theorizing this entrapment, the study shifts the conversation from identifying barriers to understanding the systemic resistance that sustains them.

The discordant cases analyzed in Section 3.9 serve as critical counter-narratives to this entrapment. These participants demonstrate that it is possible to exorcize the ‘meritocratic ghost’ by identifying the ‘blind spot of privilege’ and proposing power redistribution as a prerequisite for justice. By theorizing these cases as ‘markers of critical resistance’, we show that pedagogical uncertainty is not an evolutionary dead-end, but a potential catalyst for professional growth. These voices offer a roadmap for moving from abstract discourse to concrete structural change (Gerdin et al. 2021).

Despite the depth of the qualitative data, this study has limitations. The focus on a single PETE program in Spain means results reflect a specific institutional culture and may not be representative of all teacher education contexts. Future research should adopt comparative designs, including different universities and regions, to explore how local socio-cultural factors influence pre-service teachers’ conceptualizations. Additionally, the use of an open-ended questionnaire, while allowing for a larger and more diverse sample, limits the ability to perform real-time probing or explore emerging contradictions in situ. Although the instrument’s ‘reflexive itinerary’ partially mitigated this, future studies should incorporate semi-structured interviews or focus groups to achieve greater interpretive depth regarding the nuances of these pedagogical decisions.

4.1. Limitations of the Study

These findings should be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, the study was conducted within a single PETE program in Spain. This contextual specificity allowed for a situated understanding of participants’ conceptualizations, but it also limits the transferability of the findings to other institutional, curricular, and socio-political contexts. Therefore, the results should not be read as representative of all pre-service PE teachers, but as an in-depth account of one specific teacher education setting.

Second, the use of an open-ended questionnaire shaped the type of data collected. Although this format made it possible to gather responses from a relatively large qualitative sample and to identify broad patterns across the corpus, it did not allow for real-time probing, clarification, or follow-up questions. Consequently, some contradictions or tensions in participants’ responses could not be explored in greater depth. Future research should complement this approach with interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, or longitudinal designs during school placement.

Third, the cross-sectional nature of the study limits our ability to examine how these early conceptualizations evolve over time. Since participants had not yet been followed into sustained teaching practice, it is not possible to determine whether the forms of pedagogical uncertainty identified in this study would be reinforced, transformed, or challenged when students encounter the realities of school PE. Longitudinal research during the practicum would be particularly valuable for understanding how social justice-oriented beliefs are negotiated in relation to institutional routines, assessment cultures, and school-based constraints.

4.2. Practical Implications for PETE

The findings suggest several implications for Physical Education Teacher Education. First, PETE programs should move beyond presenting social justice only as a moral or ethical commitment. Although participants showed sensitivity toward equality, respect, and inclusion, their responses also revealed difficulties in translating these values into concrete pedagogical decisions. Therefore, teacher education should provide explicit training in equity-oriented lesson design, including the manipulation of task constraints, grouping strategies, roles, rules, materials, and levels of challenge. In this sense, social justice should be taught not only as a principle, but as a technical–pedagogical competence that can be embedded in the design of PE lessons.

Second, the results highlight the need to work more systematically on assessment for equity. Participants frequently rejected purely performance-based grading and valued progress, effort, and participation, but they did not always provide clear criteria for implementing fair assessment in practice. PETE programs should therefore include specific workshops in which pre-service teachers critically analyze traditional assessment practices and redesign rubrics, tasks, and grading criteria from an equity perspective. This would help future teachers justify assessment decisions that recognize different starting points, individual progress, and meaningful participation without abandoning transparency or curricular rigor.

Third, teacher education should create spaces where students can analyze and discuss the tensions involved in implementing social justice in real PE contexts. The discordant cases identified in this study show that pre-service teachers may experience uncertainty when trying to balance equality and equity, inclusion and competition, student agency and teacher authority, or common standards and differentiated support. Rather than treating these tensions as inconsistencies, PETE programs should use them as pedagogical opportunities. Case-based discussions, peer reflection, simulated dilemmas, and practicum-based analysis can help students move from general intentions of “being fair” or “being kind” toward a more critical understanding of power, participation, and structural inequality in PE.

5. Conclusions

This study moves beyond the international confirmation of pre-service teachers’ intuitive understandings of social justice by providing a mechanistic explanation for the persistent gap between ethical commitment and pedagogical execution. While our findings align with the ‘moralistic’ adherence noted in prior literature, this research contributes the novel concept of the ‘meritocratic ghost’—an analytical abstraction derived directly from the inductive analysis of dimension D4 (79% frequency). This concept identifies a specific internal belief system where academic rigor is inextricably linked to uniformity, providing a context-specific explanation for why Spanish pre-service teachers struggle to decouple fairness from sameness. Furthermore, by theorizing the ‘pedagogical entrapment’ cycle, we demonstrate that the failure to implement socially just pedagogies is not merely a lack of will, but a self-reinforcing system where institutional barriers and professional anxieties converge. These original contributions shift the academic conversation from identifying that a gap exists to understanding the relational logic and specific psychological barriers that sustain it.