How Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teachers Experience Physical Education—A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Sexual and Gender Diversity in PE and at School
3. Methods
4. Results
4.1. Experiencing and Anticipating School as a Homophobic Context
“The terrorising all sort of came with dyke and lessie PE teacher and I thought these people actually hate me and for nothing more than my sexuality or my job”.[61]
“I used to get telephone calls at all hours of the night, and they were kids on the phone calling me up. It wasn’t one call a night. It sometimes was three or four, and sometimes it was like 12 and 1 o’clock. I could never figure out which one it was. ‘Oh, do you want to come over and sleep with me?’ Things like this. They’d hang up, and they’d call again. I went so far as to have the telephone number changed”.[66]
“The principal walked out of his office into the front office, and [the secretary] asked the principal, ‘Is Mona,’ and quick as a wink, right out of his mouth, [the principal said], ‘A lesbian.’ I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. The English teacher’s mouth just kind of dropped open, and there was a pregnant pause, and I just said, ‘Not nice.’ And I left. Because I could feel the color come up …I never forgave him for that”.[66]
4.2. Experiencing PE as a Particularly Risky Subject
“[I] hate supervising the kids going in the showers. I mean it’s just really stupid but you just feel really awkward about it”.[61]
“You know, check kids through the showers. I think because I am gay you become hypersensitive that you’re not having a good old stare just in case somebody picks up on it and that would be embarrassing to you”.[63]
“All through my teaching I was very careful not to touch kids. I’m still very careful touching kids. It’s just a hang up I have because of being a lesbian touching girls. I’m just very leery of it”.[66]
4.3. The Use of Protection Strategies
“There’s nothing that I keep hidden from my kids except my real personal life… I have no intentions of my kids knowing that I’m gay”[67]
“When Bart [colleague] called Geraldo [student] a ‘fag’, my body went through incorporeal transformations. His words led to an emotionally spiked state of fear and anger. This state affected the physical composition of my body: my face and head filled with blood and my body was suddenly battling itself (blood pressure rising, nausea, etc.)”.[40]
5. Discussion
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Year of Publication | Authors | Country | Study Objective | Data Collection | Size of Inspection Group | Sexuality, Gender and Age of Inspection Group | Methodological Quality Check |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | Woods [66] | USA | Reconstruction of lesbian PE teachers’ experiences and description of the meanings they made of their experiences | Interviews | 12 | Lesbian women, 25–50 years old | Methodological quality standards are met |
1992 | Woods and Harbeck [67] | USA | Examination of the identity management strategies used by PE teachers to conceal or reveal their lesbianism | Interviews | 12 | Lesbian women, 25–50 years old | Methodological quality standards are met |
1994 | Sparkes [62] | UK | Exploring how a lesbian PE teacher experiences homophobia and heterosexism and how she relates these experiences to other moments in her life | Interviews | 1 | Lesbian woman, in the late twenties | Methodological quality standards are met |
1996 | Squires and Sparkes [63] | UK | Exploring moments from the lives of lesbian teachers at different stages of their careers | Interviews | 5 | Lesbian women, 21–49 years old | Methodological quality standards are met |
1996 | Clarke [61] | UK | Exploring the multiplicity of ways in which lesbian PE teachers construct and manage their identities | Interviews | 18 | Lesbian women, 23–47 years old | Methodological quality standards are met |
1998 | Sykes [65] | Canada | Examination of the social construction of sexual identities across three generations of female PE teachers | Interviews | 6 | Three lesbian and three heterosexual women, 29–59 years old | Methodological quality standards are met |
2003 | Sykes [64] | Canada | Examination of the narratives about same-sex desires between teachers and students in PE | Interviews | 9 | Lesbian women, gay men, bisexual women and men, no age information | Methodological quality standards are met |
2016 | Edwards et al. [19] | UK | Exploring the experiences of two lesbian PE teachers working in a post Section 28 school environment | Interviews | 2 | Lesbian women, 25–29 years old | Methodological quality standards are met |
2018 | Landi [40] | USA | Reflection on researcher’s affective experiences as a queer male physical educator | Autoethnography | 1 | Gay man, in the twenties | Methodological quality standards are met |
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Müller, J.; Böhlke, N. How Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teachers Experience Physical Education—A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies. Sexes 2023, 4, 65-79. https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes4010007
Müller J, Böhlke N. How Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teachers Experience Physical Education—A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies. Sexes. 2023; 4(1):65-79. https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes4010007
Chicago/Turabian StyleMüller, Johannes, and Nicola Böhlke. 2023. "How Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teachers Experience Physical Education—A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies" Sexes 4, no. 1: 65-79. https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes4010007
APA StyleMüller, J., & Böhlke, N. (2023). How Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teachers Experience Physical Education—A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies. Sexes, 4(1), 65-79. https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes4010007