This study examined whether single-gender or mixed-gender PE lessons were more conducive to increasing the physical activity levels of girls. One hundred and twenty girls (12--15 years) wore a wGT3x+ActiGraph accelerometer while participating in basketball games. Time spent in low (LPA), moderate (MPA), vigorous (VPA), and moderate-to-vigorous…

This article focuses on the inequalities experienced particularly by girls who attend co-educational secondary schools where specific male sports dominate school life. The research was undertaken in the Republic of Ireland in three schools known for the participation and success of boys' teams in Gaelic football, hurling and rugby. Through a…

Background: A student's choice to engage in a learning task is highly related to the student's environmental stimuli and his or her perception of interest. From this perspective, the construct of situational interest (SI) has been used to interpret students' motivation in task engagement. SI is assumed to be transitory, environmentally activated,…

As much as the principle of co-education may appear to make sense in physical education (PE) lessons, trends in its development have emerged over the past years, especially in secondary schools, which were certainly not intended by the pedagogical programme of "reflective co-education", which stands for respect for equality…

Within physical education and sport, girls must navigate discourses of valued athletic and gendered bodies that marginalise or "other" non-normative performances through systems of surveillance and punishment. The purpose of this paper is to share girls' perspectives on how these discourses affected their gender performances and activity…

The purpose of this study was to analyse representations of hegemonic masculinity in physical education (PE) mixed classes, the only curricular discipline having sport as its contents in the Portuguese educational system. The analysed data come from semi-structured interviews with Portuguese secondary school teachers and students and from class…

Flag or touch football is a popular activity unit in American secondary physical education curricula. However, unlike other sports its stigmatization as a masculine-typed activity and frequent inequitable distribution of game play opportunities at the skill positions (e.g., receiver, quarterback) results in the marginalization of female…

This article provides options and a rationale for expanding gender-grouping considerations to include single-gender, coed, and combination strategies for instruction in secondary physical education classes. This rationale is based on empirical evidence that suggests that female students are denied equal opportunity to achieve learning goals during…

Students from coeducational classes were assigned to a same-sex or a new coeducational physical education class for a 10-lesson unit of basketball. Group and individual analyses indicated that middle school students preferred same-sex classes, whereas high school students preferred coeducational classes. (SM)