The development processes of physical education and gender: students' discourses

This study aims to understand the positions of elementary school students in Coimbra/Portugal on the processes of development of PE, gender and the reflection of these positions in the classroom. To construct the corpus, semi-structured interviews were used with 16 students from two elementary school in the city of Coimbra/Portugal. The analysis shows that although the students are reflective about PE and concerned about equal opportunities, non-sexist practices and language, there are still contradictions and marks that reinforce a non-genderized or binary and hierarchical reality about gender, contributing to the circulation of social discourses of female inferiority. Therefore, students are fundamental to changing this unequal reality, as their beliefs and perceptions shape behavior and give meaning to the daily life of school PE.