“We have to make it fair”: an ethnographic account of students’ negotiating equity and inclusion in student-centred physical education

Background Student-centred approaches, as empowering and socially driven pedagogical environments, afford the conditions for students to negotiate how learning opportunities are distributed in physical education (PE). However, the impact of such negotiations is not guaranteed to be positive, particularly with limited teacher mediation, yet, because research has often adopted a teacher-centric view, a nuanced understanding of how students co-produce equity and inclusion through daily negotiations is warranted. Aim This ethnographic study explored how students, within a student-centred PE context guided by four preservice teachers, negotiated in ways that impacted equity and inclusion. Methods A narrative was developed using classroom ecology and reflexive thematic analysis to interpret a myriad of accounts documented through prolonged immersion as a participant observer, ranging from fieldwork notes and audio recordings to focus groups. Outcomes Students often instilled hegemonic participation patterns by negotiating who got to do what during practice, a negotiation that was often met with compliance. However, compliant students gradually began to renegotiate tasks, roles, groupings, and interactions in ways that could widen how learning opportunities were distributed. Over time, students became more proactive, and negotiations became indelibly embedded within the lesson's ecology. Conclusions This study provides a granular ethnographic account of how equity and inclusion in student-centred PE can be continuously co-constructed by students throughout lessons, which provides new avenues for conceptualising negotiations, as well as their place as a pedagogical tool to be explored by physical education teacher education and pre-service teachers.