Physical activity promotes healthy physical and mental development, and regular participation can have a tremendous impact on one’s quality of life. Yet, roughly 75% of adolescent children fall short of daily activity targets. Of particular concern, physical activity levels among girls decline sharply as they become adolescents.
Qualitative inquiry aimed at understanding this phenomenon has become more common in the literature. In the article, Enacting a body-focused curriculum with young girls through an activist approach: Leveraging the after-school space, we consider the outcomes of an after school program which implemented a body-focused curriculum. This curriculum, referred to as GIRL (Gaining Insight through Reflexive Learning), utilized an activist approach.
The critical elements of activist research with girls as described by Oliver and Kirk (2016) include:
Student centered pedagogy
Hearing the feedback of all girls equally and using this feedback to inform how one teaches.
Inquiry-based education centered in action
Leading to greater student involvement, this element encourages the utilization of student feedback in guiding pedagogical decisions by engaging girls in inquiry.
Critical study of involvement
The allowance of curriculum space for girls to critically study their embodiment in relation to their environment; specifically, how omnipresent social messages contribute to their self-image.
Sustained listening and responding to girls over time
The final element suggests that simply understanding girls’ issues is not enough to affect quality curriculum and pedagogy. Researchers must engage with girls via the aforementioned elements. Involving prolonged engagement, supporting girls thinking, inviting their voices to drive curriculum, and creating a positive environment.
To put it plainly, an activist approach centers the classroom, pedagogy, and curriculum around the student. These four elements work together to set expectations for the environment to meet in accordance with the student, rather than expectations for the student to meet in accordance with her environment.
The GIRL curriculum centered class discussion and activity around matters of the body. The coaches implemented this curriculum by providing a place where girls could practice high levels of confidence and satisfaction with their bodies and, a safe place in which girls’ could discuss various concerns regarding the body through naming, critiquing, and changing possible outcomes (Marttinen et al, 2020).
GIRL was conducted at a Title I school in southern California. As such, the school serves a predominantly low-income population. The student body at the time the study was conducted consisted of 87% Hispanic/Latino, 3.5% White, 3.5% Asian, and 1.3% African American/Black. Nine fifth and sixth grade female students, aged ten-eleven years old, voluntarily participated in the study; all nine participants identified as either Hispanic/Latina or mixed race. Two female coaches, Mia and Ann, facilitated the after-school sessions.
The GIRL sessions were integrated into an existing after-school program called REACH (Reflective Educational Approach to Character and Health). For the first nine weeks, the GIRL sessions were held once a week for the first 20-40 minutes of the REACH program. After participants asked for more sessions, the sessions were expanded to being held twice a week starting with week ten and continuing through the end of the 28-week program. A full text and free article that explains the curriculum and provides examples can be found here.
Data were gathered via a coaches journal, field notes and observations, participants’ journals throughout the program, participants’ winter break journals, semi-structured interviews with students, emails between the after-school program coordinator and the researcher, and artifacts created by participants during GIRL sessions.
The GIRL curriculum was divided into four seven-week segments. The coaches first sought to establish trust and communication strategies amongst themselves and the participants- this is critical to an activist approach. Further, establishing an environment in which girls feel comfortable is crucial before expecting candor from them, let alone physical activity. The second segment introduced body-focused activities. This involved showing the girls videos and engaging in magazine exploration to prompt their thinking about the cultural and social messages they receive through media (Azzarito et al. 2016; Oliver and Lalik 2001, 2004b). The third segment employed a continuation of the previous while allowing more leadership opportunities for the girls. The girls were given the ability to take the lead on what activities to participate in and were given choice in regards to how the activities were completed. The final segment utilized culminating activities to aid in the transfer of skills into environments outside of the GIRL sessions.
The environment of the GIRL program was relatively unique to its participants. Insofar as it was not a male-dominated space, as physical activity centered after-school programs sometimes tend to be. The two coaches centered each weekly session plan around body image. Activities included a photoshop ‘spot the difference’ activity, a beauty ideal true or false game, and a treasure box activity in which the girls wrote compliments for one another’s treasure boxes. These activities proved to introduce a seldom discussed topic in the lives of the participants. In a final follow-up interview, Elena, said, “no one has ever asked me those questions, and well, I had the chance to say them in front of […] just girls”. The treasure box activity was one of the participants’ favorites. This underpins the importance of safety in a girl’s educational environment.
Girls seek safety, among other things, in environments where they are asked to sweat, exert, or compete. The treasure box activity allowed the girls to feel supported by their peers and a sense of mutual trust, thus creating a safer environment. It is another example of the coaches keeping the participants at the center of the curriculum. As put by participant Sofia, “I like that we get to write to other people [in our group], and you get something back, and you get to read them at the end, and giving them to people makes them feel good about themselves”. Further speaking to the environment created by the coaches and participants, Emmelina, said during an interview, “I like how we could express ourselves, we don’t have to be afraid of what to say”.
The pedagogy of the two coaches was immersed in student care and was student-centered overall. The coaches were able to foster individual relationships of trust, candor, and safety. Throughout the program, the coaches were faced with various issues including inappropriate behavior, lack of focus, and stress and frustration amongst the participants and coaches due to these challenges. The coaches student-centered response to these challenges was to listen and respond to students as it gave the girls an opportunity to be heard, gave them a voice, and this allowed the coaches to respond in an appropriate, non-condescending way.
Journals were used to further trust between coach and student, and offered an opportunity for personal rapport, via the coaches responding back to student statements and encouraging them to ask questions within their journal. To nurture this rapport, each GIRL session included journal writing time with reflective questions posed to the girls throughout. The trust between the coaches and students as well as the safety of the environment allowed for the open, honest discussion of otherwise sensitive areas- puberty, transgender individuals, family, and boys. Many of the girls even indicated that the GIRL session was the only arena in which they ever broached such topics. The safety and trust of the GIRL environment was also noticeable through the coach’s reflexivity.
The coaches took part in reflexive practices throughout the program. These practices led to an insightful pair of interactions between the coaches and Emmelina. The coaches noticed Emmelina’s apprehension in acting out certain social scenarios. Subsequently, the coaches read some concerning writings in Emmelina’s journal, calling herself “ugly” and “a nobody”. To address this, the coaches spoke privately with Emmelina. Ann reflects in her journal, “Emmelina had tears welling up in her eyes. I asked her what she thinks beautiful is and she said ‘I don’t know.’ I told her I think that beauty comes in many different forms and […] I think something that could help others is to have an activity that brings up these topics”. Reflexivity aided the coaches in implementing contemporaneous changes to the GIRL sessions as well as consider any faults in the program’s implementation.
The after-school space lends itself to the implementation of an activist approach- voluntary, malleable, continuous interactions with student populations. In this case study, Ann and Mia were able to make conspicuous the power behind trust and safety in an educational environment and in a teacher-student relationship. The individual relationships the coaches built with the GIRL participants and the environment enabled them to lead open, honest, and productive discussion and candor in what can be an otherwise oppressive environment- the classroom; this is the crux of an activist approach and proved to be key in the successful implementation of the GIRL program.
The results of the case study make plain that the current roadblocks to participation of girls in educational and physically active settings are amenable through evidence-based practice. Effective teacher practices can ameliorate the relationship between girls and physical activity, acting as a bridge toward lifetime physical activity and literacy rather than as a barrier. The small group setting of the GIRL program allowed for more individualized attention to be placed on each participant. Lessons from this program can be applied in a classroom setting- specifically understanding that a safe classroom environment was built by establishing trust and candor between the coaches and students.
You can read the full article (behind a paywall) here. You can view the pre-print free on ResearchGate here.
This is the citation: Marttinen, R., Johnston, K., Flory, S. B., & Meza, B. (2020). Enacting a body-focused curriculum with young girls through an activist approach: Leveraging the after-school space. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 1-15. (ahead of print)
This post was written by Greg Coogan, an undergraduate research assistant at George Mason University. The work from this article was completed as a part of Brianna Meza’s masters thesis at Cal State Fullerton.