This article reports on the findings of an exploratory study of tomboy identities. Based on case study data of children aged nine to eleven in two contrasting London schools, we attempt to tease out how children of this age, their teachers and parents, understand the term ‘tomboy’, how they relate it to the identities of themselves and others, the extent to which such identities can be taken up and maintained, and the relationship between these and active play in pre-pubertal girls. The study is theoretically grounded in the idea that masculinities and femininities are individually and collectively negotiated within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice, so that the identities that any individual can take up are locally governed and constructed.

It was unusual to identify unproblematically as a tomboy, though several girls described themselves as ‘a bit tomboy’. Although active play remains possible for some girls as they come to the end of primary schooling, for others their movement becomes restricted, due to a number of factors. This has longer-term implications for the range of identities available to teenage girls, and for their physical well-being.

...of girls' physical education experiences

Physical education represents a dynamic social space where students experience and interpret physicality in a context that accentuates peer relationships and privileges particular forms of embodiment. This article focuses on girls' understandings of physicality with respect to the organisation of physical education and more informal social networks. Research exploring the connections between the body, capital, physical activity, and femininity and work on friendship and other social relationships underpin the study. The article draws on findings from ethnographic work involving 12- and 13-year-old girls in a multi-ethnic, mixed comprehensive school in the United Kingdom. The meaning of physicality was interwoven with differences in social status, membership in friendship groups, gender ideologies, and ethnicity. Girls' interpretations of their experiences centred on their perceptions of the importance of displays of competence and the ways that practices in physical education reinforced and challenged their social networks. Girl-only physical education contexts did not emerge as unproblematic as practices were used to both include and exclude other girls, to reinforce social status and to marginalize others. Girls who were physically skilled and socially valued were able to exercise power and maintain their status through demonstrations of competence and strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Girls' activity choices and evaluations of physical education related to their own feelings of competence, the potential for positive or negative social interactions, and their ability to acquire and utilize desirable forms of social and physical capital. Implications for teaching include the necessity of incorporating inclusive practices that acknowledge the diverse range of girls' experiences, interests and needs, the need to reflect on the link between activities and social relationships, the possibility of incorporating space for critical reflection, and the influence of friendships and social networks.

BSC

...for PE pedagogy 

This article addresses the impact of selected sports media events on the active participation of a group of young people aged 14/15. Its particular focus is on an intense period of media sport coverage during the European Soccer Championships (Euro '96), the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships and the Atlanta Olympics and on how a group of British young people articulate ways that consumption of these products creates opportunities and challenges for their own sports participation.

The data reported here focus on one aspect drawn from a wider media sport and audience investigation designed within a hermeneutic and interpretative methodological framework. Through daily diaries and interviews this article draws particularly on young people's interpretations of sport and media as competing leisure activities and lifestyle choices; ways in which they perceive that watching sport provides them with new motivations and opportunities for physical activity; and the potential of sport media messages and images to 'inform and fashion performance'.