Browsing by Author "Vuorinen, Matti"

The meaning of gender in physical education and sports has been seen as significant. Physical education groups have been divided by gender into boy’s groups and girl’s groups, although there has been an increase in the use of mixed groups in all school levels. Despite the rise in popularity of mixed groups, the significance of gender in physical education is still relevant, either due to structural factors or practical factors. Gender awareness is a way of acting, which acknowledges the significance of gender today and actively works to dismantle the restricting effects of gender stereotypes. The National Core Curricula of Education references gender awareness as a thing that every teacher should take into consideration in their own teaching and as a thing that each teacher should work towards. In this thesis my mission is to find out what teacher’s attitudes are towards gender awareness in physical education and do they have the readiness to organize it. At the same time, I will try to find out what are their perceptions about gender awareness in physical education and what factors do they find important regarding their readiness. In this thesis I used a mixed methods approach in which I used both quantitative and qualitative research methods. For my quantitative portion I performed a descriptive statistical analysis and for my qualitative portion I performed a data driven qualitative content analysis. The data was collected with an online questionnaire, which included background questions, closed multiple choice questions and open-ended questions. The data was collected from two Facebook groups, that are aimed at teachers and the questionnaire received 70 answers. The respondents’ attitudes towards gender awareness in physical education were mainly positive. The most significant difference regarding attitudes were between men and women, where women tended to feel more positively about gender awareness in physical education. Perceived readiness was also good among the respondents and no significant differences were seen between any grouping. The factors behind attitudes and readiness were described in a variety of ways. Positive expression regarding attitudes described gender awareness as an additional resource, while expressions of negative attitudes saw gender awareness as harmful or impractical. Expressions regarding factors that increase readiness presented professional development and encounters as main factors. Expressions regarding factors that decrease readiness presented teacher-based factors and environment-based factors as main factors.