Gillian Walls

The Ability of Gender to Challenge: Queensland Senior Physical Education Gillian Walls

Previous research in physical education has historically focussed on the gender issues of single-sex and coeducation, however discussion on alternate groupings of students, is not as significantly explored. Ability is a factor that has also been infrequently dealt with in this examination. This research considered the factor of ability in single-sex and coeducation practical physical education learning environments, and the homogeneous groupings of single-sex schooling alongside a coeducation setting. It was hypothesised that gender, ability and the learning environment could affect experiences, perceptions and sense of level of challenge experienced within the physical education environment. The data analysis revealed that ability was a significant factor in Senior Physical Education learning environments. However, the findings of this research did not reveal gender as a significant factor in the same learning environments. Implications of the preliminary findings of this research for grouping students in Senior Physical Education classes indicate issues of equity relating to grouping students based upon ability and gender.