PHED 680

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Physical Education

This course focuses on understanding the three main tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy as detailed by Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995), and how to apply them within physical education contexts, either as an educator or teacher-educator. Assumptions which underpin the course are that physical education has historically enacted a colorblind perspective when it comes to invisible or unspoken issues of racial inequity embedded within the field. Additionally, this course operates from the assumption that many teachers, and in particular, white teachers, are often unaware of the need for culturally relevant pedagogies and instead maintain Eurocentric pedagogies which privilege whiteness while simultaneously positioning racial and ethnic minorities as other. Therefore, this course will aim to disrupt the framework of whiteness from which physical education is often constructed towards deeper and more nuanced understandings of culturally relevant pedagogies. Informed by literature on the topic, students will center the multiple ways of knowing that emerge from their determinations of culturally relevant pedagogy in order to apply this knowledge in work towards more equitable and inclusive physical education contexts and to better meet the needs of a diverse student population, including English Learners

Units: 3.0