‘Race’ talk! Tensions and contradictions in sport and PE

Background: The universal sport discourses of meritocracy and equality are so engrained that few challenge them. The most cursory interest in sport, Physical Education (PE), and society will reveal that the lived reality is quite different. Racial disparities in the leadership and administration of sport are commonplace worldwide; yet, from research into ‘race’ in sport and PE, awareness of these issues is widespread, where many know that racism takes place it is generally claimed to be somewhere else or someone else. For many, this racism is part of the game and something to manipulate to steal an advantage; for others, it is trivial. This paper explores the contradictions and tensions of the author’s experience of how sport and PE students talk about ‘race’ and racism. ‘Race’ talk is considered here in the context of passive everyday ‘race’ talk, dominant discourses in sporting cultures, and colour blindness.

Theoretical framework: Drawing on Guinier and Torres’ [2003. The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. London: Harvard University Press] ideas of resistance through political race consciousness and Bonilla-Silva’s [2010. Racism Without Racists: Colour-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Plymouth: Rowan and Littlefield] notion of colour blindness, the semantics of ‘race’ and racialisation in sport and PE are interrogated through the prism of critical race theory (CRT). CRT is used here to centre ‘race’ and racialised relations where disciplines have consciously or otherwise excluded them. Importantly, the centring of ‘race’ by critical race scholars has advanced a strategic and pragmatic engagement with this slippery concept that recognises its paradoxical but symbolic location in society.

Discussion: Before exploring ‘race’ talk in the classroom, using images from the sport media as a pedagogical tool, the paper considers how ‘race’ is recreated and renewed. The paper then turns to explore how the effortless turn to everyday ‘race’ talk in the classroom can be viewed as an opportunity to disrupt racialised assumptions with the potential to implicate those that passively do so. Further, the diagnostic, aspirational, and activist goals of political race consciousness are established as vehicles for a positive sociological experience in the classroom.

Conclusion: The work concludes with a consideration of the uses and dangers of passive ‘race’ talk and the value of a political race consciousness in sport and PE. Part of the explanation for the perpetuation of ‘race’ talk and the relative lack of concern with its impact on education and wider society is focused on how the sovereignty of sport and PE trumps wider social concerns of ‘race’ and racism because of at least four factors: (1) the liberal left discourses of sporting utopianism, (2) the ‘race’ logic that pervades sport, based upon the perceived equal access and fairness of sport as it coalesces with the (3) ‘incontrovertible facts’ of black and white superiority (and inferiority) in certain sports, ergo the racial justifications for patterns of activity in sport and PE, and (4) the racist logic of the Right perpetuated through a biological reductionism in sport and PE discourses.     

Rationalizing Sociality: An Unfinished Script for Socialbots

This article takes the concept and some of the existing applications of socialbots—software robots that operate on social networking sites and present themselves as human users—as an occasion to trace the evolution of online sociality. The argument mobilizes theories of social rationalization from Max Weber to contemporary critical theory to demonstrate that the appearance of automated profiles (socialbots) on social networking platforms can be seen as a logical step in the progressive enclosure of online social interaction in standardized, simplified, and trivialized forms, frames, and gestures. Critical questions concerning what the growth of robo-sociality may mean for individual users and the online public sphere are posed with a view to charting the directions for a needed public debate.     

基于变易理论的体育教学内容分析及其设计策略

摘要：教学内容是体育教学过程中最具核心意义的要素之一。为进一步拓展、深化对体育教学内容及其特性的学理认识,科学有效地选择、设计和呈现体育教学内容,促进学生的有效学习,切实提高体育课的教学品质,主要运用文献资料法和逻辑分析法,在概述变易理论的基础上,重点发掘、阐释体育教学内容的变易特性及其主要类型,并提出基于变易特性的若干体育教学内容设计策略。研究结果表明：1）变易理论的深刻洞见之于体育教学内容的学理认知及其教学设计具有十分重要的认识论和方法论意义;2）体育教学内容具有一般和专项二重属性,并在其关键特征上、学生对其理解上、体育教师对其认识处理上呈现出3种重要的变易,具体又表现为预设的、实践的以及体验到的3种类型;3）重建体育教学内容观,重新审视、认识学生及其学习,选择、确定最有价值、最适切的体育教学内容及其关键特征,设计适切的变易图式,科学处理体育教学内容是帮助学生理解、掌握体育教学内容,进而促进学生更有效地学习的关键所在。     

综合英语课程教学的认知转向探索

受认知诗学理论的影响,综合英语课堂教学将更加注重学生的学习心理过程和学习效果。认知诗学语境下的概念型教学法除了关注英汉对比意识在学生思维中的养成,在综合英语教学中将更多地聚焦于以概念为中心的单元主题在学生认知过程中的内化。概念型教学法的五个教学步骤,即解释、物化、交际活动、言语化、内化,可以有效地将教学内容前景化以提高学生学习效果,并有助于培养学生创造性的学习和批判性思维的养成。     

Lambert W函数性质及其应用

介绍了Lambert W函数的代数及图像性质,如该函数的级数展开式、微分及函数在复平面的图像等。总结了其在数学、物理、化学和生物等领域的应用情况。     

行人最大速度对行人流影响的研究

应用改进的格子气模型(即将行人的最大速度扩展到大于1)研究行人的最大速度对过道中单向和双向行人流的影响。模拟结果显示:最大速度为5时所对应基本图的临界密度跟实验值比较符合,说明该扩展是必要的;在一定范围内随着行人最大速度的增大道路的整体通行能力增强同时临界密度减小;双向行人流的时空斑图显示行人最大速度的增大加快了拥堵的形成过程(即缩短了行人从局部拥堵演化为完全拥堵的时间)。     

大学英语教学中批判性思维的培养模式研究

作为大学生综合素质不可或缺的组成要素,批判性思维的培养理应成为大学英语课堂教学的重要目标和任务之一。本文先探讨了批判性思维的概念,又详细分析了大学英语教学中培养批判性思维的重要性,并以大学英语课堂使用的《新视野大学英语精读》第二册第七单元为例,对大学英语教学中培养批判性思维的教学模式进行了探讨。     

流行小说中的亚文化对青少年阅读及写作的影响——以韩寒的《三重门》为例

近年来,随着人们精神文化生活的日益丰富,流行小说空前繁荣。流行小说在校园中更是广泛地流行,其中所表现的亚文化思潮必然会对青少年产生不可估量的影响。论文以《三重门》为例,分析其文本中的批判性亚文化在学校管理、当今的许多出书现象、以及藏书现象的主要表现,并阐述其中的亚文化思潮对青少年阅读习惯及写作方面的影响。     

The stark reality of the ‘White Saviour’ complex and the need for critical consciousness: a document analysis of the early journals of a Freirean educator

While the anglophone academic literature has long engaged in analysis of the role of privilege in the work of educators in the Global North, this article represents an initial foray into such analysis in non-formal educational settings in the Global South. Through a cultural-textual document analysis of 12?months of personal journal entries written by the author while working as a Freirean adult educator in Mozambique, this article documents a lack of recognition of social privilege exhibited by the author in these entries, which is here referred to as the ‘White Saviour’ complex. This article also documents how the pursuit of what Freire calls ‘critical consciousness’ can effectively problematise this privileged mindset.