Reconfiguring girls’ disengagement in secondary physical education: applying established-outsider relations to peer relations, emotions and behaviour

The Reframing Sport for Teenage Girls: Tackling Teenage Disengagement report identified self-consciousness, body image and peer judgement as key factors for girls’ disengagement in sport. However, research on girls’ disengagement in secondary Physical Education (PE) tends to focus on gendered disparities, activity choice and biological reasons (i.e. puberty orperiods). Therefore, this article utilises the model of established-outsider relations to analyse how social processes and peer-group dynamics shape girls’ (dis)engagement in secondary PE. Data from five focus groups with 13- to 14-year-old girls in a coeducational secondary school in northern England is thematically analysed. Building upon individualised explanations (i.e. motivation, enjoyment, confidence), findings show girls’ disengagement is socially produced as competence, appearance and legitimacy are continually judged and negotiated. Whilst generally taught in single-sex classes, many girls’ self-consciousness, inferiority and outsider status were informed by their experiences of mixed-sex PE and the positioning of boys as an established group. As an outsider group, peer comparison and self-surveillance contributed to competence and appearance-informed hierarchies among girls. Visibility and perceived judgement were described as being intensified during individual activities, with team games diffusing responsibility, but not offering an escape from evaluation. Navigating such dynamics, some girls reported using hiding techniques as a form of disengagement. Demonstrating how outsider ‘group disgrace’ was internalised and reproduced between girls differently extends work on emotions, embodiment and peer relations in secondary PE. Tackling girls’ disengagement requires more than improving motivation, enjoyment and confidence, but also reconfiguring relational conditions within PE.