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Despite significant theoretical and practical progress over the past 20 years, the social construction of gender and its link to youths’ participation in physical activity in school contexts remain critical issues that call for further socioeducational scrutiny. In this study, researchers investigated the ways students’ embodiment of discursive constructs differed in terms of gender and race, and the relation between students’ embodied discursive constructs and students’ favorite or least favorite physical activities in physical education classes. The participants were 528 students from three public high schools. A survey was developed to assess students’ embodiment of discursive constructs. These results suggest that discursive constructs are influential in producing students’ choice of “gender-appropriate” physical activities. To destabilize the gender binary, therefore, the creation and promotion of a discourse of the “multiplicity of physicality” is proposed.

This paper addresses the appropriate unit of analysis in field research. We first discuss the issues related to this topic: (a) unit of measurement versus unit of analysis, (b) treatments and random assignment, (c) independence of observations, (d) moderating and control variables, and (e) correlational versus experimental research. We then present a model for determining the correct unit of analysis. In many instances, researchers should use class means or subgroup means, and this has implications for research design. In the third section, we discuss the related issues of (a) the burden of proof, (b) asking the right questions and getting the right answers, and (c) completing statistical analyses. How data are analyzed can affect the results, and researchers should consider these issues when planning their research.

Scholarship related to physical education and sport pedagogy is rigorous and should be central to the academic discipline of kinesiology. The goal of this article is to situate physical education and sport pedagogy as an applied field in kinesiology, grounded in the assumption that physical education, as the professional or technical application of the broader academic discipline, is of critical importance to the success of kinesiology. A brief overview of the history of research on teaching physical education is followed by an overview of the streams of research that have evolved. Major tenets of research on effective teaching and curricular reform are discussed. The status of physical education teacher education and school physical education programs is considered, and a rationale for a broader view of pedagogy that has the potential not only to promote physical education and sport pedagogy but also to enrich the academic discipline is offered.