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Sport, Education and Society

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Using visual methodologies to understand pre-service Health and Physical Education teachers’subjectivities of bodies

Valeria Varea & Bonnie Pang

To cite this article: Valeria Varea & Bonnie Pang (2016): Using visual methodologies tounderstand pre-service Health and Physical Education teachers’ subjectivities of bodies, Sport,Education and Society

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2016.1228625

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Using visual methodologies to understand pre-service Healthand Physical Education teachers’ subjectivities of bodiesValeria Vareaa and Bonnie Pangb

aSchool of Education, University of New England, Armidale, Australia; bSchool of Science and Health,Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia

ABSTRACTSocio-cultural theorists have argued that having a diverse understandingof subjectivities of normal/ideal bodies is important for Health andPhysical Education (HPE) teachers. When teachers hold a singleunderstanding and perception of normal/ideal bodies, such as a thinbody as normal or ideal body, which are usually informed by dominantdiscourses, they may (re)produce narrow understandings of bodiesamong their students. This paper focuses on how a group of pre-serviceHPE specialist teachers (11 females and 3 males, aged between 18 and26 at the time of the first interview) from an Australian university,discuss issues related to subjectivities of bodies. It draws on visualmethodologies and semi-structured interviews to understand how thesepre-service HPE specialist teachers construct discourses of bodies.Foucault’s concepts of normalisation, surveillance and biopedagogies areused to explore discursive constructions of bodies, with a particular focuson how some discourses are normalised via surveillance techniques. Theresults of the study invite us to reflect on how images may promotecertain ways of thinking about and considering the body among pre-service HPE specialist teachers. In light of contradictions which werefound across the comments of two participants who constructeddifferent discourses during the interviews, we posit that making sense ofsubjectivities of bodies is complex and often contradictory. Furthermore,the results suggest that photo elicitation is a useful visual method fortheorising issues related to bodies. Results can inform teacher educationand policy in how to better prepare pre-service HPE teachers to teachabout bodies.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 11 January 2016Accepted 22 August 2016

KEYWORDSPre-service Health andPhysical Education teachers;bodies; photo elicitation;normalisation; surveillance;biopedagogies

Introduction

While it is commonly acknowledged that Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers are requiredto teach about bodies in their classes (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority[ACARA], 2015; Board of Studies NSW, 2007), literature suggests that some teachers may hold contra-dictory and problematic understandings of concepts related to subjectivities of bodies (Rich, 2004;Webb, Quennerstedt, & Öhman, 2008; Wrench & Garrett, 2014). For example, teachers’ experiences,discourses and embodied practices may valorise discourses of liberal individualism and genderedinequalities within Physical Education (PE) classes (Rich, 2004) and students – and people ingeneral – often expect from PE teachers to have appropriate and fit bodies, and be healthy andskilful role models (Webb et al., 2008). Some scholars have found similar results that emphasisehow HPE teachers espouse values, beliefs, knowledge and possible practices, and that they have

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Valeria Varea vvarea3@une.edu.au School of Education, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351,Australia

SPORT, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2016.1228625

narrow views of what is to be healthy and fit among pre-service HPE teachers (Garrett & Wrench,2012; Varea & Tinning, 2016; Welch & Wright, 2011), while others have argued that pre-service HPEteachers tend to have more body image distortions, eating and exercise disorders than the rest ofthe population (O’Dea & Abraham, 2001; Yager & O’Dea, 2009). In addition, none of these previousstudies utilised a visual component in the data generation process which could extend pre-serviceHPE teachers’ understandings of subjectivities of bodies. People’s selection of body images fromthe media can provide a more authentic representation of their subjective experiences of thebody (Clark-Ibáñez, 2004; Rose, 2007). The use of visual methodologies is important in this studyin terms of unpacking pre-service teachers’ subjectivities of bodies.

In extending the current literature, this paper draws on images from the media that participantsbrought to the interviews as visual prompts for research in response to the highly visual culture inWestern societies (Jenks, 1995; Jones, 2003). What people understand about their worlds is linkedto whom and what they see (Casper & Moore, 2009). This is accentuated by the greater exposureto screens (TV, computers, mp3/mp4 players, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) and also to fashion maga-zines in contemporary society. Digital technologies frequently portray a large number of bodies,idealised as healthy and well-shaped, where individuals learn the meanings of an appropriate body(Azzarito, 2010a; Kirk, 2002). In so doing, the media acts as sites of public pedagogies for many,especially young people (Tinning, 2010).

Visual methods can provide further information which interviews alone could not. For example,Azzarito (2009) explored high school students’ social construction of the ideal body in PE by usingbody images drawn from fitness and sport magazines (i.e. Sports illustrated, Ebony, Muscle and fitnessand Essence) from two schools located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Theresearcher showed a portfolio of pictures and asked students to comment on girl’s and boy’sideal bodies. As a result, this study utilised visual methods to complement the interviews andaimed to uncover how high school students’ construction of the girl’s ideal body was representedby a narrow choice of pictures displaying ideals of sexualised slenderness and a white femininefit body. This study illustrated that visual methods is a useful methodology to uncover certainstudents’ beliefs of ideal bodies. Similarly, Oliver (2013) researched issues related to bodies withninth-grade girls from a school in a rural town in the Southeast United States, asking them toselect images from their preferred magazines that captured their attention. From this study was con-cluded that images assisted girls to make public ideas and concerns they had that language alonecould not do.

It is relevant, therefore, to examine the influence that media images may have on constructions ofsubjectivities of bodies among future HPE specialist teachers. We first explain the importance of usingvisual images to researching bodies in a highly visualised society. Then we describe the Foucauldianconcepts of surveillance, normalisation and biopedagogies used for this paper, followed by themethods section. Lastly, we present the main findings of this research which are presented inthree main themes: ‘Discussing (ideal) bodies’, ‘Unpacking further results through photo elicitation’and ‘Affirming bodies diversity’.

Using images in researching bodies

Images have the potential to stimulate reflections that words alone cannot (Schwartz, 1989), and thisis particularly important while working with issues related to subjectivities of bodies among pre-service HPE teachers. Visual methodologies include a wide variety of methodological approaches,research designs and techniques. Pink (2007), for example, establishes three different approaches:‘a) examining pre-existing visual representations, b) making visual representations, and c) collabor-ation with social actors in the production of visual representations’ (p. 40). Various visual methodsand techniques that have arisen in the literature include visual ethnography (Pink, 2007), visual nar-rative (Carrington, Allen, & Osmolowski, 2007; Moss, 2003), visual sociology (Wagner, 1979), image-based research (Prosser & Loxley, 2007; Wagner, 2006) and photo elicitation (Clark-Ibáñez, 2004,

2 V. VAREA AND B. PANG

2007; Curry, 1986; Gauntlett & Holzwarth, 2006; Harper, 2002), among others. Of these, photo elicita-tion was utilised in the study reported here.

Photo elicitation is considered an enabling methodology which assumes that ‘people have some-thing interesting to communicate, and that they can do so creatively’ (Gauntlett & Holzwarth, 2006,p. 84). The use of this method can reveal insights that may remain uncovered by other approaches,particularly those ones related to normalisation and (self-)surveillance of bodies among pre-serviceHPE teachers. Photo elicitation is a complex process which allows participants to show dimensionsof their social world which may be ignored or taken for granted (Clark-Ibáñez, 2007) and maytrigger memories, especially those related to embodiment. It is a useful tool to investigate howcertain constructions of bodies have been normalised, particularly through surveillance. It can beargued that the messages conveyed by a picture are neither fixed nor mono-dimensional. Animage produces multiple readings and messages which are, according to Schwartz (1989), intrinsi-cally ambiguous. However, this ambiguity should not be considered as a limitation or disadvantage.On the contrary, when used to aid in the communication of complex messages by participants, it maycontribute to the generation of richer data.

When images are produced by the researcher, some level of distance between the participant andthe researcher is generated. However, the participants of this study collected their own images. Someacademics have considered photo elicitation useful for exploration of sensitive issues regardingpeople’s bodies. Research using visual methodologies provides an appropriate avenue for deeperexploration of individuals’ experiences of their body as it encourages participants to communicateand express themselves in a significant way (Gauntlett & Holzwarth, 2006). Harper (2012) suggeststhat visual research can produce new and different types of knowledge. He asserts that the worldthat is seen and represented visually is different to the world that is represented through words,and as a result, it connects to different realities than more conventional research methods. We willnowmove on to describe the Foucauldian concepts of surveillance, normalisation and biopedagogiesused in this paper to explore how they may influence the subjectivities of normal/ideal bodies usingimages in the data generation process.

A Foucauldian approach to unpacking the images

This paper draws on Foucault’s concepts of surveillance, normalisation and biopedagogies to explainhow the participants made sense of and discussed issues related to bodies. Surveillance techniqueshave become increasingly common in everyday life in Western societies (Skeggs, 2009; Vaz & Bruno,2003). Individuals usually monitor their bodies, actions and emotions, and some may also check thatthey are following a healthy pattern for their lives. Foucault (1979) analyses how individuals havebecome subjects of their own controlling gaze.

Surveillance functions as a technique of power given that it perpetuates, creates or prescribesbehaviour according to some norm of social life. As Webb, McCaughtry, and Macdonald highlighted,‘[t]oday, the retribution associated with surveillance has shifted from corporeal punishment forescaping physical confinement, to public admonition for transgressing normalcy’ (2004, p. 210).Foucault (1979) also noted that being subject to the gaze of others led subjects to internalise thegazes and regulate their behaviours and identities towards a specific norm. Different physicalspaces – and now also virtual spaces – are locations in which people are monitored and in whichnew forms of normalising practices emerge (Evans, Rich, Allwood, & Davies, 2008). Normalisation pro-cesses use surveillance as a mechanism to try to achieve the apparent norm, such as a normal body.Normalisation, according to Foucault (1979), is a new form of disciplinary power. It is a way toobserve, order, intervene and ultimately, control, which also contributes to the simultaneous hom-ogenisation and individualisation of populations. Although normalisation ‘is part of a disciplinarypower that no one controls’ (Heyes, 2007, p. 118), there are people everywhere who act as judgesof normality. Gaze normalises and ‘through establishing what is considered appropriate and inap-propriate, a standard of “normal” is created’ (Richardson & Locks, 2014, p. 22).

SPORT, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY 3

Foucault (1979) claims that normalisation is a great instrument of power. Biopower is a form ofpower which attempts to control individuals and populations through practices that teach themhow to be healthy (and consequently, good) citizens (Harwood, 2009). In so doing, through thedisplay of normalised or idealised bodies, digital technologies and magazines may act as biopedago-gies which provide instructions regarding how individuals should live their lives and how they mayachieve ideal bodies. As result, biopower analyses the constitution of subjects and their processes ofnormalisation (Harwood, 2009). The term biopedagogies is used to describe normalising and regulat-ing practices that take place in different institutions and that are also dispersed through media. Bio-pedagogies cause us to reflect on how the body is also a political space (Wright, 2009) and has thepotential to influence the process of subjectification through creating pressure for individuals tomonitor themselves (e.g. through the display of specific kinds of bodies via digital technologiesand in magazines), usually intensifying knowledge around supposed obesity-related risks and provid-ing instructions on how to eat healthily and be active (Harwood, 2009). Pre-service HPE specialist tea-chers are not immune to these normalising and surveillance influences from digital technologies andmagazines and, as such, it is relevant to analyse how they are influenced by these normalising andsurveillance processes that take place through bodies displayed on the media. We will now turn tothe research design.

Methods

The participants in this study were undergraduate students studying to become HPE specialist teachersat an Australian university. Fourteen students volunteered to participate in the study, of whom 11 werefemales and 3 males, aged between 18 and 26 at the time of the first interview. Thirteen participantsidentified themselves as Australians while one identified himself as Singaporean, and all of them self-identified as belonging to a middle class. All of the participants who self-identified as Australians wereborn in Australia except for one, who was born in South Africa and moved to Australia when she wasnine years old. The project aimed to invite a small sample of HPE undergraduate students to examinetheir views on subjectivities of bodies through media images. The participants were recruited from theHPE programme cohort at a university located in a major Australian city. The total cohort consists ofapproximately 40 students. As the sample for this paper was small and self-selected, it could be possiblethat those who volunteered for the study held particularly strong views about the issues, which causedthem to volunteer. Further research is needed to see to what extent the views presented in this paperare evident among pre-service HPE teachers generally. Ethical clearance was gained through the uni-versity and pseudonyms have been used throughout when reporting data to ensure anonymity.

The data for this paper were generated from two sources: semi-structured interviews conducted bythe first author as part of a larger study and images from the media that participants selected and tookto one of the interviews (Figure 1). The first author was born and bred in Argentina and then relocatedto Australia to pursue her Ph.D. studies in the field of HPE. The interactions between the first author (as ayoung, female, Argentinian) and the participants increased the rapport from interview 1 to interview3. The second author was born and bred in Hong Kong. Her involvement in the project was post-data generation. She has expertise researching gendered and racialised experiences in HPE and phys-ical activity. Her role was as a critical friend during the analysis and writing process, enabling dialoguesabout the integration of data and theoretical perspectives. The first author conducted three interviewswith each participant. Interview questions aimed to explore how participants constructed discoursesrelated to their subjectivities of normal/ideal bodies. Questions relevant to this paper that wereasked in the interviews included: ‘What do you think an ideal body looks like?’, ‘How do you feelwhen you see a fat or a skinny person?’, ‘What do you think an average person’s body should belike?’ and ‘What do you think about your own body?’ In the second set of interviews, participantswere asked to bring some images, sourced from the media, which caught their attention in someway regarding bodies. The prompt for this task was emailed one week prior the interview, and preciselyit asked to ‘[c]ollect some pictures (frommagazines, internet, brochures, etc) about people’s bodies that

4 V. VAREA AND B. PANG

Figure 1. Some examples of images of bodies taken to the second set of interviews.

SPORT, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY 5

caught your attention somehow and bring them to the meeting’. The decision to set this prompt quitebroadly was based on the intention to not limit participants’ responses and the selection of images, andto be open to find things that the researchers were not expecting. In the actual interview, the firstauthor asked the participants a broad range of questions about their perceptions of the bodies inthe images. In this paper, only those data that are related to the participants’ talk about the idealbody and the fat/skinny body were included.

All interviews were transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were read several times to identify categoriesand similar ideas that were grouped into themes constructed from the dominant discourses evidentin the participants’ comments. QSR NVivo9 software was used for coding and to identify recurringideas. Two cycles of coding were conducted using a content analysis approach (Saldaña, 2009). Anopen coding was conducted in the first instance and the amount of data coded ranged from afew words to full sentences that were included into the different themes. For the second cycle ofcoding, Foucault’s concepts of surveillance, normalisation and biopedagogies were used to unpackparticipants’ discourse on bodies. The images that participants took to the second set of interviewswere analysed in two different ways. First, what participants said about each image was coded as partof the interview transcripts. All images were analysed by the first author; they were organised into acomprehensive, systematic photo inventory (Prosser, 2007) and were coded using QSR NVivo9 soft-ware. Next, a visual content analysis (van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001) was conducted with the images.‘Variables’ and ‘values’ mutually exclusive and exhaustive were used in the coding of the images(van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001). For example, some variables used were: ‘sex’, ‘pose’, and some ofthe values were: ‘male/female’, ‘passive/active’.

In what follows, we discuss three of the main themes constructed in interaction with participantsand the data. We firstly analyse how participants discussed their meanings of (ideal) bodies. We thendiscuss findings that will extend our understanding of how issues related to gender and race/ethni-city were only possible to uncover through the use of photo elicitation. Finally, we explore the com-ments of two particular students who offered different discourses than the rest of the participants.

Discussing (ideal) bodies

The functionality discourse of the body seemed to play a significant role in most participants’ lives.They expressed more concern with the way that their bodies functioned than with physical appear-ance. Sport played a significant role in the discourses of most participants. They also commented onthe importance of possessing an able body, primarily to play sports but also to be able to function ineveryday tasks. The following two excerpts from participants illustrate this:

If I couldn’t do everything that I can I would hate it, especially sports…When I get sick for example and I’ve notbeen able to do sport, I hate it. I feel lazy. (Simone, 19 years old, born in Australia)

When I look at people that they can’t take care of themselves anymore, because they haven’t got full functionalityof their body, I really do think that that would be one of the worst things that could happen to me… I just neverwant to have to become dependent of someone else to help me out. I think I just need to be able to get through aday by myself and anything that hinders that would be a really bad blow to my quality of life. (Charles, 20 yearsold, born in Australia)

Although most of the participants demonstrated more concern for the functioning of the body thanfor its appearance, their classification of bodies as (un)healthy was influenced by the images they sawin the media. Julie and Tanya commented:

… yes, she is a model [image #1] so she has to keep her body toned, but I think she looks really healthy. Shedoesn’t look overly thin. She doesn’t look like she is really starving herself to be a model. She just looks naturallytoned, happy and fit. (Julie, 19 years old, born in Australia)

… I reckon she [image #2] has a really fit-looking body. That probably resembles how she looks after it, I guessthrough sport, and she eats healthy. (Tanya, 19 years old, born in South Africa)

6 V. VAREA AND B. PANG

Julie and Tanya agreed that these two bodies looked fit and healthy. In so doing, they implied thathealth could be translated to having a shape – in other words, health is externalised and constructedas something that can be judged from someone’s appearance, and fitness is also normalised as some-thing that can be seen. Their subjectivities regarding health were based on a visual component. Thedisplay of bodies (in one form or another) that are idealised as active, healthy and well-shaped hasbecome ubiquitous in the media. The media, therefore, acts pressing individuals towards increasedself-surveillance through the construction of a body which is subject to biopower influences.

Today, the construction of being healthy is mainly about looking healthy (Lupton, 1996; Markula,Burns, & Riley, 2008), and looking healthy is about looking beautiful, slim and toned. However, theconstruction of bodies as (un)healthy influenced by visual assessment is of great importance inthat it suggests that the media does pedagogical work by teaching young people about desirablebodies (Tinning, 2010). Even though there is considerable evidence which demonstrates that mostcelebrities who appear in the media suffer from eating and exercise disorders, and that most picturesare technologically enhanced before publication (Pang, Alfrey, & Varea, 2016; Thompson & Heinberg,1999), this group of participants did not take this into account. Consequently, they evidenced a non-critical acceptance of dominant models and discourses.

It is noteworthy that, during the second set of interviews when participants brought images ofbodies from the media, almost all of the female participants brought mainly images of female sub-jects. This was not the case with male participants, who brought images of both female and malesubjects to the interviews. The first author considered it important to ask the female participantswhy they brought images of females rather than males, as this was not specified in the prompt.The following are some representative responses:

Probably because I don’t care what men look like and because I care what I look like, so I inspire to look like themmaybe. (Simone, 19 years old, born in Australia)

I think it relates more to how I’d see myself and I’d compare myself to other women… You see a guy, you can justgo, okay, he’s hot… but with other women, it’s a bit – I try not to get into it – but it’s a little bit of a competition.(Julie, 19 years old, born in Australia)

In this way, female participants were using images from the media to self-surveil their own bodies.The images also acted as idealising or normalising agents towards participants’ bodies, as many ofthem constructed their discourses of the body by referring to the images as representative ofideal or normal bodies. In other words, media acted as biopedagogy for some of these participants,encouraging them to undertake normalising and regulating practices to achieve the types of bodiesthat are commonly displayed in the mass media. Images in this regard were considered as biopeda-gogies, teaching students how to live (Harwood, 2009).

Participants showed some similarities in how they considered an attractive body to also be ahealthy body. Some participants tended to look at such bodies as a motivation to try to achievesimilar bodies for themselves and to stay healthy, acting as biopedagogies on participants’ subjectiv-ities. Finally, female participants brought mainly images of female bodies to the interviews demon-strating some kind of competition between female bodies.

Unpacking further results through photo elicitation

Participants did not specifically talk about how race/ethnicity and gender influence their subjectiv-ities of bodies. However, through photo elicitation it was possible to discover some relevant issuesregarding these topics, as explored below.

Race

All participants except for one, brought images of white-looking subjects to the interviews. Imagesnumber 3–6 are some examples. Only through the use of photo elicitation was it possible to discover

SPORT, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY 7

some possible invisibility of whiteness for the participants who brought these images. These imagesreinforce the characterisation of HPE professionals as a homogenous, predominately white, middle-class and heterosexual group (Azzarito, 2009; Dowling, Fitzgerald, & Flintoff, 2015). Carlos (26 yearsold), who self-identified as Singaporean, was the only one who brought images of subjects fromanother country while all other participants did not (images #7 and 8). He collected the above-men-tioned images as examples of an attractive woman.

According to critical whiteness studies (Frankenberg, 2008), the hegemonic racialised powerrelations are maintained where the ‘perfect’ body is understood in terms of whiteness. This formof cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) serves to privilege, marginalise and influence how HPE teachersposition themselves and their future students in relation to the ‘right’ body. This way of legitimisingwhiteness in subjectivities of bodies through denying or overlooking other possible forms of bodies,is concomitantly constructing those who do not fit with the norm as the other (Foucault, 1980). This ishow Foucault’s normalisation works to shape people’s subjectivities in relation to ideal bodies(Wright, O’Flynn, & Macdonald, 2006). In this case, body appearance, such as whiteness (Azzarito,2009; Pang et al., 2016), are often valued in contemporary western physical cultures. Arguably, thedominant subjectivities of an ideal body have overlooked alternative notions of bodies that couldbe meaningful in these pre-service teachers’ lives and professional careers. As the data showed,the representations of ‘other’ bodies are underrepresented in these participants’ discourses andthus highlighted the need for alternative and diverse understandings of bodies.

Gender

As mentioned earlier in this paper, most female participants brought mainly images of female sub-jects to the interviews. Taking into consideration that there were also more female than male partici-pants in this study, we had considerably more images of female subjects to analyse. Most of thesesubjects are displayed with a passive attitude (showing no intention of movement), posing to thecamera, staring at the viewer and wearing little clothing (see for example images #1, 2, 9, 10 and11). This confirms the claims of a significant corpus of literature regarding how female bodies areusually portrayed as objects (of desire) in the media, and how they are sexualised and idealised(Azzarito, 2010a; Wright, 1991). In contrast, the images of male subjects that were brought to theinterviews show some kind of movement. The male subjects also wear considerably more clothingand do not seem to stare at the camera to the same extent. In fact, two of them are even wearingsunglasses (images #12, 13 and 14). It is noteworthy that most of the participants did not reflectnor subvert the physicality for other aspects of identity. Carlos was the only one who reflected onthis, when he stated the following:

The female body is seen as an object of sex for men…Maybe as a male audience, the first three things noticed[from the female subjects in the pictures that he brought, see images #7 and 8] were face, then breast, then thecrotch or butt… perverted as it seems but people are conditioned by various media. Look at the second photo[#7], isn’t that what the advertiser is doing? Which brings to a point, females equals sex… not someone you canhave intellectual conversations with. (Carlos, 26 years old, born in Singapore)

In this way, Carlos was the only participant who reflected on the sexualisation of women in the media.As noted by Pang et al. (2016), the hyper-realistic slim and flawless bodies portrayed in popular mediain the postmodern media culture often glamorise unrealistic skin tones and body size.

It was only possible to uncover participants’ covert orientations to race and gender through theutilisation of photo elicitation. Accordingly, Katzew and Azzarito (2013) found that through photo eli-citation it was possible to obtain important information about young people’s constructions andunderstandings of the body’s experiences that the researchers would have been unlikely touncover otherwise. In this way, and as advocated by Harper (2002), photo elicitation is not only aninterview process that provides more information, but rather it evokes different kinds of information.Photo elicitation proved to be a useful methodological technique to explore racialised and gendered

8 V. VAREA AND B. PANG

body discourses that can lead us to relevant body knowledge. Given the strong link between visualculture and the body in Western societies, visual methodologies are predominantly useful in thestudy of the socio-cultural construction of the body, particularly in physical activity and health con-texts, where the body is represented and constructed according to different exercise practices, valuesand beliefs.

Affirming bodies diversity

One male (Jack) and one female (Anna) participants constructed different discourses regarding sub-jectivities of bodies. Sport did not seem to play a significant role in their lives and they describedmore accepting approaches towards different types of bodies. Even though they were the minorityamong the participants, they showed a strong, consistent and usually non-contradictory point ofview during the three interviews conducted. Jack was also the only student who repeatedly men-tioned his religious point of view, as expressed below:

I think all of my views have been brought up because I’m a Christian. So I think a lot of my views are from that andfrom being – well somebody created me so to kind of respect them you want to respect the body. (Jack, 22 yearsold, born in Australia)

Macdonald and Kirk (1999) investigated pre-service HPE teachers who self-identified as Christians andsuggested that specific religious views have implications for how teachers consider the body in termsof identity and lifestyles. Although most participants in Macdonald and Kirk’s (1999) study self-ident-ified as religious, this was not the case for the participants of the present study. Of the 14, only Jackreported the influence of religious beliefs on his understandings. As such, Jack’s comments serve toillustrate a different construction of the body from that provided by the majority of participants. AsSpeck and Prideaux (1993) stated, a Christian identity may raise some significant questions about themoralities of the pedagogies that individuals use as teachers. In this way, Jack might face some ofthese challenges as a future HPE teacher. However, Christianity could also act for Jack as a way toresist dominant discourses about bodies. Jack also stated the following when talking aboutnormal/average bodies:

…well what is normal? What is the average person? Because everyone had different shapes and figures so… Idon’t know if I can consider anyone normal. Because I mean the norm changes so often… So I think the normalperson gets changed very quickly. So there’s no kind of concept of this person that falls into the normal category.Because that might be the norm now but in five or 10 years’ time that might not be the case. Everybody’s bodieschange really quickly. (Jack, 22 years old, born in Australia)

Religion may relate to Jack’s beliefs and values of resisting normal bodies in the way that he affirmedin different occasions being more interested in the inner self of people and that each person’s body isunique. Overall, these two participants also stated that they would not construct body types otherthan their own as ideal for them. Even though being happy (or accepting) with regard to one’sbody might not mean that it is an ideal body according to dominant discourses, these studentsdescribed happiness as the ultimate goal in life. Therefore, they stated that an ideal body wouldbe a body that one feels happy about, as per the following excerpts:

… if I was to go look at someone and say you have the ideal body, it’s their ideal body, not mine. So everybody hastheir own individual ideal body and I don’t know if it’s their ideal body, because it’s up to them whether they’rehappy with it or not. To me, that’s how you know whether you have an ideal body, but I can’t say if anybody elsedoes. Depends on how they feel about it… I only know what I’m happy with in my body. If somebody else ishappy with their body, whether it’d be obese, skinny, whatever then, that’s their ideal body. (Anna, 20 yearsold, born in Australia)

… that person’s body is their body and that’s how they are… I would say everybody’s body is ideal for them…that’s who they are so if they’re comfortable with their body then that’s the ideal body for them I think. (Jack, 22years old, born in Australia)

SPORT, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY 9

Jack and Anna expressed an unusual position in the above quotes compared to other participants.They constructed different kinds of ideal bodies according to each person, meaning that a singleideal construction could not apply to all individuals. They continued to offer a different discourserelated to images in the media, when Jack, for example, refused to bring images to the interview:

Valeria: Can you tell me why did you decide not to bring any pictures?

Jack: Because being with the values that I have, being a Christian and stuff, I don’t really look through mediasources and have bodies jump out at me. Even when I’m flicking through a magazine and there are picturesof girls in bikinis, I don’t really look at that. I kind of skip over it quickly. I don’t see people for their bodies.Because of myself being a big person, I want to see past that and want to see the inner – the personality ofthe people. I never want anybody to judge me for my body. I want them to judge me as from my characterand my personality and that’s what I try and do for everyone. Not look at their body and go, well they’veworked out on their body so they must be a good person… I think, well, society is putting these pictures infront of me and I can choose not to look at them if I don’t want to.

Jack was consistent in his decision to not bring images to the interview. In so doing, he resisted domi-nant discourses provided by the media concerning idealised and sexualised bodies. Media images,therefore, did not seem to have biopower influences upon Jack’s subjectivity of bodies. He alsoreported having the same reaction for images featuring both male and female subjects. Anna, onthe other hand, brought only one image (# 15) to the interview and she stated that she chosethat image for the following reason:

…when you said images that catch your attention, it’s always gymnastics… That picture was particularly good;(a) because she’s Australian – I like Australian gymnasts – but (b) because of her form. The picture just - you look atit and you go, wow, that’s so amazing that someone can make that image with their body…

Valeria: Why do you think you chose someone doing gymnastics and not someone just posing to the camera?

Anna: Probably because I know that to be able to do that you have to have worked so hard and that’s what makesit all the more amazing, rather than just standing there and posing in a photo.

It is noticeable that Anna did not mention anything regarding body shape or appearance. Rather, herdecision was predominantly based on recognition of the skills needed to be able to perform the exer-cise performed by the gymnast in the image. As she had coached Artistic Gymnastics for a longperiod of time, Anna was aware of the difficulty of that exercise and expressed greater appreciationfor it than for a subject simply posing to a camera. Therefore, Anna, like Jack, showed resistance todominant discourses spread by the media, or their distinct subjectivities compared to the rest of theparticipants. However, unlike Jack, Anna did not criticise or directly resist these dominant discourses –rather, she stated other non-dominant ways of choosing images from media, not based on bodyaesthetics.

Overall, these two participants tended not to make contradictory statements during their inter-views, in contrast to the remainder of the cohort who were quite contradictory. However, whiletalking about his own body, Jack expressed some inconsistent discourses. He reflected:

I’m quite big for my age and for who I am but I still find that I am quite healthy… I got a lot of scrutiny when I wasin primary school or in high school about being big. I’ve been big all my life so it’s not a matter of not trying. It’sjust the simple thing of okay well that’s me. Like that’s how I am… It’s about what you think of yourself and ifyou’re happy with the way you are then that’s all it should be. (Jack, interview 1)

Valeria: When you see a skinny, skinny person, what do you feel?

Jack: A little bit annoyed with them sometimes because I’m like oh you’re so skinny. It is a little bit frustratingseeing someone who’s so – like they’ll eat so much and yet they’ll still be so skinny. I think I get more frustratedwith them than I do with bigger people. (Later, interview 1)

While Jack reflected that he tried to not pay much attention to others’ physical appearance and to hisown body, he still sometimes felt annoyed when seeing slim people who he felt could engage incertain behaviours without changing their bodies. Influenced by his religious beliefs, Jack claimed

10 V. VAREA AND B. PANG

to be more interested in personal qualities than in external appearance. Consequently, these datasuggest that the culture of the body tends to be contradictory. Even these participants were notimmune to these complex ways of make sense of the body. This group of participants, therefore,showed different discourses and greater acceptant to different kinds of bodies than the rest of theparticipants, and it is worthy of further examination as a possible way to resist dominant discoursesor as an expression of different subjectivities.

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper was to explore how pre-service HPE specialist teachers discuss issuesrelated to subjectivities of bodies using images from the media. This paper contributed to thecurrent corpus of literature in how photo elicitation can be used when exploring subjectivities ofbodies, particularly among pre-service HPE teachers. The findings indicated that the pre-serviceHPE teachers in this study placed importance upon functionality discourses about the body.However, it was clear that aesthetics discourses also had an impact on most of them. These partici-pants tended to reproduce dominant discourses when viewing and discussing images from digitaltechnologies and magazines. Most of the participants’ understandings of healthy bodies wererestricted to being attractive and related to white bodies, and they also normalised those kinds ofbodies. Furthermore, some participants used those images to self-surveil their own bodies. Most par-ticipants showed almost no resistance to dominant discourses (e.g. white and slim bodies = healthybodies), nor did they critique those bodies displayed in the media. Only two participants, Jack andAnna, constructed different subjectivities of bodies. However, even these two participants showedsome contradictions in their responses, which may indicate that they were not totally immune todominant discourses circulating in today’s Western societies. Consequently, these findings demon-strate the nuances and contradictions of the construction of body discourses and the possiblepower relations of bodies, which may carry significant consequences.

Using photo elicitation, some problematic views of race and gender were discovered. Onlythrough the use of photo elicitation it was possible to discover some invisibility of whiteness in par-ticipants. It is also useful in uncovering relevant information related to bodily experiences and sub-jectivities. However, the sole use of photo elicitation for other studies can be challenging in terms ofdata triangulation. Data analysis procedures for this paper involved both the analysis of participants’words as well as the analysis of images. This last type of analysis can be challenging, particularly whenusing specific software.1 What these pre-service HPE specialist teachers understood and expressedregarding bodies was related to their discourses about the images. Teacher educators in pre-service HPE programmes should increase opportunities for students to reflect on dominant dis-courses regarding bodies, including how these are constructed, and provide them with the necessarytools to critique such discourses and offer alternatives. Teacher education programmes may incorpor-ate the use of photo elicitation as a pedagogy, given that it can add to the discussion of issues relatedto heath and embodiment, unpacking the powerful ‘narrative capacity’ of the media (Azzarito, 2010a).We advocate the use of critical media pedagogies (Azzarito, 2010b) as a strategy for teaching andlearning about bodies in teacher education programmes in HPE. This resonates with the AustralianHPE curriculum on using inquiry-based approaches to learn in, through and about bodies (ACARA,2015). Future research that further explores constructions of bodies among pre-service HPE teachersusing a diverse tool kit is needed, particularly to investigate potential consequences for their futurepractices.

Note

1. The analysis of images using QSR NVivo software and a content analysis approach can be challenging, particularlyin the coding phase, as the researcher needs to give meaning to what is seen in the images. It is widely acceptedthat photographs are polysemous (Prosser & Loxley, 2008) and some may consider this to be problematic.

SPORT, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY 11

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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