Readdressing democracy and social justice: coping with inequalities in physical education

This research is contextualised by Freirean approaches to teacher education, which promote complex arrangements in the organisation of knowledge communities among teachers. Such communities are supportive of teachers’ learning by providing critique to advance socially-just teaching practices. Recently, Sanches Neto, Venâncio and Ovens (2021) found that collaboration across different settings allowed a better understanding of the teaching complexities. However, it is uncertain how knowledge communities structured based on Sanches, Costa and Ovens (2022) support and promote teachers’ democratic values and thinking towards social justice. We explore this uncertainty by drawing on an action research project within a Brazilian physical education teacher education (PETE) Master’s program (ProEF). Participants included teacher-researchers from different locations in the Northeast of Brazil, who were supervised by two teacher educators and co-authors of this article —Sanches Neto and Venâncio. In this article, the authors used vignettes of one ProEF Master’s student —Silva— to discuss her own teaching and context. Through a complexity thinking lens, our objective was to analyse collaboratively her teaching intentions and dilemmas towards social justice. We found that critical incidents regarding race, gender and class evidenced intersectionalities and how the teacher embodied democratic values while coping with inequalities. The teacher was aware of the inequalities faced by her students. Despite this, her teaching lacked the criticality and full institutional support to address all emerging issues for a more equitable physical education and long term change. The teacher’s advocacy connects to the broad research project aiming to readdress democracy through engaged teaching a pedagogy of discomfort as an alternative to neoliberal educational guidelines.