Questioning the No-Touch Discourse in Physical Education from a Children’s Rights Perspective

Author(s):

Marie Öhman(presenting / submitting)Ann Quennerstedt(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

25. Research on Children's Rights in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

25 SES 07, Promoting Students’ Self Expression and Development: Some Problematics

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

17:15-18:45

Room:

207.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Carol Robinson

Contribution

This paper takes its starting point in the discourse of child protection and the growing anxiety around intergenerational touch in educational settings. In the paper we question the rationality of ‘no-touch policies’ and offer an alternative approach. We do this by employing a children’s rights perspective on physical contact between teachers and students in the school subject of physical education (PE). Several scholars have explored how the production of a ‘safe child’ and ‘safe teacher’ has become a dominant feature of the everyday work in school (e.g. Piper & Smith 2003; Jones 2004; Johnson 2012; Piper, Garratt & Taylor 2013a; Piper, Garratt & Taylor 2013b; Fletcher 2013; Piper 2015).

A restrictive approach to physical touch is a recurring theme in the intensified production of child protection policy documents and codes of practice by organisations dealing with children and young people. These documents, which aim to create safe environments for children, often include guidelines for appropriate and inappropriate interactions. Some policy documents and codes of practice make connections to the human rights framework. With reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN 1989), protection from violence and abuse is (rightly) pointed out as a right of the child (WOSM 2007). When arguments against touching are linked to children’s right to be protected from abuse, their legitimacy and credibility are strengthened. A right to be protected from sexual and other abuse is indeed a human right of children, but if ‘no-touching’ is emphasised as an important way of fulfilling children’s right to be protected from abuse, where does that lead us?

In the paper we argue that the discourse of child protection and safeguarding draws on a narrow understanding of children’s rights, where protection and safety are allowed to dominate the interpretation. Following Piper (2015:175), we therefore find it important to challenge “the rationality of what has been presented as child protection and safeguarding in institutions dealing with children and young people”.

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the question of physical contact and touch between teachers and students in a physical education context. We explore a viewpoint that supports the use of and need for physical contact in PE teaching by developing theoretical and practice based arguments. An alternative children’s rights perspective is first used to form the theoretical argument. Two human rights are addressed and connected to physical contact in teaching: the right to life and the right to education (Bobbio, 1996, Quennerstedt & Quennerstedt, 2014). These children’s rights informed theoretical argument is then used in the reading of 16 Swedish PE teachers’ experiences of physical contact in their pedagogical work to form the practice based arguments. While we do not wish to diminish the importance of dealing with problems of abuse, harm and sexual harassment, we do want to emphasise the need for alternative perspectives on physical contact in order to achieve a more multifaceted discussion and understanding of ‘touch’, ‘safety’ and ‘rights’ in PE.

Method

An alternative children’s rights perspective is used to form the theoretical argument. We describe the protection of children as the starting point for children’s rights thinking, and that protection is still widely considered an important rights issue for children. Similarly, we point to the connection between a protection-based children’s rights view and no-touch policies. We also describe how children are gradually acknowledged the full range of human rights and how contemporary rights theorising points to the necessity of contextualising human rights. After having examined a contextualisation of rights that focuses on children as growing and developing humans, rather than as vulnerable humans, we form our theoretical argument in relation to physical touch in the school subject of PE: A justifiable human right of children is to develop to their fullest potential, also concerning personality and physical abilities. Education thus has significant responsibility for meeting this right by responding in a way that promotes children’s development. Against this background, a children’s rights perspective on physical contact in PE therefore needs to address how physical contact relates to children’s development. The practice-based arguments that we develop draw on interview data from the ongoing project Don’t touch! – Pedagogical consequences of the “forbidden” body in Physical Education. The project is funded by the Swedish National Centre for Research in Sports (CIF). (See also Ohman & Grundberg Sandell, 2015)). The project aims to explore how mainstream discourses and wider worries about abuse and child protection in society influence teachers’ pedagogical work in PE. The teachers involved in the study are aged between 30-63 (5 women and 11 men) and are at different stages in their careers. They teach PE in 11 different primary, secondary and upper-secondary Swedish schools, located in urban and rural areas. The four main questions posed are: (i) How has the increased public anxiety associated with physical contact between children and adults in institutions affected your work as a teacher? (ii) In what kinds of pedagogical situations do you think that physical contact and touching are pedagogically relevant, necessary and reasonable in a PE context? (iii) When do you use physical contact in your teaching? (iv) What do you think would be lost if you were given a set of rules (regulations) that prohibited physical contact in PE?

Expected Outcomes

Informed by our theoretical argument and the teachers’ talk about physical contact we have identified three practice-based arguments that support the use of physical contact in PE practice. Each argument focuses on a specific advantage of physical contact between the teacher and the student that is relevant for children’s development: (i) Touching as a precondition for a certain subject content in PE. (ii) Touching as a way of establishing the conditions for learning needed in PE. (iii) Touching as a human necessity and as an expression of care. Our conclusion is that physical contact is a qualitative aspect and essential for children’s learning, development and growth, both as individuals and as members of society. We conclude our argument by emphasising that contrary to the message given in the no-touch discourse, children's human rights can support the need for physical touch in certain pedagogical learning situations. We therefore call into question the children’s rights logic in the no-touch policies as set out in the safety discourse and hope that our arguments will open the way for another children’s rights logic that can contribute to new discussions about intergenerational touch in educational settings.

References

Bobbio, Norberto (1990) The Age of Rights. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Fletcher, S. (2013) Touching practice and physical education: deconstruction of a contemporary moral panic. Sport, Education and Society. 18, 5: 694-709. Jones, Alison. (2004). Social anxiety, sex, surveillance, and the ‘safe’teacher. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(1), 53-66. Johnson, R.T. (2012) Training ’safe’ bodies in an era of child panic: New Technologies for Disciplining Bodies. Paper Presented at the Annual American Education Research Association Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, April 2012. Ohman, Marie & Grundberg Sandell, Carin (2014) :The pedagogical consequences of ‘no touching’ in Physical Education – the case of Sweden. In: Heather Piper (Ed.): Touch in Sports Coaching and Physical Education: Fear, Risk and Moral Panic, p. 70-84. Routledge: London. Piper, Heather. & Smith, H. (2003) ‘Touch’ in Educational and Child Care Settings: dilemmas and responses. British Educational Research Journal, 29, 6: 879-894. Piper, Heather., Garratt, Dean., & Taylor, Bill. (2013a). Hands off! The practice and politics of touch in physical education and sports coaching. Sport, Education and Society, 18(5), 575-582. Piper, Heather., Garratt, Dean. & Taylor, Bill. (2013b) Child abuse, child protection, and defensive ‘touch’ in PE teaching and sports coaching. Sport, Education and Society, 18,5: 583-598. Piper, Heather (2015): Touch in Sports Coaching and Physical Education: Fear, Risk and Moral Panic. Routledge: London. Quennerstedt, Ann & Quennerstedt, Mikael (2014) Researching children’s rights in education: sociology of childhood encountering educational theory. British Journal of Sociology of Education 35(1), 115-132. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). UN Document E/CN:4/1989/29/Rev.1 WOSM (2007): Child Protection Tool Kit. The Europe Region World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) and the European Scout Region., The World Organization of the Scout Movement European Region, Geneva. http://www.scout.org/en/information_events/library/child_protection/child_protection_tool_kit

Author Information

Marie Öhman (presenting / submitting)

Örebro University

Healt and Medical Sciences

Örebro

Ann Quennerstedt (presenting)

Örebro University

Department of Education