A central aim of educational policy is to promote lifelong participation in physical activity. For Physical education (PE) to serve this aim, it must offer learning experiences perceived as meaningful, affirming, and inclusive. Shame stands in tension with this goal: it can obstruct learning processes, inhibit enjoyment, and cause withdrawal, avoidance, and durable disengagement from bodily movement and sport. Despite these high stakes, shame has rarely been a primary research focus in education science or sport pedagogy. Its marginalization likely reflects the nature of shame itself, frequently described as taboo (Scheff, 2016) or hidden emotion (Neckel, 2020), which resists direct articulation and systematic investigation.

Where shame does appear in the state of research, it often surfaces indirectly as one finding among others: as a form of disrespect (Grimminger, 2012), unsettling experiences (Metz et al., 2024), or as a negative consequence of visibility (Åsebø et al., 2022) or the desire for invisibility (Littlefair et al., 2025). A more explicit strand centers on PE-specific content and practices. Williams (e.g. 2015) catalogs PE activities in his “Hall of Shame,” linking certain instructional practices to shame experiences. In the German context, Wiesche (2017) identified 108 situations in which students experienced shame, while Hunger and Böhlke (2018) investigated how former students perceived transgressions of shame and intimacy boundaries in PE.

Synthesizing these studies, recurrent shame-prone contexts include: performance pressure, lack of sport-specific skills, bodily exposure, public exposure, violations of privacy or intimacy, appearance and physical attributes, gendered attributions, insults and humiliation, and accidents or misfortune. However, much of the existing work focuses on situations that may elicit shame rather than on students’ own perceptions, meaning-making, and lived experiences. This proposed study addresses that gap by centering students’ accounts of how shame manifests in PE, how they understand it, and how they respond to it. Developing this understanding is a necessary precondition for recognizing shame as it occurs in PE and designing shame-sensitive pedagogy.

The research question addressed here therefore is: How is shame experienced by students in PE, and in what ways do they understand and respond to it?

Following Scheff (2000), Shame (sic) is used to describe “a large family of emotions that includes embarrassment, humiliation, shyness, and related feelings involving perceived rejection, failure, or inadequacy.” In everyday terms, shame often means being ashamed of oneself about something before someone. To refine this view, we draw on Schäfer  and Thompson's (2009) account of shame as comprising three constitutive, interwoven relations: to the self, to others, and to norms or ideals. Rather than privileging a single dimension (e.g., self-relation as a discrepancy between the actual and the ideal self), this framework posits that students’ shame experiences arise through the dynamic interplay of these three factors. This tripartite model focuses our analytic attention on how students express shame. By centering meaning-making in these intertwined relations, the study advances theoretical clarity and practical guidance for creating PE environments that mitigate shame, foster dignity, and sustain participation aligned with lifelong physical activity goals.

This exploratory qualitative study investigates how students experience shame in PE lessons. To capture diverse perspectives across interests, age groups, and institutional contexts, the sample comprised ten sport groups from seven schools in Austria purposively selected using criteria informed by prior research (Palinkas et al., 2015). The schools varied whether they specialized in sports or in different areas and whether PE is organized in same-gender or mixed-gender groups. Data were generated through vignette-based interviews with 33 students, 22 of whom were female. This method combines a structured interview guided by focused questions with an open, narrative approach. Vignettes act as prompts to elicit implicit knowledge and situated interpretations (Kahlhammer, 2017). Students were informed in advance that the topic was shame, both to ethically avoid surprise and to invite those willing to engage. Random selection within sport groups was used to broaden the range of responses. Between two and five students per group were interviewed. Interviews were conducted in person during PE lessons, predominantly in locker rooms or quiet school areas, contingent on participant comfort. PE teachers served as gatekeepers, facilitating participation and, in some cases, encouraging students to take part. Given the sensitivity of the topic, interviews were conducted individually. The interview protocol began with general questions about students’ personal relationships with sport, their typical experiences of PE, and relationships within the sport group and with the PE teacher. The vignette was then read, followed by questions probing perceptions, associations, and empathic understanding. When students reported personal experiences of shame, targeted follow-ups sought detailed accounts. If no such experiences emerged spontaneously, additional prompts addressed contexts identified in prior research as shame-prone, such as swimming lessons, changing rooms, performance demonstrations, and team selection. For students uncomfortable discussing their own experiences, questions shifted to perceptions of classmates’ shame, enabling insight into meanings and attributions without personal disclosure. Finally, participants were asked about preferred coping strategies and recommendations for shame-sensitive teaching, including desired teacher and peer responses. In this study, we applied qualitative content analysis following Kuckartz and Rädiker (2024), implementing a two-step coding procedure. Student names were pseudonymized, and MAXQDA facilitated code extraction. First, we deductively coded data using the three shame-relations: self, others, and norms. Second, overlaps among these codes were identified, finer-grained subcodes developed, and their interrelations examined to illuminate the nuances and structures of students’ shame experiences.

Our preliminary findings indicate that shame in PE is a relational phenomenon shaped by three overlapping aspects: (1) the discrepancy between students’ perceived self and their ideal self, (2) the influence of significant others whose opinions matter to them, most notably peers and teachers, and (3) the internalization of social and gendered norms, particularly around performance and body image. These dimensions are intertwined in everyday PE situations of exposure, comparison, and evaluation. Students are highly attuned to what others may think of them, and their ideal selves are continuously shaped by shared expectations within their social environment. The study clarifies how the three relational aspects of shame interrelate in PE and why students experience shame in particular moments. It also sheds light on how students would prefer such episodes to be recognized and handled, providing practical orientation for everyday teaching aimed at minimizing withdrawal and disengagement. On this basis, we do not argue that shame can be universally eliminated from PE. Rather, it can be addressed through professional shame sensitivity. This entails recognizing when a self–ideal gap is activated, understanding how peer and teacher judgments amplify or mitigate shame, and acknowledging how and which norms inform students’ experiences. Responding with empathy and reflective pedagogical practice enables teachers to take individual experiences seriously and to manage them appropriately. This is not a universal formula; it is a context-sensitive stance that aims to recognize, name, and handle shame in ways that students themselves consider supportive.

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