This study assessed attitudes of high school students toward physical education with regard to sex and sport participation. A total of 440 sport participants (175 girls and 265 boys) and of 427 nonsport participants (227 girls and 200 boys), all of whom were 15 yr. old, voluntarily participated. The Attitudes Toward Physical Education Scale was administered to assess participants' attitudes toward physical education. The results of 2 x 2 (Sex x Sports Participation) analysis of variance indicated a significant difference in attitudes toward physical education between sport participants and nonsport participants, with the former scoring higher, and a difference between boys and girls, with boys scoring higher. However, there was no significant interaction between sex and sports participation on attitudes toward physical education. In general, sport participants had more favorable Attitudes Toward Physical Education scores than nonsport participants, and high school boys scored significantly higher than girls. There was a significant difference in Attitudes Toward Physical Education scores between female and male high school students, with boys having more favorable attitude scores.

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This paper analyses the construction of masculinities in Turkish physical education through Carrie Paechter's conceptualisation of gendered communities of practice. According to Paechter, educational communities of practice operate as sites of gendered activity. Membership within these communities contributes to the construction of a gendered identity. We suggest that this model is useful for conceptualising how Turkish young men come to engage with physical education classes which can be considered as masculine communities of practice. In one Turkish secondary class, we found that football was the most valued practice, determining boundaries of participation and differentiating levels of participation in the learning community. Young men who were immersed and excelled in football took up 'full' learning trajectories and became accepted as 'fully masculine' while those who were uninterested or non-competitive in football took up marginalised learning trajectories. We suggest that these diverse learning trajectories came to reflect differentiated versions of masculinity. Introduction: communities of practice as gendered sites of learning and identity formationRecent calls in sport and physical education pedagogy have been made to evaluate the role played by power and discourse in constructing masculinities which may be dominant, subordinated, and fluid (Atencio and Wright 2008;Bramham 2003;Pringle 2008;Pringle and Markula 2005). Following on, we differentiate how Turkish young men experience physical education discourses and male power within a shared discursive context (Pringle 2008), and subsequently construct diverse masculinities. Our analysis relies upon Wenger's (1998) model of communities of practice which describes how diverse social practices and identities are created relative to the workings of a particular learning community or community of practice. The concept of 'legitimate peripheral participation' describes the diverse social positions and dynamic practices by which individuals come to engage with their learning communities. Essentially, members of a learning community engage in shared practice; they develop expertise by participating in 'legitimate and acknowledged activities' (Paechter 2003, 71) and in so doing,

The purpose of this study was to compare the gender role orientation and gender role classification of female and male athletes to those of their nonathlete counterparts. A total of 463 athletes and 378 nonathletes completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory. The findings indicated that athletes score higher on the masculinity and femininity subscales than do nonathletes. Men had higher scores on masculinity than did women, whereas women had higher scores on femininity than did men. In addition, both men and women athletes were mostly classified in the androgynous category. These findings are discussed in relation to the competitive sport environment and Turkish society.

This paper draws on Bourdieu's notions of habitus, social field, and capital to provide a more complex examination of the place and meaning of physical education in Turkish young people's lives. Two secondary schools comprised of students from quite distinctive social, cultural, and geographical locations were involved in the study. Collected data from several focus group discussions, individual interviews, and class observations was analysed in relation to the themes of 'social class', 'gender', and 'students' positions within the social field of 'physical education'. The findings demonstrate how the national Turkish physical education (PE) curriculum became interpreted and deployed by each school in distinctive ways. Both schools promoted disciplinary and performance-based physical activities in the PE social field, even as they used different physical activities and had different reasons for privileging these types of activities. Physical education was used by the middle-upper-class school to reify and enhance the symbolic, cultural, and social capital of young people, who were regarded as future intellectual, business, and government leaders within Turkish society. In comparison, the school based in the poor suburb used physical activity as a means to create 'good' and 'productive' citizen-subjects. However, in using particular physical activities to create certain types of subjects with institutionally valued habitus (including physical 'abilities' and personal and social attributes), both schools ended up privileging only a few select young men and women whose physical capital was commensurate with the discursive requirements of the social field. From this perspective, we argue that both schools authorised certain individuals (mostly young men) who were able to take up ascendant positions because they could most easily convert their physical capital into social and cultural forms. These students were most able to determine acceptable forms of embodiment and could dictate patterns of use in the physical education classroom. In many instances, their dominance worked to prevent most of their peers from fully participating in PE.