What About the Girls? Case study of change in a rural school

Abstract

Change within schools is a constant. Managing the introduction of change to the secondary school sport and physical education settings has been at the centre of a large-scale intervention and research project conducted throughout NSW, Australia during 2008-2010. School-specific changes were designed to investigate and redress the decline of moderate to vigorous physical activity for adolescent girls as they progress from Year 8 to Year 10. Each intervention school in the project (n=12) designed their own modifications to their sport and school environments. These modifications were in response to the data collected during the formative phase of the research, which included canvassing the views of: the Year 8 girls and boys; physical education teachers; sport teachers; executive teachers; and principals. Modifications such as: girls only groupings; more variety of choice, priority selection of sport for year Year 8 girls, shorter duration of weeks for specific sports; and, equipment relevant to female sanctioned activities, were developed, trialled and evaluated. These processes were developed and enacted with the guidance from 'critical friends'. Pre-service teacher education expertise was a key feature of the critical friends. Three of the twelve schools included in the major research project supported by the Department of Education and Community were located in rural and regional contexts. The process of introducing change related to girls' participation in sporting activities in one of these rural schools is the focus of this presentation. Adopting the Anderson and Cawsey (2009) model of change in schools, the unique features of a rural school will be described in terms of the processes they used to introduce, implement and sustain evidence-based change. One case study will be presented and reported using the hybrid model of change from the perspective of the critical friend assigned to the rural school. The case study will include a profile of the school's demographics, identification of key players and change agents, as well as examples of student voice and action. This presentation will conclude with reflections on the processes involved in supporting rural and regional schools to enact gender-based change.