Mixed Physical Education: How to Design PE That Is Genuinely Good for Both Girls and Boys

Mixed Physical Education: What Inclusive Design Actually Looks Like

A contributing voice from child development | Specialist in curriculum, pedagogy, and school leadership

Mixed-gender physical education in Indian schools often defaults to activities that suit the most athletic boys and exclude most girls, and this pattern has a specific, well-documented structural cause: many default PE formats, full-scale competitive team games, elimination-style activities, reward pre-existing high skill rather than building it, concentrating success and participation among a small group of already-athletic students while marginalising everyone else. Research on inclusive PE design offers a genuinely different structural approach, not just an appeal to fairness.

Key facts

• Elimination-style games, dodgeball being a commonly cited example in physical education pedagogy research, are specifically criticised for a structural flaw: they concentrate active participation among the most skilled players while removing less skilled or less confident students from play early, meaning the students who most need practice and engagement get the least of it.
• Skill-progression and differentiated activity design, structuring physical education around building skill incrementally and offering modified formats where success doesn’t depend entirely on pre-existing athletic ability, is associated in PE pedagogy research with broader participation across skill levels and genders than defaulting straight to full-scale competitive team games.
• Research on adolescent girls’ physical education experience has documented self-consciousness and body-image concerns as a specific, real barrier to participation, particularly in mixed-gender settings where being watched and judged during physical activity carries genuine social weight for many girls at this developmental stage, a documented mechanism distinct from skill or interest.
• Structured models such as the Sport Education curriculum approach, associated with researcher Daryl Siedentop, restructure PE around teams, roles, and seasons designed to build competence and belonging progressively, an example of deliberately designed structure as an alternative to defaulting straight into unstructured competitive play.

The exclusion is structural, which means the fix is structural too

A PE class that starts with a full-scale competitive game and lets natural selection determine who touches the ball is not neutral. It is a specific structural choice that concentrates participation among students who already have the skill the activity is nominally meant to build, and research on inclusive design offers a genuinely different structural default, not simply an instruction to “be more encouraging” within the same format.

This distinction matters for how a PE teacher actually plans a class. The problem the original claim identifies isn’t primarily about individual attitudes, boys being unkind or girls lacking confidence in the abstract. It’s about activity structure: an elimination game structurally produces exactly the exclusion pattern described, regardless of how encouraging the teacher tries to be within that format. Changing the structure, not just the tone, is what the research on inclusive design actually recommends.

Five principles for designing inclusive mixed PE

1. Diagnose whether a specific activity’s structure concentrates or distributes participation. An elimination game structurally concentrates play among the most skilled; a skill-progression or modified-format activity structurally distributes it. This is a checkable feature of the activity design itself, not primarily a matter of individual student attitudes.
2. Build competence progressively before introducing full competitive play. Skill-progression design gives less-experienced students a genuine chance to develop ability in a lower-stakes format before being placed into a fully competitive game where existing skill gaps are maximally exposed.
3. Address the specific, documented self-consciousness barrier directly, not just through general encouragement. Since body-image and being-watched concerns are a real, separate mechanism from skill or interest, structural choices, activity format, group size, level of public performance required, can address this directly, rather than assuming warmth alone will overcome it.
4. Use structured models like team-and-role-based approaches to build belonging alongside skill. Approaches such as the Sport Education model deliberately build roles and progressive competence into the structure itself, rather than relying on unstructured competitive play to somehow produce inclusion as a side effect.
5. Start by auditing one recurring class activity for whether its structure concentrates or distributes participation, and redesign that one activity toward a skill-progression or modified format before overhauling the entire PE curriculum at once.

Frequently asked questions

Is the exclusion in mixed PE mainly about individual attitudes, or is there a more structural explanation? The stronger explanation, per PE pedagogy research, is structural: activity formats like elimination games are specifically documented to concentrate participation among the most skilled players regardless of individual teacher or student attitudes, meaning the fix needs to address activity design, not just encourage kindness within the same format.

What’s a concrete example of an activity structure that tends to exclude less athletic students? Elimination-style games, dodgeball is commonly cited in the research, are specifically criticised because they remove less skilled or confident players from active participation early, concentrating the actual practice and engagement among students who already have the most skill.

Is girls’ reduced participation in mixed PE mainly about skill, or is something else going on? Research on adolescent girls’ PE experience documents self-consciousness and body-image concerns as a real, separate barrier from skill or interest, particularly in mixed-gender settings where being watched during physical activity carries genuine social weight, meaning skill-building alone doesn’t address the full picture.

What’s a realistic first step for a PE teacher wanting to redesign toward more inclusive practice? Auditing one recurring class activity specifically for whether its structure concentrates or distributes participation, and redesigning that single activity toward a skill-progression or modified format, rather than attempting a full curriculum overhaul immediately.

What to do:

1. Name one student in your class who is most affected by a currently exclusionary activity structure, and write down one specific, modified-format alternative you will try this week, not a general improvement, but a named action for a named child.
2. Search DIKSHA or ask your Block Resource Coordinator for any resource specifically on inclusive physical education design in your state context. If nothing exists, note that gap; the absence of a resource is itself useful information.
3. Spend five minutes this week observing whether your current PE activities structurally concentrate participation among a few skilled students or distribute it more broadly, not teaching, just watching and noting.
4. Tell one colleague about the specific critique of elimination-style games, and discuss whether any of your regularly used activities share that same structural flaw.
5. At the end of the week, ask yourself what you would redesign next week, and what you would look for, such as whether more students are actively engaged for more of the class period, to know whether it is working.

Note on sourcing: web search was unavailable during this session, so current, specific citations could not be verified live. The core research described here, the structural critique of elimination-style games, skill-progression PE design, adolescent girls’ documented self-consciousness barriers, and the Sport Education model associated with Daryl Siedentop, reflects well-established, broadly known findings in physical education pedagogy research, but a reader preparing this for publication should verify specific citations before treating them as fully sourced.

Support resources: NIPUN Bharat FLN assessment tools (via your state SCERT or DIET); NCERT teacher guides; Azim Premji Foundation open-access research; DIKSHA platform content in 36 languages; Tele-MANAS mental health helpline: 14416 or 1800-891-4416; CHILDLINE: 1098.