The scale of the underlying evidence base is striking. Following the PRISMA reporting standard, the researchers searched nine academic databases in March 2026, including Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, and African Journals OnLine, using 70 keyword combinations that paired physical education terms such as school sport and physical education teacher training with exposure terms including racism, anti-racism, critical whiteness, and critical race theory. The search surfaced 3,346 publications, of which 56 met five inclusion criteria covering peer review, language, study population, and thematic focus. Twenty-three of those publications centered specifically on the perspectives of practicing physical education teachers and physical education teacher education students, and it is this subset that formed the analytical core of the review. Seventeen of the 23 studies were qualitative, one was quantitative, one used mixed methods, and four were theoretical or conceptual contributions.

Methodologically, the review was unusually transparent about its own construction. Each empirical study was quality-assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist for qualitative work and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool for quantitative and mixed-methods research, with two authors scoring independently and reconciling disagreements by consensus. Most empirical studies were rated high quality. The team then applied a hybrid analytic strategy: template analysis, a codebook-driven form of thematic analysis, was used for descriptive themes, while reflexive thematic analysis in the tradition of Braun and Clarke guided the more interpretive themes. Consistent with the epistemology of Critical Race Theory, the authors explicitly documented their own positionality—the first and last authors identify as white men, the second and third as Black women—and described how their Black female colleagues challenged their white colleagues’ assumptions throughout the process. This reflexive architecture matters, because the review’s central argument is that no analysis of racism escapes the racial position of the analyst.

Four themes emerged from the coding process, and the first concerns how racism is understood in the first place. Rather than converging on a shared definition, the reviewed studies deploy a fractured vocabulary: Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, colorblindness, structural racism, the racialized other, biological racism, and gendered racism all appear, often within the same body of literature. Whiteness figures prominently in eleven of the 23 publications. In this framework, whiteness is not simply an attribute of white individuals but a racial discourse that structures a hierarchy of embodied capital and rights, deciding whose movement styles, bodies, and sporting knowledge count as normal and whose are read as deficient. The review also found that these conceptual choices track geography and authorship: the eight United States-based studies, for example, differed markedly depending on whether first authors identified as scholars of color, with approaches ranging from colorblindness frameworks to gendered racism.

The second theme documents the lived experiences of teachers and trainees, and here the picture is bleak. Marginalized physical education teacher education students reported stereotypes, exclusion, everyday racism, and microaggressions in every study that addressed their experiences, supporting Critical Race Theory’s core claim that racism is endemic in predominantly white educational systems. Navigating white-dominated institutions demands substantial emotional labor and strategic self-presentation—burdens the review notes were never described for white students. Institutional machinery often compounds the harm. One participant quoted in the review described feeling uncomfortable after racialized comments but did not even know whom to report them to. A 2025 study found that Black and Latine pre-service teachers faced material gatekeeping in the form of licensure exams costing roughly 90 dollars per attempt, with no institutional financial support, illustrating how classism and ableism intersect with race to filter who enters the profession at all.

Intersectionality runs through the findings like a structural beam. Female teachers of color described sexism intensified by racism, with their bodies and competencies scrutinized in ways their white colleagues rarely experienced. The review cites a Norwegian study in which teachers perceived the movements and bodies of female students of color as deficient and out of place, and interview data from Germany in which racialized and gendered perception patterns converged in teachers’ talk about students from refugee backgrounds. Even educators who explicitly championed inclusion were shown to carry unconscious stereotypes: one frequently cited study of white physical educators, titled after a participant’s declaration that she treats everyone the same, found that negative stereotypes about racialized others were woven into teachers’ self-descriptions despite their egalitarian intentions. Only one study, a quantitative survey from Spain, reported broadly positive attitudes among trainee teachers toward diversity—a stark outlier against the qualitative record.

The third theme, unveiling whiteness, is perhaps the review’s most consequential. Sixteen of the 23 publications describe whiteness as a system of norms governing physical education across Western countries. The profession’s demographic composition is itself a signal: most physical education educators are white, often teaching dramatically more diverse student populations, and leadership roles skew toward young white men. This overrepresentation creates what the authors call a feedback loop, in which white normativity reinforces exclusion, restricts mentorship for students and teachers of color, and ultimately impoverishes learning for everyone by narrowing the range of perspectives, teaching methods, and cultural knowledge in the gym. The critique extends to knowledge production itself. Among the studies reporting first-author racial positionality, white first authors predominated, and the review’s authors—including its own white male lead—interrogate why white scholars so often hold the access and resources to narrate the experiences of marginalized students, echoing calls for research grounded in the communities most affected.

The final theme addresses what can be done, and the evidence here is sobering but not hopeless. Multiple studies criticized the absence of any dedicated course on race in physical education teacher education curricula. Yet pilot interventions suggest structured reflection can work: as far back as 1990, a two-semester equity-focused course led one participant to admit, I have become aware that I am racist to some extent. Service-learning interventions combining coursework, teaching practice in multiethnic schools, and reflective journals helped trainees deconstruct stereotypes, though authors cautioned that single-semester experiences cannot overcome a lifetime of socialized beliefs, and one study found no evidence of lasting impact from a short course. The review argues that the scarcity of anti-racist training reflects institutional resistance to confronting whiteness itself, and points toward culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies as a promising framework, alongside global strategies adapted to local contexts.

The review’s limitations are candidly stated. It was restricted to English and German publications, focused on specific databases and keywords, and drew predominantly on qualitative studies from English-speaking countries, leaving a scarcity of large-scale quantitative surveys. The themes were initially developed from a white male perspective, a bias the authors attempted to mitigate through critical reflection within the team. Still, the conclusions are pointed: institutions and journals should support scholars from racially minoritized groups through inclusive funding, collaboration, and mentorship, and teacher training must equip educators—especially white educators—to examine bias, reflect on their racial identity, and challenge norms of whiteness. For a field that aspires to build tolerance through movement, the message is uncomfortable but clear: the path to an anti-racist physical education begins not with fixing racialized students, but with turning the analytical lens on the invisible whiteness of the gym itself.

Subject of Research: Racism and anti-racism in physical education from the perspectives of teachers and physical education teacher education students

Article Title: Whiteness and (anti-) racism in physical education considering teachers’ and physical education teacher education students’ perspectives: a systematic review

Article References: Whiteness and (anti-) racism in physical education considering teachers’ and physical education teacher education students’ perspectives: a systematic review. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1903712

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2026.1903712

Keywords: physical education, racism, anti-racism, whiteness, critical race theory, teacher education, systematic review, microaggressions, intersectionality, PETE, social justice, pedagogy