Abstract
Educating gender socioemotional well-being is a great education challenge. The objectives of this study were (1) to identify the motor interactions (cooperation and opposition), the emotional intensity, the motivational interest, and the perception of success by gender in two traditional paradoxical games (TPG) (Hunting Ball and Sitting Ball); (2) to relate the intensity of emotions in both games; and (3) to reveal the predictive capacity of the motor interaction and emotion on the interest aroused by games. A total of 42 students (boys = 21; 50%; girls = 21; 50%) played both games. After each game was over, the participants answered the Games and Emotions Scale. For the differences between Hunting Ball and Sitting Ball, mean and standard deviation, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p-value, and the effect sizes were performed. The results support the great contribution of TPG for educating the relational and emotional well-being between genders.
TopIntroduction
The Gender Equality: A Social and Priority Goal for Our Society
One of the great challenges of current physical education is the education of interpersonal relationships and emotional well-being (UNESCO, 2015). Learning to live together and enjoy the encounter with others are two of the main pillars on which any innovative physical education program should be based, as is clear from the Kazan action plan approved by UNESCO member countries (UNESCO, 2017a).
In the context of coexistence, it is essential to attend to equal opportunities for women and men. Ever since the Treaty of Rome, the European Union has consistently advocated gender equality as one of its core policies. Gender equality draws on a long history of policy development at the European Union (EU) level, the origins lying in the EU Treaty signed in Rome in 1957. Ending discrimination and promoting equality is widely accepted as a social and priority goal for Europe (European Communities, 2009). However, gender equality is still one of the most relevant social challenges for European society. According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, the Gender Equality Index in Europe is 67.4 out of 100 which means that European society needs to consolidate its efforts to eliminate inequality between women and men. For this reason, the European Union has established a Gender Equality Strategy for the period of 2020-2025 (European Union, 2020). The aim of this strategy is:
Working together to make real progress by 2025 in achieving a Europe where women and men, girls and boys, in all their diversity, are equal – where they are free to pursue their chosen path in life and reach their full potential, where they have equal opportunities to thrive, and where they can equally participate in and lead our European society. (European Union, 2020, p. 19).
A special focus on gender equality is also done in a current UNESCO policy document, the Kazan Action Plan (UNESCO, 2017a). This document was developed within the UNESCO Action plan on Sport for Development and Peace. Reinforcing gender equality and empowerment of girls and women via sport is presented there as one of the main policy areas. In addition to that, the Fourth UNESCO Collective Consultation on the Safeguarding and Promotion of Traditional Sporting Games (TSG) was innovatively focused on women empowerment through TSG and highlighted the necessity to promote equality between men and women when they wanted to put in practice any physical activity of TSG.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Motor Praxeology: Science of motor action and especially of the conditions, modes of operation and their development. As Parlebas highlights (2020): “ The systematic observation and analysis of the field, pertinent data, carried out in collaboration with researchers of different nationalities, has allowed us to develop new methodological approaches adapted to the study of motor games. Our general purpose has always been twofold: a) To develop tools and methodological approaches properly connected with ludomotor practices as to reveal phenomena specific to the motor action deployed during games playing, defining new concepts when necessary and taking into account the positive and negative effects exerted on the participants. b) To synthesise these different results, for we cannot feel satisfied with small pieces of research, monographs or isolated experimental data, no matter how important these may be. It seems interesting to conceive a general theory of motor games that place them within the great cultural creations, leading to more or less profound consequences in the social, educational, and political fields .” (p. 2)
Traditional Sporting Game: Motor situations codified in the form of competition but not institutionalised. sporting games, frequently rooted in a long cultural tradition, which have not been regulated by official authorities. The contains local rules that provides a great ludodiversity of relationships.
Gender Equality: This concept refers to the situation where individuals of both sexes are free to develop their personal abilities and make choices without the limitations imposed by strict gender roles. The different behaviours, aspirations and needs of women and men are considered, valued, and favoured equally. Equal opportunities for women and men indicates the absence of barriers to economic, political and social participation on the grounds of sex.
Sport: It is the set of motor situations codified in the form of competition and institutionalised.
Paradoxical Traditional Sporting Game: It is a type of sporting game whose internal logic entails motor actions affected by ambiguity and by relational ambivalence, which give rise to contradictory or inconsistent collective effects. All the players are both partners and adversaries. In Sitting Ball, a participant who has just addressed a friendly pass to a comrade can suddenly become the antagonistic target for this same comrade, who chooses to put him temporarily out of the game. However, this gesture of transgression of tacit connivance is authorised by the internal logic of the game: each participant has complete freedom to choose with regard to the same player between the solidarity pass or the rivalry shot.
Internal Logic: This concept concerns to the properties contained in the rules, independently of the characteristics of their protagonists. The internal logic is defined by “the system of relevant traits of a motor situation and the subsequent consequences in the completion of the corresponding motor action” ( Parlebas, 2001 , p. 216). When playing a game, players respond to relationships established by their internal logic, that is, (a) relationship with space: participation in a stable surface (without uncertainty) or unstable surface (with uncertainties); (b) relationship with material: presence or absence of objects; (c) relationship with time: way of ending (presence or absence of a final score that establishes winners and losers); and (d) relationship with others (type of motor interaction with the other participants, or for instance, the allowed degree of intensity in/with body contact).