Discursive Legitimation and Operational Threshold of Gender in Initial Teacher Education in Chilean Physical Education

Gender perspective (GP) has gained increasing legitimacy in initial teacher education, although challenges remain regarding its translation into conceptually grounded practices. In Physical Education (PE), the issue is particularly relevant due to the persistence of a masculinized disciplinary tradition and the centrality of the body. This study analyses how, in the discourse of teacher educators from two Chilean PE programs, the importance attributed to GP and the declared actions to implement it are distributed. A descriptive qualitative study was conducted using quantitative-oriented content analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews, corresponding to the entire eligible teaching staff. A total of 184 statements were analysed with a deductive category system. Of these, 63.1% referred to the importance attributed to GP and 36.9% to declared actions. Within the latter, 47.1% corresponded to inclusive language, 39.7% to practical strategies, and only 13.2% to theoretical-problematizing strategies, declared by seven of the 40 participants (17.5%). The same ordering of statements was observed in both institutions. In the analysed discourse, GP appears widely legitimized, while declared actions are concentrated at the operational threshold, understood as an analytical distinction rather than a pedagogical development scale, with little problematization of the knowledge and assumptions that produce inequalities.