African American Physical Education Folklore Surrounding School Transition

Abstract

Transferring from elementary to secondary school can be difficult for many children, and students making this transition often suffer from anxiety and stress. One source of stress can be found in the scary stories transitioning pupils hear about their new schools, particularly those about physical education and sport. The purpose of this study was to examine the scary stories young African American adults living in the Deep South recalled hearing about physical education as they made the transition from elementary to secondary school. Folklore and the concept of role reversal were the theoretical perspectives that guided data collection and analysis. Participants were 51 African American students. They wrote down scary stories they recalled hearing prior to transferring to secondary school within a two-item open-ended story record. Stories were coded and categorized and reduced to key themes using analytic induction and constant comparison. The key finding was the scary stories the African Americans in this study recalled were similar to the stories American Caucasians recalled in previous research. The stories collected in this study were also reminiscent of those described in the studies carried out with young adults in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. Results of this study also indicate physical education plays only a peripheral role in the African American folklore surrounding school transition.