Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes

Tune In: Trailblazers

25 minutes

Find Out: Discrimination in sports

25 minutes

Take Action: Case study

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students will:

explore examples of sporting communities coming together to achieve a goal.

Students can:

articulate some examples of the discrimination the women’s team faced
share an example of sporting communities combating challenges.

Tune In: Trailblazers

Preparation

If you have watched ‘Trailblazers’ in Lesson 1 (‘Sporting Equality’), you can skip this section and go to Step 1. Today, we’re going to look at a group of people who are working to break down barriers.

Watch ‘Trailblazers’

Trailblazers (https://clickv.ie/w/INpy)

Step 1

With your students, brainstorm key moments from ‘Trailblazers’ showing where the women’s football team faced discrimination, including:

wearing men's uniforms
no change rooms
needing to do their own fundraising
nude calendar
paying to play
less pay than the men’s team
bringing their own food preparation equipment. e.g. rice cooker
being banned from using official fields.

Step 2

Ask students to think about these quotes from Moya Dodd:

“It was all kind of sticky tape and bits of string really in some ways”.
“There was no infrastructure around us. There was no scaffolding that supported the women’s game. It was scraped together by the people who were, you know, still pulling on their boots”. – Moya Dodd, Cap # 42, debut 1986.

Lead a discussion about how this discrimination impacted them as players and as a team.

Learning extension: Using the ‘Mind Map Brainstorming’ activity sheet, students explore the discrimination faced by the women’s football team and the impacts of this discrimination. This is helpful when used as an A3 sheet to allow space to add details.

Find Out: Discrimination in sports

Step 1

Lead a discussion about discrimination in sport. Ask your students: “What are some barriers to participating in sport”? Your students might suggest:

access to equipment, uniforms, facilities and support (coaches, medical, etc)
physical limitations (wheelchair users, limb differences, height differences, visual impairments, hearing impairments, etc)
mental disabilities (autism, downs syndrome, FAS, sensory processing disorders, etc)
social barriers (gender/cultural/race, discrimination, etc)
language barriers.

Which groups of people do you think these barriers will impact? Your students might suggest:

Aboriginal/First Nations People
People with disabilities
People in low socioeconomic situations
CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) people
Immigrants, both recent and future generations
Children
Women
LGBTQI+

Step 2

Explore examples of other sporting communities combating challenges. You may choose for students to conduct their own research or choose one of the articles and factsheets we have prepared for you.

Learning support: We have provided articles of various lengths and complexities to help you differentiate for your students.

Australia's Paralympic Soccer Team's future unknown after Australian Sports Commission cuts its funding	Communities Combating Challenges Pararoos
AFL apology to Adam Goodes	Communities Combating Challenges Adam Goodes
Ash Barty’s Wimbledon victory: a massive win for Australian women and indigenous representation	Communities Combating Challenges Ash Barty
Powerchair footballer Rebecca Evans tackles obstacles keeping women with disabilities out of sports	Communities Combating Challenges Rebecca Evans
Swimming Australia appoints discrimination, harassment law expert as panel chair	Communities Combating Challenges Swimming Australia
Women athletes team to tackle discrimination in sport	Communities Combating Challenges Women Athletes

Step 3

Guide students to pick one example that can be used as a case study.

Students use a range of primary and secondary sources to research that case study and fill in the student worksheet.

What happened?
How did these people, or groups, come together to overcome challenges?
Who were the allies? Who helped them? How?
How did they get their community onside to help enact change?
What was the result?
Any other interesting information

Students could complete this research individually or as a group.

Note: If you did not complete the previous lesson, you could use this as a chance to remind students about the difference between primary (original records, firsthand witnesses, evidence from someone directly involved, etc) and secondary (sources that re-tell, interpret, analyse, etc) sources of information.

Take Action: Case study

Step 1

Using the example they explored in the last section, students can create a presentation to share a story of the event. Encourage them to focus on highlighting the concepts of mateship, community, and allyship to create change. This could be a slide deck presentation, speech, poster, etc.

Step 2

Plan with your students how they will share their presentations with their community.

Reflection

Think back to the ‘Trailblazers’ film.

Ask students:

What hurdles were the same as your case study? Uniforms? Funding? Culture?
Are there any groups of people at your school who face these hurdles?

Learning extension: Students use a Venn Diagram to compare their case study and the Australian women’s national team or to compare two different case studies. What was the same? What was different? E.g. community support, funding, the problem, outside support, etc.

Discrimination in Sports

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

Success criteria:

Students can...

Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Skills

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Additional Info

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