Gender, race/ethnicity, class and body culture: a critical assessment of the anti-racist struggle in the production of knowledge concerning teacher training and school Physical Education (2003–2025)

Abstract

This study critically analyzes knowledge production on gender, race/ethnicity, class, and body culture in teacher education and Brazilian school Physical Education, considering master's dissertations and doctoral theses produced between 2003 and 2025. The investigation identified epistemological trends, theoretical-methodological limits, and political-pedagogical implications of this body of research. This bibliographical and documentary study, configured as a review of knowledge production, identified 71 studies in the CAPES Theses and Dissertations Catalog, of which 11 met the inclusion criteria. The data, analyzed through an epistemological matrix adapted from Silva and Gamboa (2014), revealed the predominance of multicultural, post-critical, intercultural, and decolonial approaches, with limited presence of historical-dialectical materialism. The findings indicate that, although the debate on ethnic-racial relations and anti-racist education has expanded, significant limitations remain in the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and class. The study reaffirms the need to strengthen knowledge production grounded in historical-dialectical materialism, oriented toward understanding reality in its concrete totality and race/ethnicity, gender, and class as historically produced determinations within the destructive contradictions of capitalism.