Search

Background: Interest in and debates around meaningful movement and embodiment in physical education (EPE) have grown over the last ten years. The quality of these discussions centre on a degree of conceptual clarity for talking pedagogically about embodiment, and consideration of ways of applying it in practice in meaningful ways. The aim of this study is to systematically analyse the theoretical concept of embodiment presented within physical education (PE) literature, in order to support a conceptual clarity upon which to build well-grounded pedagogical insights and practices for school-teachers and their students, as well as PE teacher educators. Method: A narrative literature review methodology was used to identify twenty-three (23) papers from peer-reviewed literature between 2010 and 2021 that had some focus on embodiment. These were analysed using [Rodgers, B. L. 2000. "Concept Analysis: An Evolutionary View." In Concept Development in Nursing: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications, edited by B. K. Rodgers and K. A. Knafl, 77–102. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.] theoretical evolutionary concept analysis method to systematically identify characteristics associated with the concept in published literature. Evolutionary concept analysis typically involves a six-phase process of usage over time. Data analysis involved the systematic extraction and analysis of the literature for surrogate terms, related concepts, attributes, antecedents, consequences, and references to the concept. Results: Despite conceptual variances across the articles analysed, a set of common attributes that included intentionality, affect, meaning, sharing, and unity were identified. The review identified potential consequences of EPE including deeply transformative and meaningful change in the learner, the context, and the teacher. Events, situations or phenomena that precede EPE are broadly linked to the teacher, the learner, and the context. Conclusions: The concept of embodiment as it pertains to its theoretical/philosophical deployment in PE, is both complex and varied, limiting its potential to inform the pedagogical practices of teachers and therefore realise the consequences espoused. To temper this disconnect the paper provides accessible, yet provisional guidance for teachers via clusters of familiar characteristics with accompanying descriptions of what the literature suggests as important for embodied approaches. Together the tables and analysis encourage and enable educators and researchers to believe in, commit to, and to operationalise embodiment as practice in their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a curriculum learning area, physical education (PE) has continually struggled to gain status within an increasingly crowded curriculum. This frequently leads to a reduction in available time within the curriculum for PE. In Australia and internationally, this may be explained by a focus on standardised testing, though questions are also raised about the capacity of PE to contribute to broader learning outcomes within the school context. Whilst the links between physical activity (PA) more broadly and cognitive performance, brain development and executive function (EF) have been recognised, the specific role physical education (PE) has on student's academic achievement (AA) is less well established. Consequently, researchers have sought to evidence the 'value-add' of PE in order to justify its relevance and importance in the curriculum. This literature review sought to explore the association between physical education (PE) and academic achievement (AA) in other curriculum learning areas. It was guided by the research question, does physical education have measurable educative benefits/impact on student academic achievement in other curriculum learning areas? Six databases/database platforms were searched: Informit, Scopus, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus, ERIC and Ovid (including AMED, DARE, Cochrane CCTR and CDSR and PsycINFO) for articles published in English between 2004 and 2020. A total of 5,599 unique articles were returned from the searches and alerts after duplicates were removed. Articles were then screened against inclusion and exclusion criteria with 88 articles identified for full text review. This literature review reports on the final 48 peer-reviewed research articles to meet the inclusion criteria. The review of the literature suggests mixed findings regarding the association between PE and AA in other curriculum learning areas; the findings are reported as having 'effect', 'no effect' or 'inconclusive effect'. Collectively, the 'effect' studies indicate that relationships exist between PE, AA and EF. This conclusion is consistent across school settings, study methodology and intervention design. However, the 'no effect' studies indicate that there is no relationship between PE, AA and EF. Whilst, the 'inconclusive effect' studies collectively indicate an array of inconclusive relationships between a variety of indices associated with PE, PA, AA and/or EF. The 'no effect' and 'inconclusive effect' conclusions are irrespective of methodology or intervention design, regardless of the approach used and measurement tools, the findings were the same. Studies that increased the amount of PA students were undertaking by the increasing time dedicated to PE did not report any negative impact of student achievement and grades. In regards to the research question, the evidence is highly mixed as to the potential impact PE can have on AA in other learning areas. What is certain from the studies reviewed is that participation in PE does not have any negative impact on student AA. The review highlights a number of limitations with existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Purpose Method Results and discussion Physical education has been described as too instrumental and uncritical, where a focus on utility has limited the value of pleasure in movement. Decades of previous research has addressed the need for changes where embodied experiences and learning are emphasized [Kirk, David, and Richard Tinning. 1994. “Embodied Self-Identity, Healthy Lifestyles and School Physical Education.” Sociology of Health and Illness 16 (5): 600–625; Kirk, David. 2010. Physical Education Futures. London: Routledge; Wrench, Alison, and Robyne Garrett. 2015. “PE: It’s Just Me: Physically Active and Healthy Teacher Bodies.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE) 28 (1): 72–91; Wright, Jan. 2000. “Bodies, Meanings and Movement: A Comparison of the Language of a Physical Education Lesson and a Feldenkrais Movement Class.” Sport, Education & Society 5 (1): 35–49]. Accordingly, we align with the ongoing call for a ‘corporeal turn’ [Smith, Stephen J. 2007. “The First Rush of Movement: A Phenomenological Preface to Movement Education.” Phenomenology & Practice 1 (1): 47–75, 66] in physical education, towards a more holistic understanding of learning and experience as embodied and emplaced [Pink, Sarah. 2011. “From Embodiment to Emplacement: Re-Thinking Competing Bodies, Senses and Spatialities.” Sport, Education and Society 16 (3):343–355.]. This turn may involve a curriculum where pleasurable and meaningful movement experiences are educational goals. Building on this, we ask whether a pedagogy that gives room for playfulness may be a starting point for physical education being perceived as more meaningful and pleasurable. Our theoretical framework builds upon Wellard’s model of body-reflexive pleasure, Hyland’s understanding of playfulness as a responsive openness and Gibson’s theories of affordances.In this study we explore pupils’ embodied experiences in physical education, using empirical findings from a sensory ethnography. The research questions asked are ‘How do pupils’ playfulness create possibilities for pleasure in physical education? And which opportunities for embodied learning are being offered through playful and pleasurable experiences?’ Our aim is to inform and develop pedagogies of embodiment by including playfulness as a strategy for facilitating opportunities for pleasurable and meaningful experiences that enable embodied learning.The empirical data is based on a sensory ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a 10th grade class (23 pupils, age 15–16 years) in Oslo, Norway. The first author conducted the fieldwork as a participant observer. This included joining all physical education lessons for one semester and conducting 17 interviews with pupils by the end of the semester. In the analysis and interpretation process we have combined ‘the ethnographic hunch’ [Pink, Sarah. 2021. “The Ethnographic Hunch.” Experimenting with Ethnography: A Companion to Analysis: 30–40] with an abductive analysis approach [Tavory, Iddo, and Stefan Timmermans. 2014. Abductive Analysis: Theorizing Qualitative Research. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press].The findings are represented in three episodes that show how pupils playfully changed the teacher-given tasks, and in doing so created possibilities for pleasurable experiences. The findings are discussed using [Wellard 2012. “Body-reflexive Pleasures: Exploring Bodily Experiences Within the Context of Sport and Physical Activity.” Sport, Education and Society 17 (1): 21–33] model of body-reflexive pleasures and phenomenological perspectives on playfulness [Hyland, D. 1977. ““And That Is The Best Part of Us:” Human Being and Play.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 4 (1):36–49], and affordances [Gibson, James J. 1986. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates]. Playfulness emerged as a criterium for perceiving activities as pleasurable. The pupils’ playful stance assisted them in their search for meaning and pleasurable activities because it enabled them to be open and responsive to the possibilities that emerged in the physical and social environment. This led to pleasurable experiences of physical thrill and psychological flow in social interaction when moving with others. We discuss how pleasurable experiences may have potential for the pupils’ embodied and emplaced learning, as participants in place-events. As illustrated in the three episodes, the playful and pleasurable activities offer opportunities for learning and practicing integrated competencies, e.g. physical, social, and creative competencies. Suggested implications for physical education teachers may involve giving pupils the freedom to be playful by being open to letting pupils’ innovative initiatives influence the teaching and contribute to create a safe space for movement exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Even though advocacy for poststructural feminist lenses to change/challenge physical education (PE) has grown over the years, there is an evident gap in qualitative research using poetic forms of representation in PE. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use a poststructural feminist framework to challenge a particular kind of hegemonic reproduction of PE, particularly to explore the notion of 'Joe Wicks as PE'. Participants and settings: Collaborative autoethnography framed this study and participants included three queer leaning female-identified early/mid-career PE teacher educators. Data collection/analysis: Over the course of eight weeks, we collected and generated a variety of texts individually and collectively. To capture our reactions, we decided to collect data around two 'prompts', namely the recorded podcast titled 'Is Joe Wicks the face of PE?' of an Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d'Éducation Physique (AIESEP) hosted chat, and our participation in a 9 am 'PE with Joe' session. We presented the data gathered in this project poetically. Findings: We divided the findings into two parts corresponding with our responses (collaborative autoethnographies) to the two themes, namely 'We can't fix this/that' (aka 'Banging our heads against a brick wall') and 'Joe Wicks as PE' (aka 'Feminist killjoys'). Implications: We believe that a poetic representation, in addition to nurturing and amplifying the emotional and lyrical data collected, presented an opportunity to contribute to, and extends this kind of representational style in PE. In addition to this, collaborative autoethnography allowed us as a community to advance scholarship and provides a space for collective empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent critiques of twenty-first century physical education (PE), and by association physical education teacher education (PETE), position the discipline as largely uncontested, unproblematised and uncritical. This critique encourages researchers to re-consider the nature of PE and what it means to move, be moved, value movement or be physically educated. Much literature also supports the claim that young people, especially young women are not as convinced of the value of PE as their teachers are, and hence question the educative or pleasurable value of PE, and the kinds of movement activities it precipitates. As a consequence, prescriptive unimaginative 'straight' pedagogies that restrict teacher creativity dominant PE classrooms, giving rise to ongoing exclusions and maintenance of a space where the embodied experience of moving in the world is foreclosed to many young women. This paper engages with the discomfort of change in PE/PETE, alongside the tiresome narrative around the 'problem' of/with young women and movement to consider the question, 'what might an embodied form of pedagogy in PE look like for young women?' Purpose: To address this question the paper empirically and pedagogically rethinks the educative purpose/potential of the discipline for young women in relation to embodied learning and pleasure. By deploying a reconceptualization of Peter Arnold's notion of 'in' movement, the paper offers PE/PETE practitioners practical examples of embodied pedagogies by way of pre-text vignettes with the potential to elicit movement pleasure and meaning, critique taken-for-granted assumptions, and as such enable the lifelong valuing of movement for and by young women. Methodology: This paper begins with a number of claims about the uncontested, uncritical and unimaginative state of PE/PETE and the pedagogical impact of this on learners and educators. This is then anchored to findings from a set of empirical data that explored the concept of embodied learning in the context of 'fire-fighting camps for girls'. This anchoring is done by using the work of Arnold and others to support an exploration and subsequent development of embodied pedagogies. As such the paper dwells only briefly on the empirical aspects of the data, preferring instead to focus on putting Arnold to work theoretically and pedagogically, arguably a complex task and yet important as his work forms the underlying assumptions of many PETE courses and international PE curricula. Findings: A number of pre-text vignettes in the form of postcards, photographs, videos, a poem, and a letter are shared as stand-alone pedagogical stimulus material that respond to calls to offer alternative, critical and non-normative choices to PE/PETE practitioners and their students. These pre-text vignettes use themes as their starting point and each is accompanied by a brief analysis as well as suggestions for how they might usefully be used as teaching and learning resources in a classroom. Thus, the vignettes pedagogically engage with the discomfort of change in PE/PETE whilst also disrupting the tiresome narrative around the 'problem' of/with young women and movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]