Environing as Embodied Experience—A Study of Outdoor Education as Part of Physical Education

The development of a re-understanding or re-investigation of body pedagogy is currently prominent in the field of physical education (PE) and sport pedagogy. This goes for the learning of movement capability and health but also in relation to outdoor education (OE). The latter a criticized area for having a one-size-fits-all approach to curriculum, with less attention to what to learn in OE, including aspects of everyday practices of being outdoors. The aim of this study was to explore students aged 15 years, and their meaning making of being outdoors expressed in written stories about a favorite place. Two school year eight classes in a Swedish compulsory school situated in an area with high diversity participated. Through this theory-generated empirical study, written stories were explored as one way of evaluating students' meaning making of outdoor places. By using practical epistemology analysis (PEA) to examine experience operationalized through aesthetic judgements attention is paid to the relation between the student and the situation (their favorite place). The analysis make it possible to discern a sense and meaning making of “being” outdoors as an embodied experience, as a relational whole of the self, others and the environment. Descriptions of aesthetic experiences were analyzed leading to dimensions of environing described as “calm and privacy,” “community and togetherness” and “feelings and senses.” A favorite place was by all students described as a very local and nearby place accessible in everyday life. The analysis generated understandings of feelings of “fulfillment” and different embodied experiences of what an encounter with an outdoor place or being outdoors could mean. Furthermore, how personal and diverse the meaning making place tends to be and how experience and habits contribute to the students' creation of microenvironments. Dimensions of environing become part of an embodied process. The analysis of the written stories calls for an alternative understanding of what OE can or should consist of. The findings encourage teachers and researchers to consider alternative understandings and practices of OE that highlight and educate students' overall embodied (individual) experiences and learning in OE and PE.

Exploring gender habits: A practical epistemology analysis of exergaming in school

Digitisation is an ongoing process in society as well as in physical education (PE) and research has identified digital technologies as a trend that influences the PE curriculum. A number of studies have explored the topic from different angles, although very few have empirically looked at the critical aspects of digitised PE in educational practice. This is particularly striking when it comes to issues of gender. Against this background, the aim of the paper is to explore gender habits in a digitised PE practice. A transactional approach, drawing on the work of the pragmatist feminist Shannon Sullivan, is used in the study. The data consists of video- and audio-recordings of ongoing video gaming organised by the PE teacher. A practical epistemology analysis is employed to explore the teenagers’ gender habits in depth. In the analysis, it is clear that the use of exergames in school reinforces traditional gender habits, rather than weakening them. This is particularly evident when the teenagers play in single sex groups. This is also the case when playing in mixed gender groups, although here some changes in gender habits can be identified. However, gender habits are not easily transformed and the findings support the argument that deliberate teaching is important when issues of gender are raised in practice.

Analysing the continuity of teaching and learning in classroom actions: When the joint action framework in didactics meets the pragmatist approach to classroom discourses

One strand of comparative didactics aims at discussing the relationships between the theoretical constructions developed within subject didactics and how these can contribute to research about teaching and learning. This article explores the relationships between categories for analysing joint actions of teacher and students (didactic contract, milieu, mesogenesis, topogenesis, chronogenesis) and categories used in the pragmatist approach of classroom discourse analysis (practical epistemology and epistemological moves). We combine both frameworks to feature different types of breaches in the didactic contract and the building of continuity in teaching and learning actions for dealing with these breaches. Analyses are carried out through examples of classroom events in science education and physical education. We argue that these frameworks, when elaborated on and compared, enable us to characterise both generic and specific dimensions of teaching and learning in different subjects.

A didactic analysis of content development during Cooperative Learning in primary physical education

The purpose of this study was to use the Joint Action Studies in Didactics (JASD) to understand how teachers’ and students’ interactions co-construct knowledge during Cooperative Learning (CL). The basis of CL is that students learn with and from each other through a structured interdependent relationship. A case study approach was used to examine how a group of three year-5 students and their teacher from an ethnically diverse primary school in New Zealand co-constructed knowledge within a 3-month CL intervention in physical education. The JASD protocol included collecting data on the teacher’s intention, practical epistemology and student interactions as they engaged in CL task structures. Data analysis included a search for patterns in the evolution of the didactic contract of content learned as students interacted in the co-construction of knowledge. Findings revealed that the CL tasks provided a pedagogical structure where student interactions were generally aligned with the didactic intent of the tasks. The teaching techniques of the student coach served to make the development of content more dynamic, with an increased frequency of breaches in the didactic contract. This dynamic may facilitate student learning during productive group problem-solving tasks. When the intended content was more specifically defined, the topogenetic technique of teacher intervention within tasks was critical to re-align students’ interpretation of the knowledge at stake in the CL tasks.

Students' Aesthetic Experiences of Playing Exergames

The aim of this study was to explore Swedish junior high school students meaning-making of participating in exergaming in school based on their aesthetic judgments during game play. A transactional approach, drawing on the work of John Dewey, was used in the study and the data consisted of video- and audio recordings of ongoing video gaming. A practical epistemology analysis (PEA) was used in order to explore the students' meaning-making in depth. When analyzing the data, the importance of performing well in relation to the challenges the game offers; developing techniques suitable for the game; and interacting socially with one's peers emerged as main themes in the students' meaning-making and learning. It was clear that the students' taste for gaming played a crucial role in how they proceeded in the activity and that meaningful gaming included an intrinsic combination of pleasure and displeasure.