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BackgroundChildren diagnosed with cancer experience muscle weakness and impaired physical function caused by treatment and related immobility. The situation forces them into a negative cycle of diminished participation in physical and leisure activities and isolation from peers; inhibiting the natural development of social and gross motor skills. This manuscript presents a protocol for a study that explores the effects of using structured active play to maintain preschoolers' age specific gross motor function and social and personal skills while undertaking intensive cancer treatment.MethodsThe study is a two-arm, superiority randomized controlled trial with an intervention and a control group designed to evaluate the effects of a structured active play intervention on gross motor function. Gross motor subtests of the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales, Second Edition (PDMS-2) are used for measurement; with the primary end-point at 6 months post-treatment initiation. Eighty-four preschool children (aged 1–5 years), newly diagnosed with cancer at the Copenhagen University Hospital are randomly assigned to either an intervention or control group, using a 1:1 allocation. The intervention group receives a combined in-hospital and home-based program that includes structured active play activities, while the control group receives standard care, including physiotherapy. During hospital admission, the intervention group undertakes 45-min structured active play group sessions three times weekly, conducted by exercise professionals. Parents receive training and supervision to facilitate daily individual sessions outside of group sessions. Secondary study outcomes target the children's overall function level in everyday life, general physical performance, and health-related quality of life. As well, children's and parents' experiences within the intervention are explored and the children's social and personal development is observed.DiscussionLimited evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of rehabilitation interventions, particularly those including active play, for preschoolers diagnosed with cancer. This manuscript reporting on a study protocol will enhance clarity and transparency in reporting and offer insights for others with interest in this same topic. Once completed, findings from this study could extend knowledge about the conduct and measurement of effectiveness in rehabilitation initiatives. If study findings suggest that the intervention is effective, structured active play may become a standard part of rehabilitation.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04672681. Registered December 17, 2020. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04672681.

The film Dancing Days With Young People is inspired by art-based research and performative social science. Here artists and researchers examine important issues together. The film follows 1 teacher, 21 university students, and 200 high school pupils from various cultural backgrounds. It focuses especially on the young university students in a challenging course of teaching emphasizing creativity, embodied leadership, and dance. Here, they also teach the high school pupils various styles of dance. Research shows that it can be challenging for many young people to develop teaching competency and the embodied leadership they will need in their impending work as teachers. This is also an issue in many university educations and other educational fields. Therefore, the research questions examined how we can develop somatic awareness, creativity, and embodied leadership through innovative educational processes. And how close-to-practice, artistic elicitation methods may contribute to both researching and portraying this process. The film was created by collaboration between a researcher and teacher, a documentary film instructor, a musician, and a creative film editor. The film was both part of the research process and the result of the creative collaborative. It may be regarded as a coproduced research publication in itself, as it visualizes and documents the findings of the project. Therefore, the film may be seen as a contribution to the growing field within performative social science. Here, the film illustrates especially well the intense moments in sensual emotional situations, which cannot be captured solely in the world of words. The findings show that embodied leadership may be developed through real-world learning processes in which joyous, vulnerable, and subjectively experienced risk-filled situations become part of a common creative educational journey. The teaching methods and the theme of embodiment and leadership may be applicable in wider educational fields.

At first glance, dance and movement may appear foreign to the idea of nurse education. On closer inspection, it could be high time. The flow of words may stop, but the body is always in movement--always communicating. Still, the language of the body, and certainly movement, is an often overlooked potential in education. This is also true for nurse education: in spite of the often bodily close meetings with vulnerable and crisis-stricken patients. These meetings make great demands on the nurse to both contain own feelings and be able to "read" and understand patients' often only sense-based communication. This dimension of the nursing profession can be overwhelming, touching, and shocking for young nursing students. This research project examines, whether a course composed of theory, dance and movement lessons, and increased focus on the bodily communication between students and patients may be developmental for the nursing students' beginning embodied professionality. Results from the project have innovative educational potentials. They also give concrete indications of how nursing educations can develop new holistic anchored embodied training in a very accessible, as well as essential, ancient, and unavoidably present part of the nursing profession.

Universitetsuddannelsen i idræt integrerer læring af praktiske kompetencer og akademisk faglig fordybelse. I denne artikel præsenterer vi ”authentic microtea-ching” som model, hvor medbestemmelse og formidlingsdimensionen indgår som centrale fokusområder i vores undervisning. Vores empiriske erfaringer med at ud-vikle modellen samt det lærings- og uddannelsesstrategiske sigte beskrives med udgangspunkt i et specifikt kursus, hvor vores studerende via små trefasede forløb bevæger sig fra at være deltagere i undervisning til selv at være formidlere af det faglige indhold i virkelighedsnære undervisningssituationer. I første fase introduce-res de studerende til praksisområdet i korte forløb tilrettelagt af universitetets un-dervisere, mens anden fase tager udgangspunkt i ”reciprocal peer teaching”, hvor de studerende underviser hinanden og udvikler deres egen praksis organiseret ud fra ”microteaching”-modellen. Tredje fase inkluderer korte undervisningsforløb med elever fra gymnasieskolen som deltagere i virkelighedsnære situationer ud fra ”au-tenthic pedagogy” og tilhørende refleksionspapirer (mini-underviser-portfolier) som parallel fordybelsesaktivitet.