The meaning of movement in the everyday lives of Danish high-school students: a phenomenological study exploring existential well-being as ‘dwelling-mobility’

Abstract

Health-promoting initiatives focusing on physical activity include advice on integrating active behaviour into everyday activities pointing to a tendency to combine a health agenda with other agendas. From a public-health perspective this might be a valuable strategy, but it calls for a conceptual awareness and exploration of the target groups' perceptions of this broader concept of physical activity. Nested in a Danish intervention study aimed at increasing wellbeing among high-school students aged 16-17 through the promotion of movement, this study engages in a conceptual exploration of 'movement in everyday lives' related to well-being. Combining participant observation and photo-elicitation interviews, the study investigates different kinds of meaning experienced in relation to movement. Theoretically, the study is framed by existential phenomenology with a focus on corporeality, temporality and intersubjectivity. An existential theory of well-being is applied to a discussion of the relationship between bodily movement and well-being. The findings point to movement as a way for students to balance two existential modes within the dimensions of corporeality, temporality and intersubjectivity: one of activity and tenseness, and one of break and stillness. For the students, movement entails bodily experiences ranging from modes of selfforgetfulness to the body demanding attention in different ways; they experience movement as a break from everyday obligations, but also as a way of moving forward; and they experience movement as an occasion for being social and for withdrawing from the social worlds.

A pathway through the uncanny: A phenomenological photovoice study of Australian university students’ experiences of physical activity during COVID‐19

“…The four “life world existentials” of lived space (spatiality), lived body (corporeality), lived time (temporality), and lived human relation (relationality) were used as guides for reflection (van Manen, 1990, p. 101; see also Wehner et al., 2020). Furthermore, van Manen suggests that phenomenological literature is explored as part of the analytic process.…”

Adaptation, Student Participation and Gradual Withdrawal by Researchers as Sustainability Strategies in the High School-Based Young and Active Intervention: School Coordinators’ Perspectives

“…It would have been fruitful to include the senior students’ perspectives of the three-year process to a larger extent to provide nuance to the findings. However, as students already had contributed extensively to both qualitative and quantitative data collection activities related to other aims of the HHS study throughout the three-year period [ 29 , 36 , 49 ], we were reluctant to disturb them once again. We supplemented the coordinators’ perspectives by including participant observations of workshops as a third-person view on the senior students’ engagement in the workshop facilitation.…”

Preventing Stress among High School Students in Denmark through the Multicomponent Healthy High School Intervention—The Effectiveness at First Follow-Up

“…Furthermore, today's society is characterized by a culture that values competition, an extreme focus on performance, and a constant search for perfection in every part of life [63][64][65]. These themes were also present when we interviewed students and teachers as a part of the needs assessment and process evaluation [66,67]. Such determinants are closely related to stress but are difficult to change in a school-based intervention.…”