Understanding learners’ sense making of movement learning in physical education

Abstract

There is a substantial body of physical education scholarship focusing on movement learning. The question of how pupils themselves make sense of movement learning has however, largely escaped attention. Answers to such a question would seem to be highly germane if educators are to engage in pupilcentered pedagogies. In light of this absence, the aim of this investigation was to describe how movement learners made sense of their own movement development. Drawing on theoretical tenets of Gilbert Ryle (2009. The concept of mind. New York, NY: Routledge) and Michael Polanyi (1969. Knowing and being. Essays by Michael Polanyi. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), three cases from an investigation in which movement learning was occurring are presented. The investigation was conducted during a physical education project week with pupils from an upper secondary school. Data were produced using observations, informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and research diaries as a group of pupils learned to juggle. The results suggest that: the aspects of moving to which learners attend change as they learn; learners have a relatively limited capacity to verbally articulate what they learn, and; learners' expectations of ideal ways of moving have considerable impact on how they come to make sense of their own ways of moving. The practical implications of these points are discussed in the final section of the paper.

Implementing the Movement-Oriented Practising Model (MPM) in physical education: empirical findings focusing on student learning

“…Adam increased the duration of his handstands but never really developed consistency. Like Sofie and Josefin, he continued to practise throughout the lessons but unlike the girls, he did not identify as a proficient mover (or 'knower' -Barker, Quennerstedt, and Annerstedt 2015; see also Rönnqvist et al 2019) at the end of the module. Gabriel's movements with the Panenka became more definite and faster over the lessons, even if they remained evidently dissimilar to the performances he had found on the internet.…”

“…Ryle's work has proven useful in physical education scholarship in relation to questions of movement learning (Nyberg and Carlgren 2015;Nyberg and Larsson 2014;Rönnqvist et al 2019;Stolz 2013). With its practical focus on how intelligent performances can be developed in physical education, the present investigation has the potential to expand the ways that Ryle's theory can be used to analyze the development of practical knowledge in educational settings.…”

Learning in the educational landscapes of juggling, unicycling, and dancing

“…Chow (2013), for example, asserted that 'the over emphasis on comparing one teaching approach against another has blinded researchers from examining more meaningful information about the processes present in these different approaches ' (479). Studies that have taken learners' experiences into account (Bergentoft 2018;Nyberg and Carlgren 2015;Nyberg 2015;Rönnqvist et al 2019) have tended to overlook what learners actually 'do,' or the actions that they take, to develop movement capability (see e.g. Lindgren and Barker (2019) and Barker, Nyberg, and Larsson (2020) for exceptions).…”

Transformation of complex movements from policy to practice – a discourse analysis of Swedish physical education teachers’ concepts of moving

“…Movement learning has received a great deal of attention from scholars in recent times (see e.g. Barker, Bergentoft, and Nyberg 2017;Rönnqvist et al 2019). In this literature, the term 'complex' occurs relatively frequently as a descriptor of both how learning occurs and how moving occurs (e.g.…”

“…Brown (2013) for example, uses Arnold's conceptualization of movement to describe the complexity of learning in, through and about learning while other scholars investigating knowledge and movement have discussed how moving can be understood as complex (e.g. Nyberg and Carlgren 2015;Rönnqvist et al 2019). In this paper, we focus on complex movement rather than the complexity of learning.…”