What’s in a concept? A Leximancer text mining analysis of physical literacy across the international literature

Abstract

Physical literacy is developing as a contested concept with definitional blurring across international contexts, confusing both practitioners and researchers. This paper serves the dual purpose of reporting on an interrogation of concepts associated with physical literacy in academic writing and exploring the use of a text mining data analysis tool. The Leximancer text mining software was applied to 49 research papers relating to physical literacy from 2001–2016, sourced from academic repositories and scholarly search engines. The findings from the text mining analysis revealed that the concept of physical literacy is used in a variety of contexts, specifically in connection with ‘education’, ‘activity’, ‘fitness’, ‘health’, ‘concept’, ‘competence’, ‘understanding’, ‘roles’, ‘curriculum’ and ‘assessment’. The concept with the most relevance connected to physical literacy is ‘education’, the very term that is commonly being replaced by ‘literacy’. A number of concepts were identified from the text mining analysis that were not explicitly mentioned within the definitions of physical literacy, including educational components such as ‘curriculum’, ‘teaching’ and ‘assessment’. It was also revealed that many of the strongest relational concepts from the text mining of the physical literacy literature were of a physical domain, with less relevance and connection to concepts of cognitive, social and emotional domains. The study fills an important gap in the literature by showing that while a multiplicity of conceptions of physical literacy exists, the concept gives dominance to the physical domain and the marginalisation of cognitive and affective domains in various constructions of physical literacy.

Defining Physical Literacy for Application in Australia: A Modified Delphi Method

“…This study contained several limitations, not least that the topic area to which we sought to bring clarity had developed several tensions, obfuscations and, despite noble intentions, some philosophical language that appeared to be discouraging the adoption and implementation of physical literacy (Hyndman & Pill, 2017). Consensus from a Delphi process should not be taken to mean that a 'correct' answer has necessarily been found, but rather that experts have been engaged in seeking a convergence of opinion and state-of-the-art knowledge (Hsu & Sandford, 2007;Keeney et al, 2011).…”

“…Hence, physical literacy refers to both the potential to engage with, and learn from, our physical embodiment as well as a configuration of this learning whereby the individual becomes sufficiently competent and predisposed to always engage in health-promoting movement pursuits. This simultaneous invocation of two meanings has led to significant debate and dissatisfaction (Cairney, Bedard, Dudley, & Kreillaars, 2016;Edwards, Bryant, Keegan, Morgan, & Jones, 2017;Hyndman & Pill, 2017;Jurbala, 2015). In fact, one significant barrier to physical literacy realizing its potential is the diverse, sometimes conflicting, definitions that different groups adopt for physical literacy (Shearer et al, 2018).…”

“…In fact, one significant barrier to physical literacy realizing its potential is the diverse, sometimes conflicting, definitions that different groups adopt for physical literacy (Shearer et al, 2018). This situation has been critiqued as causing confusion and conflict, and even for being too divergent from Whitehead's 'original' intended meaning (Hyndman & Pill, 2017;Robinson, Randall, & Barrett, 2018); but of course, simply because a concept has been formulated before does not prevent other researchers from exploring and testing that formulation, or from seeking approaches that are more suitable to a specific local context (e.g., Whitehead, 2010). Recent systematic reviews (Edwards et al, 2017;Edwards, Bryant, Keegan, Morgan, & Jones, 2018) and narrative overviews (Green, Roberts, Sheehan, & Keegan, 2018;Shearer et al, 2018) have analyzed and compared the differing approaches to conceptualizing and operationalizing physical literacy.…”

How Is Physical Literacy Defined? A Contemporary Update

“…Despite the generation of this consensus statement, the previous definitions from these organisations were often referred to in practice and the primary sources available to interested parties searching the internet (Hyndman & Pill, 2017). The prevalence of these competing approaches leads to the continued confusion and disagreement within the physical literacy community (Robinson & Randall, 2017).…”

Understanding practitioner perspectives of youth healthcare using thematic and lexical analyses

“…Leximancer can offer a "helicopter" view of a substantial body of qualitative data, illustratively portraying relationships and patterns between representative themes and concepts 49 2. As a form of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), Leximancer offers a systematic, logical and an efficient method to text-mine 50 3. Unlike thematic analysis, [51][52][53] Leximancer can help to reveal and make sense of different findings 54 -given its capacity to offer an "unsupervised" view of the data, 55 it can facilitate "broader opportunities for interrogating the text" 27 When a homeless young person comes in, we need something then and there because they might not come back… So, taking the service to them.…”