#Gymlad - young boys learning processes and health-related social media

Recent systematic reviews identify that the factors mediating and/or moderating the relationship between social media and health outcomes are sparse. There have also been few attempts to analyse gender specific uses of social media. This paper investigated young boys health-related learning in relation to social media. Data were generated from class activities and interviews and from a large data set that included 1346 young people. The approach to the empirical data adopted was Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA). The findings reveal two main purposes of young boys engagement with social media: (i) communicating with friends, and (ii) accessing health-related information. Irony and humour were central learning mechanisms used by young boys to participate within health-related social media, and in a way that enabled them to engage with, uphold, and handle health discourses associated with masculinity – such as being ripped – without fear of ‘literal’ peer ridicule and within a context of acceptable ‘banter’. There was evidence that young people were critical users and generators of social media, who were clearly thinking through what they see, do, and use online. Hence, this paper provides a fresh evidence-based perspective on the potentially positive role of social media as a health-related learning resource. PEA is illustrated as a new methodological approach for investigating learning in the context of social media. The evidence generated can be used to inform future evaluations of social media use, the design of educative support for young people, and guidance and training for key stakeholders

Cooperative learning in physical education encountering Dewey’s educational theory

Cooperative learning can be considered as an umbrella term for a number of classroom practices. In this paper we consider the educative nature of cooperative learning in physical education, and we have challenged ourselves to examine how cooperative learning can enhance the education of young people. We do this by revisiting cooperative learning’s Deweyan foundations and hold that such a move would be a constructive way forward for cooperative learning in physical education. We argue that there is a risk, in not going back to its educational roots, that cooperative learning might just become another way to teach, for example, games or sports, and that it currently puts too much emphasis on destination rather than journey. We suggest that using Dewey’s idea of education and experience would add: a situational element, a directional element, a temporal element, a communal element, and an educative element. In this way, the use of cooperative learning in physical education can move away from exclusively developing students’ skills, towards an open-ended process of becoming where a diversity of students transform and are being transformed by one another

"I just remember rugby": re-membering physical education as more than a sport

Purpose: The purpose of this article was to investigate how boys communicate previous experiences of cultural norms in physical education (PE) practice. This was done by analyzing what boys (from a school in the United Kingdom) remember about PE 2 years after they last participated. Making use of autobiographical memory theory and John Dewey's notions of reactualization of experience and collateral learning, we discuss the results of the study in terms of re-membering. Method: The participants in this study were 20 boys from a secondary school in the United Kingdom. At the time of the study, 11 of the boys were aged 16 to 17 years old and 9 were aged 17 to 18 years old. These boys were interviewed using a semistructured approach to explore their autobiographical memories of PE. Results: The overarching "logic" of memories of PE was sport. Almost all of the boys' articulated memories were of doing sports, albeit in various capacities. Beyond the main theme, the article positions the boys' recollections against established cultural norms of PE as a social practice and explores three subthemes: (a) just doing the game in a traditional curriculum though a multiactivity sport discourse; (b) learning the games in a technical sport discourse; and (c) learning beyond the game around an educational sport discourse. Conclusions: These boys reactualized memories of learning within an educational discourse, which suggests that what they learned goes beyond the simple consequence of participating. Copyright © 2015 SHAPE America

Curiosity killed by SATs: an investigation of mathematics lessons within an English primary school

By taking both pupils’ and teachers’ actions as the point of departure, this study aimed to understand governance within a primary school classroom. Video footage was recorded in an English primary school in which mathematics happened to be the focus. This data was analysed to identify the directions of both governance and self-governance and to help understand the consequences for pupil and teacher subjectivities. Our findings revealed the central role of national testing and inspection policy in constituting staff as ‘evidence hunters’ and pupils as ‘confessant and unafraid producers of evidence’. Both staff and pupils were complicit in creating sufficient space for everyone to fulfil their obligation to be accountable to the school’s senior leadership team (SLT), school inspectors and national attainment tests. As a consequence, mathematical knowing was simplified into a discipline of reproducing testable calculation, in which other possibilities of mathematical knowing were foreclosed

Exploring Movement Composition in the transition from physical education teacher education to school PE

Background: Scholars have suggested that students’ views of what is important for them to know as Physical Education (PE) teachers are a result of what is assessed in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). Thus, there is a risk that students will reproduce content areas such as sports and assess sport-techniques without much critical consideration. In this study, however, the risk of reproducing what is prioritised in PETE is seen as an opportunity regarding the potential reproduction of other content areas than sports. Based on the regulative principles of PE and PETE that privilege sport skills and hinder creative movement learning, we focus on a content area in PETE that provides opportunities for students to engage in creative collaboration and examine how this content area is realised in school PE. Hence, we have chosen to explore ‘Movement Composition’, a content area which has a long tradition at one of the PETE universities in Sweden. Based on an overarching interest in whether and how PETE matters, this exploratory study focuses on the potential transferability of Movement Composition as a particular content area in the transition from PETE to PE. Purpose and research question: The purpose of this study is to explore Movement Composition as a content area undergoing the transition from PETE to school PE. The research question is: How is the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition constructed, recontextualised and realised in the transition from PETE to school PE? Methods: Data was generated through an interview with one of the initiators of Movement Composition. Stimulated Recall interviews and Zoom interviews were also conducted with a group of five PETE students and three experienced PE teachers. In addition, documents such as the study guide, course literature, and written assignments associated with Movement Composition in the PETE programme were included in the empirical material. In the analysis, the combination of Bernstein’s pedagogic device and the Swedish didactics of PE research tradition was used to identify the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition in the transition from PETE to school PE. Findings: The findings show how the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition as a content area is constructed, recontextualised and realised in the transition from PETE to school PE. The construction of Movement Composition as a pedagogic discourse in PETE is about how the content area (the what) is selected and organised for pedagogical purposes. The recontextualisation of Movement Composition is about how the pedagogic discourse is interpreted and translated in relation to the PE syllabus. The realisation of Movement Composition involves how the content area in PETE is implemented in PE practice. Conclusions: This exploratory study has shown that what is articulated as a relevant content area and the way it is taught, learned, and assessed in PETE in many regards survives the transition to school PE. The transition from PETE to school PE does not only involve reproduction of sports and sport-techniques from one context to another. PETE also contributes to the use of creative, collaborative, and student-centred learning tasks in school PE.Exploring Movement Composition in the transition from physical education teacher education to school PEpublishedVersio

Social media as a tool for generating sustained and in-depth insights into sport and exercise practitioners’ ongoing practices

The purpose of this paper is to suggest and empirically illustrate how social media can be used to generate sustained and in-depth insights into sport and exercise practitioners’ ongoing practices. This is achieved by discussing the potential for social media in research designs and presenting an analysis of 6 physical education teachers’ and a researcher’s tweets during a six-year school-based continuous professional development programme. Through the use of empirical illustrations we suggest that social media promotes interflections i.e. an ongoing deliberation between practitioners and researchers facilitated by social media. The key contribution of this paper is the argument that social media offers researchers the opportunity to capture sustained and in-depth insights into practitioners and their practices and/or to examine longer-term impacts of programmes or interventions. The discussions are relevant to a range of practitioners within sport and exercise pedagogy, with teachers and teaching used as a representative example of this broad field

Social media as a tool for generating sustained and in-depth insights into sport and exercise practitioners’ on-going practices

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health on 23 Aug 2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2017.1367715The purpose of this paper is to suggest and empirically illustrate how social media can be used to generate sustained and in-depth insights into sport and exercise practitioners’ ongoing practices. This is achieved by discussing the potential for social media in research designs and presenting an analysis of 6 physical education teachers’ and a researcher’s tweets during a six-year school-based continuous professional development programme. Through the use of empirical illustrations we suggest that social media promotes interflections i.e. an ongoing deliberation between practitioners and researchers facilitated by social media. The key contribution of this paper is the argument that social media offers researchers the opportunity to capture sustained and in-depth insights into practitioners and their practices and/or to examine longer-term impacts of programmes or interventions. The discussions are relevant to a range of practitioners within sport and exercise pedagogy, with teachers and teaching used as a representative example of this broad field

Busier, happier and good(er) – 40 years on from "busy, happy, and good" as success in teaching PE

In 1983, Judith Placek published ‘Conceptions of success in teaching: Busy, happy and good?´ In this much cited book chapter, she argued that PE teachers and pre-service teachers had little concern for student learning, and often conceptualized successful teaching quite differently than researchers. For the four PE teachers and 29 PE majors, success was visible in PE when students were ‘busy, happy and good’ (Placek, 1983, p. 54). Over the last 40 years, Placek’s arguments have been picked up extensively in PE research and ‘busy, happy and good’ has often been used as catchphrase to critique a particular approach to PE that emphasises student participation, enjoyment, and discipline. In other words, ‘busy, happy and good’ has, in many ways, evolved into a slur to ‘put down’ teaching practices that de-emphasize privileged forms of student learning (mainly skill acquisition). Our intent is not to criticize Placek’s work nor dismiss the notion that a PE practice that exclusively focuses on enjoyment, participation and discipline is problematic. Instead, we aim to add nuance to the use of ‘busy, happy and good’ in PE research and practice by connecting the concept to broader issues in education and pedagogy. To do so, we argue that ‘success in teaching' is not a neutral term. Instead, they are always - as Armour et al. (2017) contend - political, educational, and embedded in societal aspirations. In a sense, it all depends on what students, and indeed teachers, are busy, happy, and good doing. In revisiting Placek’s argument we consider how the concept ‘busy, happy and good’ has been used in PE research over time. Here, our overview reveals that it is described in different ways in research in relation to PE (e.g., an orientation, an objective, a syndrome, a mentality, a model, an agenda). For this paper, we have identified four major uses of the concept with no major shifts regarding its use over time. First, ‘busy, happy and good’ is used as a general statement indicating that teachers’ main concern in PE is that their students are busy, and/or happy, and/or good - and not always all three together. Second, ‘busy, happy and good’ is used to support results regarding a focus in PE on activity, enjoyment or discipline. Third, ‘busy, happy and good’ is used as an argument that current PE is not much about learning. Finally, the catchphrase is used as a challenge to contemporary PE to move beyond ‘busy, happy and good’ towards more focus on student learning. There are of course exceptions, but these are rare (e.g. Griffin 1985; O’Sullivan & Tsangaridou 1992). It is obvious that Placek’s work, particularly this catchphrase, struck a chord in 1983. ‘Busy, happy and good’ has accordingly shaped practices and is both produced by and produces ideas about teachers, teaching and success in PE. It is, however, rare for such two small studies to realize such an immense impact, particularly since Placek herself argued the small sample size impeded generalization (see Siedentop, 1989). Concurrently, the notion of ‘busy, happy and good’ has sometimes been used as the only supporting reference for some quite general and broad sweeping statements about teachers, teaching and what happens in PE practice. From this overview we will discuss the ways ‘busy, happy and good’ often focuses on the how of teaching PE and argue that many problems arise when it also becomes the why or the what of teaching. Any theory or claim regarding success in teaching becomes empty without a direction and a content. We will follow this up by discussing ‘busy, happy and good’ in relation to different purposes (why) and different content (what), and argue that a ‘busy, happy and good’ PE could be quite productive in relation to certain purposes and certain content (i.e. success = educative). As a conclusion we use different theoretical ideas to revitalize and reclaim the notion of ‘busy, happy, and good’ as something that is not necessarily bad and can be used in more productive ways than to bash teachers and their practices. Instead, we use the apparent communicative capital of ‘busy, happy, and good’ to say something about teaching PE in an affirmative way and thus transform what ‘busy, happy, and good’ can be or be understood as. We accordingly ask: Success in relation to what? What if ‘busy, happy and good’ were a good thing? Should we even aim for students to be busier, happier, and ‘good(er)’? But again, it all depends on what they are busy, happy and good doing

What did they learn in school today? A method for exploring aspects of learning in physical education

What did they learn in school today?: A method for exploring aspects of learning in physical education. Abstract This paper outlines a method for exploring learning in educational practice. The suggested method combines an explicit learning theory with robust methodological steps in order to explore aspects of learning in school physical education. The design of the study is based on sociocultural learning theory, and the approach adds to previous research within the field, both in terms of the combination of methods used and the claims made in our studies. The paper describes a way of collecting and analysing the retrieved data and discusses and illustrates the results of a study using this combination of explicit learning theory and robust methodological steps. European Physical Educatio