Idrottsutövandets estetik : en narrativ studie om meningsskapande och lärande

The overall interest of this thesis is to explore aesthetic experience in sport and its significance for learning in sport. The main purpose is to contribute to a theoretical and methodological development of studies relating to learning in sport. The exploration is undertaken within the field of pragmatism using the works of John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The exploration consists of four case studies, consisting mainly of narrative analyses of people’s written stories of participating in different sporting activities. A practical epistemology analysis (PEA) with a focus on aesthetic experience is used in three of the studies. The theoretical contribution comprises exploring learning in sport as something that is connected to emotions and perceptions, where other elements of experience, such as the social, cultural, historical, physical and mental aspects, are also important. Examining learning in the light of aesthetic experience contributes to an examination of emotion s and perceptions as integral parts of sport, without reducing learning to only consisting of emotions and perceptions. The results of the study also contribute to the possibility of exploring values in sport-related learning and shed light on the importance of habits (feelings of familiarity) when learning sport. How people ‘bodying’ the world aesthetically as part of their participation in sport has also been shown in one of the studies. The methodological contributions of the thesis consist of the development of PEA to include the examination of written texts. Furthermore, one of the studies includes the development of aesthetic events as a tool for exploring aesthetic experience in sport. Finally, a methodological contribution is made by using PEA to examine sport, since in the past PEA has only been used in studies in science education

Health as Experience : Exploring Health in Daily Life Drawing From the Work of Aaron Antonovsky and John Dewey

Research has pursued salutogenic and narrative approaches to deal with questions about how everyday settings are constitutive for different health practices. Healthy behavior is not a distinguishable action, but a chain of activities, often embedded in other social practices. In this article, we have endeavored to describe such a chain of activities guided by the salutogenic claim of exploring the good living argued by McCuaig and Quennerstedt. We use biographical material written by Karl Ove Knausgaard who has created a life story entitled My Struggle. The novel is selected upon an approach influenced by Brinkmann who stresses that literature can be seen as a qualitative social inquiry in which the novelist is an expert in transforming personal life experiences into common human expressions of life. The study illustrates how research with a broader notion of health can convey experiences of health, thereby complementing (and sometimes challenging) public health evidence

Aesthetic aspects in meaning making - an explorative study of dance education in a PETE programme

The article focuses on how aesthetic aspects of experience are involved in meaning making within an educational setting of body movement practice. The study explores stories of how physical education student teachers feel when participating in a dance lesson, with attention given to aesthetic aspects of embodied experiences in relation to meaning making. The study draws on Dewey’s theory of experimental learning. Aesthetic experience is defined as the feeling of wholeness or fulfilment in the transaction taking place. The categorical analysis of content, inspired by pragmatic epistemology analyses, uses the operational concepts of gaps, encounters, and relations. Three categories of stories emerge linked by the resemblance of positive or negative feelings expressed. The aesthetic experiences seem to inform the students of the purpose of what is undertaken, how to value the experience, and how the meaning of the embodied experience is perceived

Experiencing sustainable fashion : Have fun and feel clever – a case study for critical design literacy

The consumption of clothes is increasing every year, which is a huge challenge for sustainability. Educational Design research have shown that the challenge cannot be solved unless we have critical literate consumers. By making the question of sustainable clothing a matter for critical design literacy, the aim of this case study is to examine the meaning making of an educational material produced for teachers in design and craft education. The educational material, entitled Sustainable Fashion, consists of 17 design projects and the analysis is made with the aid of practical epistemological analysis with a specific focus on aesthetic experience. Two ways of becoming a sustainable consumer of fashion have been identified – to have fun and to feel clever – and these two meaning making activities incorporate certain actions of what it means to be a sustainable consumer. From a critical design literacy perspective, these ways of becoming a sustainable consumer are crucial to acknowledge, as they include (and exclude other) specific sustainability actions.

Education for sustainable clothing consumerism?

This paper sheds light on how aesthetic judgments govern actions in education for design literacy and sustainability behaviours. Educational material is examined by asking: (1) What meanings regarding becoming a sustainable consumer are made available to students in the educational material? (2) How are these narratives communicated to change students’ behaviours? The material in question consists of 17 design projects intended to be used in the Swedish school subject, Educational Sloyd. Using a practical epistemological analysis, two ways of becoming a sustainable consumer are identified: to have fun and to feel clever. The paper also shows how social marketing is used as a strategy in communicating how to change student behaviours. In the discussion, we turn to design literacy research to discuss the results from an educational perspective

Environing as Embodied Experience : A Study of Outdoor Education as Part of Physical Education

The development of a re-understanding or re-investigation of body pedagogy is currently prominent in the field of physical education (PE) and sport pedagogy. This goes for the learning of movement capability and health but also in relation to outdoor education (OE). The latter a criticized area for having a one-size-fits-all approach to curriculum, with less attention to what to learn in OE, including aspects of everyday practices of being outdoors. The aim of this study was to explore students aged 15 years, and their meaning making of being outdoors expressed in written stories about a favorite place. Two school year eight classes in a Swedish compulsory school situated in an area with high diversity participated. Through this theory-generated empirical study, written stories were explored as one way of evaluating students' meaning making of outdoor places. By using practical epistemology analysis (PEA) to examine experience operationalized through aesthetic judgements attention is paid to the relation between the student and the situation (their favorite place). The analysis make it possible to discern a sense and meaning making of “being” outdoors as an embodied experience, as a relational whole of the self, others and the environment. Descriptions of aesthetic experiences were analyzed leading to dimensions of environing described as “calm and privacy,” “community and togetherness” and “feelings and senses.” A favorite place was by all students described as a very local and nearby place accessible in everyday life. The analysis generated understandings of feelings of “fulfillment” and different embodied experiences of what an encounter with an outdoor place or being outdoors could mean. Furthermore, how personal and diverse the meaning making place tends to be and how experience and habits contribute to the students' creation of microenvironments. Dimensions of environing become part of an embodied process. The analysis of the written stories calls for an alternative understanding of what OE can or should consist of. The findings encourage teachers and researchers to consider alternative understandings and practices of OE that highlight and educate students' overall embodied (individual) experiences and learning in OE and PE

Students’ Aesthetic Experiences of Playing Exergames: A Practical Epistemology Analysis of Learning

The aim of this study was to explore Swedish junior high school students meaning-making of participating in exergaming in school based on their aesthetic judgments during game play. A transactional approach, drawing on the work of John Dewey, was used in the study and the data consisted of video- and audio recordings of ongoing video gaming. A practical epistemology analysis (PEA) was used in order to explore the students’ meaning-making in depth. When analyzing the data, the importance of performing well in relation to the challenges the game offers; developing techniques suitable for the game; and interacting socially with one’s peers emerged as main themes in the students’ meaning-making and learning. It was clear that the students’ taste for gaming played a crucial role in how they proceeded in the activity and that meaningful gaming included an intrinsic combination of pleasure and displeasure. TV-spel som hälsofostra

What physical education becomes when pupils with neurodevelopmental disorders are integrated: a transactional understanding

Background Previous research on inclusive physical education (PE) has often focused on pupils with visible physical disabilities and how best to facilitate and adapt PE so that they can play an active role in the educational situation. Many lessons about inclusion have emerged from this important field. However, less is known about more ‘invisible’ variations. In Sweden, many pupils who are diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), are integrated into mainstream classes. These pupils are often more sensitive to demands and stressful situations and struggle to decode social interactions. When it comes to lessons in PE, little is known about how pupils with NDD experience the educational situation and what they need to do to be successful in PE. Purpose The aim of this article is to explore what PE practices become in classes in which pupils with NDD are integrated in terms of inclusion or exclusion processes. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, we suggest a transactional perspective on inclusion. This facilitates a non-dualistic exploration of inclusive PE and makes it possible to take the experiences of pupils with NDD and their peers into account. Methods In the article we use a transactional framework with a focus on experience, meaning-making and habits using the following analytical questions: (i) What are the experiences of integrated PE? (ii) How do these events appear as inclusive? (iii) How do they appear as exclusive? The data generation consisted of 9 field observations and 13 individual interviews with pupils aged between 10 and 11 years in three classes in two different schools in one municipality. The municipality was awarded a grant by the Swedish authorities to work towards the creation of more favourable school situations for pupils with NDD. Three classes in which pupils with NDD diagnoses were integrated in PE were selected. Findings The study identified four PE practices in which inclusion and exclusion processes were prominent: (i) to organise, (ii) to cooperate, (iii) to sweat and (iv) to win. ‘To organise’ is a comprehensive practice that is transactionally identified and foregrounded by teachers’ actions. The other three are embedded in the practice ‘to organise’, which foregrounds pupils’ actions. The study shows that pupils are included in a certain kind of PE practice when it becomes an organised practice of sweating, competing and cooperating. Conclusion The study reveals that some of the inclusive practices that are designed to support pupils with NDD exclude other pupils with or without NDD. Accordingly, working in an integrated way can be both inclusive and exclusive. It would thus seem that successful inclusive education in PE is as much about group dynamics as about ‘individual pupils with problems’. In order to achieve inclusion, teachers need to focus on actively communicating with pupils, colleagues and parents, on how and what to teach and on what students are supposed to learn

Routes and roots to knowing in Shaun White’s snowboarding road trip : A mycorrhizaic approach to multisensory emplaced learning in exergames

This article explores learning during game-play of a snowboarding video game intrigued by questions raised in the wake of the increasing mediatisation and digitisation of learning. Correspondingly, we answer to calls for more suitable metaphors for learning to cater for the entangled learning processes that changes related to the increase of digital media may infer. Using a short term sensory ethnography approach, we elaborate on the idea of multisensory emplaced learning and propose an organic metaphor – mycorrhiza – to both methodology and learning. Mycorrhiza refers to a symbiotic relationship between fungi and roots of plants in its environment where fungi are the visible effects of the mycorrhiza. The metaphor provides a way to start to unpack sensory, visual and embodied aspects of learning in the complexities of the digital age. By elaborating on the mycorrhizaic concepts fungus, soil, growth, mycelia and symbiosis we show three interrelated ways of moving through this game: (i) a social and cultural route, (ii) a competitive route, and (iii) an experiential route. With help of the metaphor we discern the symbiotic relations between what appeared in our empirical material as visual and other human and non-human aspects of emplacement.TV-spel som hälsofostra