What were you thinking? A methodological approach for exploring decision-making and learning in physical education

ABSTRACT

The broad purpose of this paper is to consider the relationship between decision-making and learning. Specifically, our aim is to propose a methodology that provides a theoretical framing along with procedures for investigating this relationship in Physical Education (PE). By utilizing selected parts of John Dewey’s educational theories, the paper presents a theoretical exposition of decision-making as an individual process containing both ‘practical’ and ‘cognitive’ aspects. By combining this theoretical conceptualization with a description of concrete research methods, the paper proposes a methodological approach enabling researchers to get empirically closer to the phenomenon of individual decision-making within PE learning. We argue that by doing so, researchers in the field of PE can study certain aspects of learning not explicitly emphasized within existing methodological approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• decision-making
• learning
• methodology
• Dewey

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Eirik Aarskog http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7511-215X

Dean Barker http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4162-9844

Notes

1 One example could be the apparent contradiction between Dewey's description of experiential learning in the chapter 'Thinking and learning' in Democracy and Education (1916), where every experience does not necessarily lead to learning, and Dewey's writing about the experiential continuum in Experience and Education (1938, p. 33), where all experience is treated as transformative.

2 For more insight into habits and their affirmation, alteration and/or generation see e.g. growth as plasticity and habits as expressions of growth (Dewey, 1916/1980, pp. 49–54), habits as social functions and habits and will (Dewey, 1922/1983, pp. 15–32) or the principle of continuity (Dewey, 1938/1997, pp. 35–39).

3 While Amade-Escot (2005) and Quennerstedt et al. (2014) refer to their method as didactic moments interviews, these are conducted as stimulated recall interviews.