Enactive cognition and physical education – a natural coupling

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue for the adoption of enactive cognition (which includes emotional and social components) as a basis for understanding the nature of learning in, through and about movement in physical education. Enactivists argue that the process of learning is not one of developing an internal intellectualist understanding of the world or simply learning to adapt to and exploit affordances that exist in a detached external world, but rather a process of meaningfully enacting a world as consciously engaged individuals. For enactivists the world for all individuals is a self-centred world, it is not pre-existing, as the world does not exist as a single entity. In the enactive process, we create our world and ourselves simultaneously. Although our self-centred world is experienced through our biological embodiment within a physical surrounding, it is also embued with emotional and social couplings that impact differently on different individuals. One has to feel and experience one’s emotional and social world through the enactive process. Our PE classes are physically enactive learning contexts that inherently involve embodied learning experiences. For this reason, this article aims to highlight the synergies, or natural coupling, between enactive theorising and school physical education.

KEYWORDS:

• Enactivism
• structural coupling
• embodied cognition
• physical education
• in, through and about movement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).