Exploring capability to move – somatic grasping of house-hopping

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study is to explore what it means to be able to move in different ways. What does it mean, from the perspective of the learners, to know how to carry out a specific movement? What is there to know and how could this insight contribute to the planning of developing learners' capability to move in different ways? As an example of a ‘new’ way of moving to be learnt, a movement called ‘house-hop’ (i.e. a 360-degree rotation initiated on the ground and completed in the air) was introduced as an object of learning in a physical education (PE) class in a secondary high school in Sweden. The paper explores learners' different ways of moving as expressing different ways of knowing how to ‘house-hop’ comprising also certain aspects of the movement being discerned simultaneously by the learners. In this way, an attempt will be made to explicate what there is to know when knowing a movement.

Background: Evans initiated a discussion about what ‘ability’ means and how it is recognized and valued within the context of PE which has been further discussed in a growing body of critical research. He also raised the question of which ‘abilities’ the PE subject is supposed to develop while at the same time stating that ‘talk of physically educating the body’ in terms of ‘practical knowledge,' ‘physical literacy’ or ‘kinesthetic intelligence’ has ‘almost disappeared from the discourse of PE'. Rather, physical education in terms of the theme of this paper, capability to move, is reduced to implicit and taken-for-granted ‘standards of excellence,' only reluctantly discussed by PE teachers. There is a need for conceiving capability to move as an educational aim so that it can be explicitly discussed and dealt with in physical education.

Theoretical framework and method: The study takes as its starting point an epistemological perspective on capability to move corresponding with Ryle's ‘knowing how,' challenging the distinction between mental and physical skills in regarding the knowing involved in capability to move as comprising interwoven mental and physical processes. Additionally, phenomenography and Variation Theory are used as analytical framework integrated in a Learning Study. Learning Study is a kind of design experiment inspired by the Japanese Lesson Study, where the main aim is to explore an object of learning.

Findings and discussion: The findings show different ways of knowing house-hop as well as several aspects to discern in order to know the movement in a powerful way. The knowing involved in house-hopping can be seen as somatic grasping comprising mental and physical skills as an integrated whole. The paper discusses how this approach to investigating learners' different ways of knowing a new way of moving to be learnt can contribute to the planning of teaching and learning capability to move.

Keywords:

• physical education
• knowing
• movement
• phenomenography
• Learning Study

Notes

1. Tanney (2009, Rethinking Ryle, preface in Ryle, 2009, Concept of Mind) argues that the ‘substance dualism', emerging from Descartes’ official doctrine, may have been repudiated as ‘property dualism' and is still present among many peoples’ conception of the mental in relation to the physical.

2. These processes concern our perception, for example the role of visual perception regarding the attention to, and preparation for, moving (Magill 2011, 120). Other processes involved when replicating and performing movements are certain associations ‘integrated’ in specific movement or movement activities like common sports (Kirk 2010, 119) as well as the discourse and social practices surrounding different sport activities which can influence students' perception of their own abilities (Gard 2006; Redelius et al. 2009, 14; Wellard 2006, 313).