Can physical education be meaningful: the role of embodied subjectivity in enhancing self and social learning?

ABSTRACT

This paper critically considers the pragmatic and phenomenological-informed conceptual possibilities for increasing meaningfulness in physical education via a greater emphasis on embodied subjectivity. The paper begins by considering why greater conceptual clarity is needed in this area and then focuses on why the centrality of lived-body experience in relation to educational planning can benefit from merging the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty with the reflective awareness component of Dewey’s pragmatism. Merleau-Ponty’s exploration of how the ‘body-subject’ provides a holistic way of conceiving relations between the body and the world. Likewise, Dewey’s writings on habit are reviewed as for Dewey habits are not mere repetitious events but socially shaped predispositions which enable feelings and judgements to be shown in response to settings. The paper then reviews curriculum and pedagogical related arguments which focus on the challenges of developing experience and language concurrently and in so doing reviews some concerning critical matters professionals require to address. The paper concludes by advancing measured claims that if applied concerns could be overtaken there is sufficient theory to practice coherence to argue that a progressive programme which focused on the self and the social could become a plausible basis for arguing that physical education is meaningful.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodiment
• embodied subjectivity
• physical education
• learning

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributor

Dr. Malcolm Thorburn is an Honorary Fellow at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. His main research interests are on of professional change issues for teachers, especially in terms of conceptualising educational values, curriculum planning and enhancing pedagogical practices. He has published widely on aims and values, policy and professionalism and planning and practice issues in education from a range of comparative contexts. His publications cover a range of educational journals including as first author, recent articles in: Journal of Curriculum Studies; Cambridge Journal of Education; European Physical Education Review; Curriculum Journal; Oxford Review of Education; Educational Review, International Journal of Educational Research, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, Sport, Education and Society and the British Educational Research Journal. He is Editor of Wellbeing and Contemporary Schooling, Routledge: London. 2017 and Transformative Learning and Teaching in Physical Education, Routledge: London. 2017.

Notes

1 MacIntyre's (1981–2007) holistic vision was that it is from inside practices that students and teachers can recognise and appreciate how the goods of practice are informed by personal narrative, our social and moral life and through developing good habits. The term ‘communities of practice’ does not feature in MacIntyre’s (1981–2007) work however such notions are inherent in MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. As such, through practice students should become increasingly adept at cultivating stable values that display practical wisdom. This would be apparent, for example, by student focusing on achieving excellences of character. On this basis, the goods internal to practice have transferable gains, as engaging in practice can lead students towards an achievement of common and individual goods. MacIntyre’s views on practice have enjoyed something of a pre-eminence among philosophers of education based on the identification of key features of practice and there ‘invitation to a certain kind of self-involving and self-transformative co-operative engagement … (combined with) … deep-seated intuitions about the nature and value of teaching, properly conceived, particularly in opposition to technicist and instrumentalist conceptions of the activity’ (McLaughlin, 2003, p. 347). See also Stolz and Thorburn (2017).

2 Thorburn (2020) in the broad area of Health and Physical Education provides activity specific examples of how enhanced engagement with embodied experiences can help overtake concerns over restrictive pedagogical ‘what works’ approaches unduly influencing school teaching. Thorburn (2020) argues for the need for restatements of pedagogical risk taking and for teachers to find spaces and opportunities for committing to more engaging and enlivening teaching approaches.

3 Scotland is one country which would benefit from more nuanced and illuminating curriculum arrangements (Thorburn & Horrell, 2011). For while the overall capacity building aspirations of the curriculum are laudable the explanation of the experiences and outcomes students require too experience and achieve lacks pedagogical insight and credible explanation and justification. Indeed, the approach adopted is merely to restate the exact same statements for both experiences and outcomes, see also Education Scotland (2009).