Exploring a pedagogy for meaning-making in physical education
Abstract
This paper responds to calls for an exploration into pedagogies of meaning within physical education. Developing meaningful educational experiences in physical education for lifelong movement involves supporting students to explore their personal experiences in movement and to use these to derive a greater understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. Following a brief overview of the role of meaning-making in physical education, a case study is offered as a practical example for how reflection can be utilised to explore movement as meaningful. The case study presents a series of steps that provide detail about a meaning-making process undertaken during a physical education class. Data suggest that setting aside time for reflection and the generation of rich movement narratives aligned to a ‘first rush of movement’, can shed light on what students find meaningful ‘in’ movement in ways that link physical education to experiences across varying social and environmental contexts. Through giving priority to bodily understandings of movement as felt, sensory experience, participants ( n = 44) were able to express meaning across a wide range of movement contexts. I contend that the exploration of student meaning in physical education is engaging, informative, and serves to extend possibilities for what curriculum is seen as legitimate in physical education by/for whom. The paper sheds light on the use of embodied meaning-making stories as a potential springboard for…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Through the priority given to bodily understandings of movement as a felt, sensory experience, participants were able to express meaning across a wide range of movement contexts.
“Through the priority given to bodily understandings of movement as a felt, sensory experience, participants were able to express meaning across a wide range of movement contexts (O'Connor, 2018, p. 14).”
From Pedagogies of embodiment in physical education – a literature review (2022) · cites this paper as O'Connor, 2018
The teacher can use embodied meaning-making stories as a potential springboard for further exploration and activity in physical education, by letting such stories influence the choice of activities in physical education classes.
“The teacher can use these embodied meaning-making stories as a potential springboard for further exploration and activity in physical education, by letting such stories influence the choice of activities in physical education classes (O'Connor, 2018, p. 11).”
From Pedagogies of embodiment in physical education – a literature review (2022) · cites this paper as O'Connor, 2018
Setting aside time for reflection and generation of rich movement narratives related to a 'first rush of movement' sheds light on what students find meaningful in movement in ways that link PE across varying social and cultural contexts.
“aside time for reflection and generation of rich movement narr to a 'first rush of movement', light on what students find mean movement in ways that link PE o across varying social and contexts.”
From Pedagogies of embodiment in physical education – a literature review (2022) · cites this paper as O'Connor, 2018
Through giving attention to bodily understandings of movement as felt, sensory experience students were able to express meaning across a wide range of movement contexts.
“Through givi to bodily understandings of as felt, sensory experience were able to express mea across a wide range of movement con”
From Pedagogies of embodiment in physical education – a literature review (2022) · cites this paper as O'Connor, 2018
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 46 · Cited by 72
- Authors
- O’Connor, J.
- Affiliations
- Monash University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- O’Connor, Justen
- ORCID
- O’Connor, Justen
- Venue
- European Physical Education Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2018-10-01
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1093-1109
- ISSN
- 1356-336X (ISSN-L)
- 1741-2749
- OpenAlex
- W2894763059
- Cited by
- 72
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 13.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- European Physical Education Review (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian Multicultural Foundation (DEECDKCA11)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation › Physical Education and Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › General Arts and Humanities › Corporeality, Perception, and Education
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports
- Keywords
- meaning-making, physical education pedagogy, reflection, embodied meaning, bodily experience, student meanings, curriculum legitimacy
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
