Embodied learning and school-based physical culture: Implications for professionalism and practice in physical education

We write as critical theorists who consider that in terms of scoping out robust conceptual elaborations which are suitable for contemporary schooling, that physical education has ground to make up connecting theory with practice and practice with theory. We advocate that aspects of existentialism and phenomenology can provide a theoretically sound basis on which to argue that embodied learning should be the foundational cornerstone of physical education programmes. To avoid embodied learning becoming overly learner centric and insular we advance Merleau-Pontian informed ideas on how learning could flourish when an individual and embodied focus merges with a school-wide physical culture agenda which is underpinned by social and moral theorising. In developing our focus on merging embodied learning and physical culture we draw upon MacIntyrean views on the goods which are internal to practice and extend thinking on how these goods could merge with the diverse aims and intentions informing the culture and ethos in schools. In pursuing these ambitions we outline the constructive activist-based benefits of teachers working within subsidiarity-based school communities where pedagogical decisions are made at a level consistent with realising whole schools aims. This is in spite of our acknowledgement that lack of career long professional learning adds to the difficulty of achieving these aims. In conclusion we argue that if physical education is to become a pivotal component of realising a diverse range of whole school aims there is a need for greater professional engagement with pedagogical approaches that attempt to derive greater meaning from learners movement experiences and which help learners to understand better both their own identity and the ethos of the school context and environment they share with others.