Students’ experience of meaningful physical education

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to explore meaningful experiences in Norwegian physical education and specifically how students experience a pedagogical approach that aims to create meaningful physical education experiences. The guiding research question for this study is: 'How do primary school students experience and respond to a pedagogical approach that aims to create meaningful physical education experiences?

Project Description

Background 

Although meaningful physical education is progressively evolving into a well-developed pedagogical approach¹, and numerous studies have examined teachers'² and teacher educators'³ comprehension of, experience with, and development of meaningful physical education teaching, there remains a dearth of studies investigating students' experiences and learning related to this approach.  

See references

¹ Fletcher et al., 2021
² e.g., Vasily et al., 2021
³ e.g., Ní Chróinín, Fletcher, & O’Sullivan, 2018

Methods 

Participants and setting:

This study involves 10 students from two fifth-grade primary schools in Norway. Throughout the 1.5-year research period, their physical education teacher employs the ‘Meaningful physical education’ approach as the central organizing principle for program planning and teaching.  

Data generation:  

• Photos: Students will be prompted to capture images of what they perceive as meaningful in their physical education classes. This task will be undertaken six times during the course of the project, in conjunction with the individual interviews. 
• Individual Interviews: Semi-structured interviews will be conducted six times throughout the project. During these interviews, students will be provided with their photos, which will serve as a starting point for the discussion. 
• Observations: Around the time of the interviews, the physical education classes that the participating students are involved in will be observed. 
• Artifacts: Text-based materials such as assignments and reflective logs will be collected throughout the study. 

Results

The results of this research will be disseminated in high ranked international physical education journals. Additionally, the project results will be shared at both national and international conferences throughout the project duration.