Master’s Thesis, 30 ECTS
The Programme for Master of Science in Psychology and The Programme for Master of Science in Psychology Oriented Towards Sports, 300 ECTS
Spring 2019
Supervisor: Steven Nordin
DEVELOPING PHYSICAL
LITERACY IN SCHOOL
CHILDREN: FROM THE
PERSPECTIVE OF
TEACHERS IN PHYSICAL
EDUCATION AND HEALTH
Abstract
Physical literacy (PL) is defined as the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life. The concept has become more prominent during recent years and has also inspired the latest curriculum for physical education and health (PEH) in Sweden. There has not yet been many empirical studies on the concept. The aim of this study was to explore elementary school PEH teachers’ knowledge, understanding and application of the psychological domains of PL. Five PEH teachers working with school children in grades 1-3 were interviewed and the data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Results showed that the teachers were used to teaching knowledge and understanding, and they had strategies to foster confidence but did not have the same systematic approach or understanding of motivation. In addition, the teachers emphasised emotions and social relations as important dimensions in PEH. The implications of this study is that there is a foundation for letting PL influence PEH in Sweden to a greater extent but there are also challenges to this aspiration. More empirical research on implementation of PL is needed.
Keywords: physical literacy, physical education, physical education and health, motivation, confidence, thematic analysis
Abstrakt
Rörelserikedom eller ”physical literacy” (PL) definieras som att med motivation, självförtroende, kunskap, förståelse och fysisk kompetens värdesätta och utveckla ett livslångt intresse för fysisk aktivitet. Konceptet har fått stort genomslag under senare år och har också inspirerat den senaste läroplanen för idrott och hälsa i Sverige. Empiriska studier av konceptet har inte ännu gjorts i någon större utsträckning. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka kunskap, förståelse och tillämpning av de psykologiska domänerna i PL hos idrottslärare i lågstadiet. Fem lärare som undervisar idrott och hälsa i årskurs 1-3 intervjuades och data analyserades genom tematisk analys. Resultatet visade på att lärarna var vana vid att lära ut kunskap och förståelse, de hade strategier för att främja självförtroende men de hade inte samma systematiska angreppssätt eller förståelse för motivation. Utöver detta så betonade lärarna känslornas och de sociala relationernas vikt inom idrott och hälsa. Studien implicerar att det finns underlag för att låta PL influera idrott och hälsa i Sverige i större utsträckning, men det finns också utmaningar till denna strävan. Det behövs mer empirisk forskning på implementering av PL.
Developing physical literacy in school children: from the perspective of teachers in physical education and health
People from all ages and from all parts of the world are becoming less and less engaged in physical activity (PA). According to a Swedish study, only 44 % of boys and 22 % of girls aged 11-17 years meet the daily recommendations of 60 minutes of PA. The younger age groups are more active than the older. The group with lowest amount of PA perform most of their activity in the school subject physical education and health (PEH) (Centrum för idrottsforskning, 2016). Not getting enough PA and having high levels of sedentary behaviour leads to increased risk for adverse health effects. According to a systematic review, sedentary behaviour can lead to serious health risks such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer. The review suggests an association between sedentary behaviour and premature mortality (Thorp et al., 2011).
The issue of working towards getting children and adults to become more physically active has been thought about from many perspectives. For being physically active throughout life, physical literacy (PL) has been argued to be of key importance. It will, among other things, help an individual make choices about being physically active and have the motivation and confidence to move in different environments (Sport for Life Society, 2016).
Physical literacy is defined by the International Physical Literacy Association (2017) as “the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life”. The term was popularized by Margaret Whitehead (2007, 2010). PL has philosophical roots in existentialism, phenomenology and monism. Existentialism argues that individuals are created through interaction with others, phenomenology proposes that individuals create the world around them by their own unique perception, and monism is the concept of mind and body as an inseparable unit (Whitehead, 2007). PL can be seen as a goal for PEH (Durden-Myers, Green & Whitehead, 2018).
Historically, the physical competence domain of PL has been studied more than the other domains, perhaps because it is more readily measurable. Physical competency on its own is not enough to foster physical literacy in children, the psychological domains motivation, confidence, knowledge and understanding are equally important (Cale & Harris, 2018; Chen, 2015).
2010). SDT differentiates between three psychological needs which are simultaneously the sources to develop motivation and also the goals of that motivation: autonomy, relatedness and competence. Autonomy has been argued by Sun and Chen (2010) to be the motor of intrinsic motivation, but it is also recognised that it can be challenging to incorporate in the pedagogical world. By providing the students with options to choose from and the opportunity to solve problems by themselves, the teacher can create an autonomy-supportive environment, which has been shown to have a positive impact on competence and autonomous motivation (Bagøien, Halvari & Nesheim 2010). A good quality of relations and interactions with peers and teachers satisfies the need for relatedness, and realistic expectations, consistency and relevant feedback can facilitate development of competence (Sun & Chen, 2010). Gillet, Vallerand and Lafrenière (2012) found that intrinsic and self-determined extrinsic motivation decreases with age, but that teachers’ autonomy support can mediate this decrease.
When measuring and evaluating confidence, the model of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977) is widely used. Self-efficacy concerns the individual’s expectation that they will be able to perform a certain activity. When assessing this, the individual will draw from four sources of efficacy expectation. These are (a) mastery experiences, which refers to one’s own experiences of successful activities; (b) vicarious experiences, which are observations of others who successfully completes a task; (c) social persuasions, which are being encouraged by others through for example feedback; and finally (d) physiological and emotional states as a source of assessing one’s own feelings and body and drawing conclusions about the possibility to manage the task at hand (Bandura, 1977; Joët, Usher & Bressoux, 2011). Psychological interventions designed to increase PA has successfully used the self-efficacy model according to a meta-analysis by Ashford, Edmunds and French (2010). In another study, children aged 8-14 years with high self-efficacy chose to participate in PEH activities to a higher degree than those with low self-efficacy (Chase, 2001).
According to Whitehead (2010), in order to develop PL a person needs to know about and understand basic principles of physical movement and also be able to evaluate and articulate his/her own and others performance. In addition, the individual will need knowledge and understanding about fitness and health. This will enable the individual to take responsibility for continuous involvement in PA throughout their life (Whitehead, 2010). Cale and Harris (2018) argue that knowledge and understanding in PEH is favourably taught during and through PA. However, to ensure that this learning is not marginalised, Cale and Harris (2018) advocate teaching knowledge and understanding about PA and health during physical exercises as well as in the classroom.
Even though preschools in Sweden have PA and play in their curriculum, it is not until grade one, when children are around seven years old, that PEH becomes more formalised (Skolverket, 2019a). Since the development of PL can be said to start from the very beginning of a child’s life (Whitehead, 2010), the first years in compulsory school has the potential to be very impactful on the child’s path to PL.
While Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia have, to different extent, embraced PL in research and policy (Shearer et al., 2018), in Sweden, published research about PL is to date very limited. Overall, not very many have studied the psychological domains of PL; knowledge and understanding, motivation and confidence. In line with the international literature, the Swedish studies have focused on the physical domains of PL (Larsson & Nyberg, 2017; Tidén 2016). Since PL has gained interest and inspired the curriculum for PEH, investigating the experiences of people that are in key positions to promote PL is motivated.
The aim of this study was to explore elementary school PEH teachers’ knowledge, understanding and application of the psychological domains of physical literacy. This aim was reached through exploring the teachers’ experiences with developing these domains in children.
Method
Selection
The first years in compulsory school can be very impactful on children’s development of PL. There is no PEH curriculum from Skolverket before elementary school (Skolverket, 2019a), so to be able to explore the systematic teaching of PEH to children of a young age, we selected Swedish PEH teachers working with children in grades 1-3 as participants for this thesis. We used opportunity sampling by sending emails to principals in schools in one medium-sized municipality and a few smaller adjacent municipalities, posted our information about the study in a Facebook group targeted to PEH teachers, and used personal contacts to reach participants. We also used snowball sampling by asking our participants for other PEH teachers who might be available for interviews. Five participants were recruited, and are described in Table 1. They taught PEH between 2 and 20 hours per week.
Table 1
Description of participants
Participant Gender Age Years working as
teacher A Male 33 4 B Female 51 26 C Female 40 15 D Female 54 30 E Female 44 22 Procedure
The interview guide consisted of background questions, the questions used to address our research aim, and some questions with which to finish up the interview. The background questions were asked in order to get information about, for instance, how long the informant have been working as a teacher and how many hours of PEH per week they teach. The research questions were informed by theory about PL, self-determination and self-efficacy. They were mostly open-ended and developed to encourage the informants to elaborate on their thoughts and experiences. Examples of questions are “How can you tell if a child is motivated to participate in an activity?”, “How do you talk about what the children experience during class?”, and “What do you think about giving children opportunities to make choices?” Follow-up questions to clarify or explore a particular area in more depth were used when needed throughout the interview. If the participants also taught children outside the age range of grade 1-3, the participants were asked to answer the questions with the elementary school children in mind. The interviews were conducted during March and April of 2019, recorded and transcribed verbatim.
We set out to find around six informants, in the end we found five teachers willing to be interviewed. By the end of the fifth interview, we felt that some degree of data saturation had been reached since we started to notice reoccurring answers. This may be due to the fact that all the interviews conducted were around 40-50 minutes each so the data obtained can be described as rich (Fusch & Ness, 2015). We conclude that five interviews were enough for this study.
Analysis
We applied an abductive approach for the analysis since we had a basis in theory but were also interested in learning new aspects of PL and PEH. To interpret the data we used thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke (2006). Thematic analysis is a flexible qualitative method which can potentially provide a rich and complex description of data gathered in interviews. It includes coding the data and arranging the codes in themes and subthemes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Table 2 gives an example of this process.
Table 2
Example of theme, subtheme, codes and excerpts
Theme Subtheme Codes Excerpts
PEH is an arena for emotions The teacher’s emotions are contagious The teacher contributes to the child’s emotions A positive attitude towards the subject
is engaging
There are children who, if you put too
high pressure on them they start to cry, and then you as a teacher must think what it was you did, and then reevaluate
that. Unless I have a positive attitude towards the subject,
it’s not possible to get the children on
According to Magnusson and Marecek (2015) not all of the data needs to be sorted into sub-themes and themes, but rather gather everything that is of importance to the research questions at hand. With this in mind we excluded data at different stages of the analysis that we judged to not be relevant for this study.
Research ethics
The ethical principles for humanities and social sciences (Swedish Research Council, 2002) stipulates four requirements, (a) the requirement of information; (b) the requirement of consent; (c) the requirement of confidentiality; (d) the utilization requirement. In this study, the participants were informed of the aim of the study, that they had the right to end their participation at any time and that they would be anonymous. Four of the participants signed a consent form and the fifth one was asked for consent verbally. They were also offered access to the final thesis. The recorded interviews were deleted after the analysis was finished.
Trustworthiness
We used investigator triangulation to increase this thesis’ trustworthiness (Cohen, Manion & Morrisson, 2002). The two authors coded the interviews separately and later compared the different codings of the same interview. A consensus decision was then made of the final choice of each code. This was done for four of the five interviews.
Since the interviews were conducted in Swedish, the quotes in the results were translated to English. To ensure that this translation did not distort the result, the supervisor of this thesis was asked to verify that the quotes were translated in an unbiased way. In addition, the teachers used two different words when asked about confidence (självförtroende and
självkänsla), even though the interview guide only referred to självförtroende. We believe the
teachers used them interchangeably enough to translate both of these words to confidence.
Preconceptions
We have our own experiences and thoughts about PL and PEH. The concept of PL seems to us a valuable contribution to PEH and also to promoting public health. One of the authors has a background as a physiotherapist and we are both able-bodied persons, and that may have affected our views of the subject at hand and the analysis. None of the authors have experience with teaching.
Results
None of the teachers who were interviewed had previous knowledge about PL but they had no issues with talking about the psychological dimensions of PL and most of them assessed their own work to be in accordance with PL. Upon hearing about the definition of PL, one teacher said:
I am trying to work towards that direction, but I think that you do it more when you try to think about it than when you don’t.
Interviewer: It sounds to me like you find this to be a helpful concept.
The analysis yielded 27 sub themes, arranged in eight themes (Table 3). Each theme will be presented separately in the following result section.
Table 3
List of themes and subthemes
Themes Subthemes
Managing expectations Expectations on PEH to be like the adult way of doing sports, such as PEH used to be Competition has a negative impact on school children
The teacher needs to counteract the expectation for competition
PEH is an arena for emotions The school children’s emotions are clearly observable
The teacher’s emotions are contagious PEH should be fun
The teacher helps school children manage negative emotions; and do not wish to suppress positive emotions
Daring, trying and succeeding Succeeding on a task gives confidence and vice versa
Trying is more important than succeeding The teacher uses different strategies to help develop confidence
The innate urge to be active is threatened by external conditions
Elementary school children want to move around
The desire to be active diminishes with age If the child does not want to be active, it is due to something outside of PEH
Fundamental knowledge and skills are needed
The less educated teacher may not teach basic knowledge and skills
The school children are not deemed competent to directly determine PEH content
The school children do not get many opportunities for choice
The school children can make choices of lesser significance
The teacher tries to find out the school children’s interests and use them Acting as a buffer against insecurities PEH contains elements that can lead to
feeling insecure
The teacher is present and intervenes to promote a climate of security and cooperation
Teacher-school child relationship provides a basis for feeling secure
A secure base is necessary for daring to try Time constraints limit attention given to the
individual child
The teachers use individual and specific feedback
Sometimes difficult to find enough time for individual feedback
Some teachers make use of time outside of PEH classes for feedback
Managing expectations
The teachers described that the children have expectations on what PEH should be like, and that those expectations usually are that there must be competition. The teachers saw that these expectations came from how the adult world does sports. In particular, the teacher saw competition as something that would have a negative impact on the children if they did not actively counteract it at all times. There was also a feeling that PEH used to be different before, when the teachers themselves went to school, and that this old idea of PEH is still influencing expectations. The following quotes are examples of how the teachers thought about PEH and what it should be like:
...I think they [other PEH teachers] do way too much adult sports instead of playing and fundamental motor skills and obstacle courses.
more, the better the school children feel, even the students who really think competing is fun I have the experience of them coming to PEH and saying like, God it felt so nice not having to compete.
The second quote also exemplifies how they saw competition as having negative impact, such as cheating, emotions out of control and feeling bad about yourself, not only on the less able children but also those who are very competitive. The teachers reported managing expectations by limiting competition e.g. through redirecting the children’s focus to the tasks at hand and giving points to pro-social behaviour instead of scoring goals.
PEH is an arena for emotions
Emotions during PEH was something the teachers could clearly see and interpret, both positive and negative emotions. They often described how emotions could be seen via bodily expressions such as waving hands and yelling.
… especially with the younger ones, they show very clearly how they feel about things. Some get angry, some run away and some turn in on themselves, become quiet, stand still, scared.
Not only did the teachers note the children’s emotions, they also realised that their own emotions were visible to the children and affected how they felt or acted.
So I mostly experience happiness in my classes when I teach PEH and I think it is because when I come into the gymnasium I think I radiate happiness.
Many of the teachers stated that one of their main goals with PEH was that the children should experience the classes as being fun. Some teachers described how they let positive feelings like happiness go unaltered, but negative emotions was something that needed to be managed, and also that the children needed help managing those emotions.
Yes, if it is happy emotions it is alright and like strong emotions as when you feel that you are moved or so, but if you get angry you need to try and help them manage it.
The innate urge to be active is threatened by external conditions
The teachers found school children of this age range to be very easily motivated. They saw that the children wanted to move around and be active without much encouragement from the teachers.
It is not really a big problem with seven year olds. I mean, let them loose inside a gymnasium and then you could just let them be there for fifteen minutes before you even have to do anything if you wanted to, but I don’t, but for a little while they get to run around. They love to move around. They do, nearly to 100 percent. /.../ so they are tremendously easy to motivate.
that makes it not work out. In these situations the teachers reported trying to find time to talk
to the child and figure out what was going on.
The teachers felt that the school children were in a beneficial environment during the first years of elementary school, but that it would change later on due to more pressure on grades, bodily changes, and too much focus on competition; and that would lead to the children becoming less and less physically active.
It is very nice to, to run into pupils who say this because then I feel that /.../ at least they had it fine together with me, but I think in part what happens when they reach secondary school, absolutely they reach puberty /.../ when I have talked to the students they tell me they have so little time in between PEH and the next class that they don’t have time to shower.
Daring, trying and succeeding
Regarding confidence, the teachers brought up the notion of succeeding. To succeed with a task was seen to increase confidence, and also, confidence was an advantage when trying to succeed with something.
If you have confidence then maybe you can manage things- mainly new things, you can manage them better and feel like it’s enough for me to do the best I can. Um, and then you dare to try and develop what gives you better confidence.
At the same time as succeeding was seen as important for gaining confidence, the main focus in PEH was expressed by many of the teachers as being daring and trying.
And usually it’s like, it’s not that you have to accomplish something, rather the goal is to try during the class.
To make the school children dare to try new things and to then succeed, the teachers had a few different strategies. One was to lure the children into trying.
Of course there are parts of PEH where children feel like they don’t want to do something. But they do it anyway. Um, you have to coax them a bit, like that.
You trick them into it a bit, and sometimes make them try when they don’t think they are trying and then sometimes you say to them, well, now you made it! I have? What? Oh, I have!
The teachers also adjusted the tasks according to the children’s ability to increase the chance of success.
During class you have different levels of difficulty. So if we’re doing high jumps, maybe you don’t have to jump one meter, but you start with just jumping up onto the thick mattress. And then you can build from there to show that everyone can make it, you can make it at different heights.
Figure 1. A model of how confidence can be created and enhanced according to the teachers’
descriptions.
Acting as a buffer against insecurities
The teachers talked about PEH as containing elements that lead to insecurity within the children. In PEH it is visible to your classmates what mistakes you make. They also mention the locker room as a space that needs to be monitored by the teachers so the children can feel secure. They try to act against the insecure elements by being present in the games and in the locker rooms, but also by intervening when the children say negative things to each other. They report talking with the school children about the importance of treating each other with respect and being nice. In addition the teachers will also decide what groups and pairs work together so that no-one is left out.
It is so easy that one feels exposed and noticed by others in the locker room and shower. And I also think it is very important that you in order to gain self confidence in PEH, where it is actually laid out so that my mistakes can be seen, so it’s very important with the group climate and that you as a teacher then kind of strike down on all the negative comments, immediately, sort of tell them that this is not okay. We are here to encourage one another and not push the other one down.
The teacher-school child relationship was seen as very important, and a starting place for building trust and security in the children. When the children feel secure, it will lead to them daring to try more things.
And it has to do with creating relations, and the more they trust you, the more they will come and tell you that today I am not feeling well or today I am not at my best. So it makes it easier and easier to read them.
go- well this will maybe sound a bit harsh, but let go of the anxiety over the things they find difficult.
This element of security can be added to the model of building confidence mentioned earlier (Figure 1.).
Fundamental knowledge and skills are needed
The teachers had a strategy in their teaching to start a task at an easy level and staying there until the children to some extent mastered the task. One reason they gave for doing this was that school children of this age should learn basic movement skills.
This is the most important thing really, to work with fundamental motor skills, because if you bring those skills to grade four, five and six, you won’t have any problem with the rest of it.
One teacher made the observation that length of education played a part in whether the teacher prioritized basic motor skills or not.
Sometimes, people complete a short education to become a PEH teacher, and unfortunately they get to teach grade one to three, where I believe the teachers with the most education in motor skills should be working.
During primary school, basic theoretical knowledge about movement and health is also taught and can be done in conjunction with physical activity, for example by playing a game where the children are running to catch cards with nutritional information.
Time constraints limit attention given to the individual child
When talking about giving feedback to the school children, the teachers mostly described talking to the children individually and trying to be as specific as possible.
I learned a lot from working with children with special needs, to encourage them when they do something right. To give the right feedback and not just go ‘oh good, you’re doing good’ or something like that.
Regrettably, you don’t have enough time for all the children, unfortunately. You try, but most of the time you give them praise round-the-clock.
When the teachers did not offer individual feedback, this was due to time constraints, as described in the second quote. To rectify this, some of the teachers made use of time outside of the class to seek out and talk to the children. One of the teachers had gotten permission to make the time before and after class into part of the teaching job.
The school children are not deemed competent enough to directly determine PEH content
Some of the teachers expressed that school children in this age range not yet have the capacity to make informed choices on larger decisions regarding PEH content.
Sometimes they want to use the trampoline- so that they can get up on the gymnastics mat, and stuff like that, and that I can make happen. So the little things they can decide, but mainly not, because they can’t.
They don’t get to choose that much during the class, well, sometimes some lesser things.
The teachers said that the school children could be offered decisions of lesser significance, for example voting on the content of one class per semester or selecting an appropriate level of difficulty in an obstacle course.
I structure their possibilities of choices. I think that has been the best way to do it.
While limiting and structuring the possibilities of making choices, the teachers at the same time tried to find the children’s interests and make use of them during PEH.
...you find something of their interest, and you kind of lure them into the movement you want them to work on. Um, ‘no do we have to dance’, then you come up with, the boys then, so there was no [route] faster than the Fortnite movements, then you had them with you to 100 percent, it doesn’t matter that it was dance.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to explore elementary school PEH teachers’ knowledge, understanding and application of the psychological domains of physical literacy. Data from the interviews yielded eight themes: managing expectations; PEH is an arena for emotions; daring, trying and succeeding; the innate urge to be active is threatened by external conditions; fundamental knowledge and skills is needed; the school children are not deemed competent enough to directly determine PEH content; acting as a buffer against insecurities; and time constraints limit attention given to the individual child.
When talking about confidence and motivation, there was a difference between the two concepts in how the teachers understood them and what importance they ascribed to them. All of them could see how confidence had a big role in PEH, and they also talked about different ways they could help the children develop confidence. When it came to motivation, on the other hand, there seemed to be a notion among the teachers that it just naturally existed within children of this age.
The teachers in this study recognised this by stressing the importance of creating a feeling of security with the children.
When talking about helping the children develop motivation, one of the main things they mentioned was trying to find the children’s interests and try to incorporate those in the teaching. This can be a tool to get children motivated to participate in a task quickly, but the challenge then lies in finding ways to make a transition to internalised motivation towards the task, since the situational interest tends to disappear fast (Chen, 2015). According to Sun and Chen (2010), autonomy is perhaps the most important part of developing intrinsic motivation. They also state that schools are many times controlled through rules and curriculums, which can instead create extrinsic motivation. In accordance with that article, the teachers in this study recognised that there are many things the children ‘must’ do in PEH as well as finding it difficult, or even not feasible to provide choices for the children.
If a school child did not want to participate, the teachers found reasons for this lack of motivation as coming from outside PEH class, like issues with family or friends. We understand the teachers’ conceptualisation of motivation to be that children want to move and if not, it is because different factors in the children’s context have spoiled this natural urge. In these cases they would try to talk to the child and find out what was wrong, which could help strengthening the relationship between teacher and school child. This way of showing concern and interest in the child can enhance the feeling of relatedness according to SDT, and possibly contribute to the development of intrinsically motivated behaviours (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Many of the teachers expressed worry over a decrease in physical activity that they many times could see among their own school children once they moved on to secondary school. The joy and urge to be physically active that they saw in their school children would diminish over time, which is in line with the findings of Gillet, Vallerand and Lafrenière (2012). The children studied in that article are between ages 9-15 years, but we can assume that children a few years younger would also have comparatively high intrinsic motivation. Both Gillet, Vallerand and Lafrenière (2012) and Bagøien, Halvari and Nesheim (2010) suggest that autonomy-supporting behaviours among teachers can have a positive impact on this decline. Since most teachers express concern in declining physical activity, there is reason to consider starting to include more autonomy-support already in the first school years.
While motivation and confidence is only briefly mentioned in the curriculum, knowledge and physical competence are more clearly defined, and is also graded as the children grow older. The teachers’ statements gave us the impression that the process of teaching knowledge and physical competence was more or less obvious to them and they used similar strategies.
The teachers told us they tried to keep at a task until the children mastered it and to start with the basic skills. Putting this into a theoretical understanding, they worked to strengthen the SDT-related concept of competence and also performance mastery as a source for self-efficacy.
School children of this age rarely have classroom-based teaching about fitness and health in PEH. Rather, the teachers tried to incorporate knowledge teaching into PA during class. A few of them combined PA and knowledge teaching even more explicitly, as recommended by Cale and Harris (2018).
Emotions can affect both confidence and motivation. According to the self-efficacy theory, the individual uses emotional states as a source for drawing conclusions about being able to succeed in the task at hand (Bandura, 1977; Joët, Usher & Bressoux, 2011). Motivation is according to the SDT theory dependent on the experience of relatedness, i.e. feeling connected to the social environment which is a positive emotion (Sun & Chen, 2010). The teachers noted that the school children’s emotions affected their degree of participation and how well they succeeded.
Even though not explicitly included in the widely used definition of PL, Whitehead argues that emotions are a part of PL. They are expressed through the moving of the body but also, bodily movement is what emotions are made of. This is also in line with the notion of monism, mind and body as an inseparable unit (Whitehead, 2010). Similarly, the body feedback theory suggests that feedback from movement and position of the body to the central nervous system is key in experiencing and regulating emotions (Koch, 2014). In PEH, the body is in focus. Physical expressions of emotions is tolerated and sometimes even encouraged in a way that the rest of the school environment does not allow. One teacher told us they had stopped trying to manage the physical expressions of joy because this seemed to suppress the children’s positive emotions. As adults, most of us do not manifest our positive emotions as visibly as small children. This can dampen the joy experienced during physical activity (Koch, 2014). We speculate that increasingly suppressing emotional expressions can reinforce the decrease in PA as the children get older. This model of not showing emotions during PA is yet another example on how the expectations that PEH should be like adult sports can be detrimental when trying to make PEH a positive experience for the school children.
Most of the teachers in this study said that they wished for their classes to be fun, and it is encouraging that many emphasized play over training particular sports. It could be tempting to reduce the teaching only to learning certain skills over having a more holistic approach to the teaching. According to Robinson, Randall and Barrett (2018), Almond states that creating playful experiences for the children is important in fostering PL.
PL can be seen as something the individual possesses, but teaching PEH classes seems to be very much about teaching and managing groups, within limited time and physical space. The teachers need to make the group function together, teach them about socialising and managing their emotions, and sometimes they need to handle situations that are not explicitly stated in the curriculum, e.g. like making sure hygiene norms are followed. All of this understandably, takes a lot of time.
One of the teachers said that it would be helpful to get a manual on PL and how to promote it in PEH. Considering the time constraints and the amount of skills that need to be taught during these classes we are prone to agree with them. Whitehead (2010) argues that it is crucial to understand the philosophies that PL are founded on. Considering that even policymakers who have attempted to let PL inspire their work have been found to have varying understanding of both the concept itself and underlying philosophies (Robinson, Randall & Barrett, 2018; Shearer et al., 2018), it is understandable that fully grasping the meaning of this concept and letting it influence the teaching is going to be challenging.
interview guide fairly closely, and judging from the transcripts the questions have remained the same over the interviews. Another limitation for this study is that the theme for this study was quite broad, with many different areas, which did not allow the participants to go into very much detail on each question. One thing that needs to be mentioned is that we have used PL as the main framework of this study, and used a few other theories to explain some of the domains included in the definition. This does not necessarily mean that we can effortlessly go the other way round and state that the different aspects we looked at taken together will give us information about PL. Studying Swedish PEH teachers’ knowledge, understanding and application of the psychological domains of PL has to our knowledge never been done before. This study attempted to provide an opportunity for teachers’ viewpoints on this important subject to be heard.
In conclusion, the teachers we interviewed were used to and skilled in teaching knowledge and understanding in addition to physical competence. They also seemed to have strategies to foster confidence. They did not seem to have the same systematic approach or understanding of motivation and its role in helping children be physically active. When looking at the curriculum the same pattern is evident there, more was said about physical skills and knowledge than about motivation and confidence, even though they were mentioned. In addition, the teachers in the interviews put emphasis on emotions and social relations as important dimensions in PEH.
The implications of this thesis is that if one would like to let PL influence PEH in Sweden to at greater extent, we believe there is a good foundation for doing so since the teachers are already working with these issues to some degree. Also the teachers’ own experiences and knowledge could preferably be used in developing PEH policy influenced by PL. There are known challenges to be considered when attempting this: teaching PEH is about much more than just teaching the subject so time and attention is limited. In addition, PL is a complex construct and it can be demanding to fully understand it.
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Appendix
Interview guide Intervjuguide
Vi heter som sagt Monika Lövsund och Emelie Svedjer och vi går sista terminen på
psykologprogrammet i Umeå. Vi gör vårt examensarbete om rörelserikedom eller på engelska heter det physical literacy.
Vad vet du om rörelserikedom?
“Att vara rörelserik innebär att med motivation, självförtroende, kunskap, förståelse och fysisk kompetens värdesätta och utveckla ett livslångt intresse för fysisk aktivitet”
Fysisk kompetens är en del av rörelserikedom men vi är mest intresserade av kunskap och förståelse, motivation och självförtroende eftersom vi är psykologstudenter. Det finns mindre forskning på de psykologiska delarna, det är också därför vi vill titta på det.
Men det finns som sagt inget krav på att du ska veta vad det är sedan innan eller så. Och när vi ställer frågor så finns inga rätt och fel svar utan vi är intresserade av dina upplevelser och tankar!
Vi kommer prata ca en timme, vi kommer spela in. Har du någon tid att passa efteråt så jag vet när vi senast måste avsluta?
Frågor?
Bakgrundsinfo. Jag ska börja med att ställa några korta bakgrundsfrågor till dig. Ålder på informant
Hur länge jobbat
Hur mycket idrott och hälsa har du på en arbetsvecka? Planering och lektioner
Vilka årskurser undervisar du i?
Vilken lärarutbildning har du gått?
Utbildning/gått på föreläsning/annan förförståelse om rörelserikedom?
Uppvärmningsfråga (endast om det känns som att det behövs) Vad tycker om att jobba med barn i den här åldern?
Vad tycker du om att undervisa i just idrott och hälsa?
Performance mastery/competence/(confidence)
Vad är målsättningen med dina idrottslektioner? Vad ska eleverna få ut av dem?
Hur märker du när barn har tilltro till sin förmåga att klara av en aktivitet?
Om ett barn visar att hon eller han inte känner att den klarar något, har du ett exempel på hur du jobbat med det?
Vad tänker du kring betydelsen av elevernas självförtroende på idrotten?
Kunskap och förståelse
Ämnet idrott och hälsa innehåller ju att man ska lära ut kunskap eller teori om till exempel regler i lekar och hur man gör saker på ett säkert sätt.
Skulle du kunna berätta om hur du arbetar med att lära ut teori om fysisk aktivitet?
Det finns ju också teori om hälsa och hur man lever hälsosamt. Berätta hur du tycker att det är att undervisa om det?
(Möjlig följdfråga: hur/var sker den undervisningen?)
Hur kan du se/märka att eleverna har tagit till sig kunskapen?
Motivation
Hur jobbar du med att att eleverna ska känna att de vill röra på sig, snarare än att de måste?
Vi har ju pratat om hur det märks att en elev har självförtroende, men hur märks det att en elev är motiverad på lektionerna eller inte? (Barn kan ju ha tilltro till sin förmåga men har inte motivation att göra det)
När ett barn inte är motiverad, vad kan det då bero på, tror du? Exempel? Kunde du göra något åt det då för att hjälpa till?
Känslor/upplevelser hos elever/affektiva delen i PL
Är det mycket känslor hos eleverna under lektionerna? Hur märker du det? Hur hanterar du det?
Hur pratar ni om vad barnen upplever under lektionerna?
Hur tänker du när det gäller att ge feedback/återkoppling till eleverna?
Hur märker du att ett barn tycker att en aktivitet är kul, rolig?
Hur gör du om ett barn inte tycker att något ni gör på lektionerna är kul?
(Hur pratar barnen med varandra om aktiviteter som ni gör, som du märker?)
Relatedness/modellinlärning/sociala delen i PL
I läroplanen finns det med att eleverna ska samarbeta och vara goda kompisar med varandra. Hur jobbar du med det?
Hur tänker du att lärare-elevrelationen påverkar hur eleverna upplever idrottslektionerna.
Autonomi
Hur tänker du kring att ge eleverna möjlighet att göra egna val på lektionerna?
(Vad tänker du kring att ha med tävlingsmoment i undervisningen?)
Om PL
Nu tänkte vi prata lite om rörelserikedom (eller physical literacy) specifikt.
OM DE KAN BEGREPPET SEDAN INNAN: Hur förstår du physical literacy/rörelserikedom?
Det finns ju olika definitioner men en är “Att vara rörelserik innebär att med motivation, självförtroende, kunskap, förståelse och fysisk kompetens värdesätta och utveckla ett livslångt intresse för fysisk aktivitet”
Vad tänker när du hör den beskrivningen?
OM DE KAN BEGREPPET SEDAN INNAN: Hur jobbar du med att eleverna ska utveckla rörelserikedom?
OM DE INTE KAN BEGREPPET SEDAN INNAN: Tänker du att du jobbar på det sättet nu? Hur?
Frågor att ställa om tid finns
Upplever du att det finns utrymme under lektionstiderna för att stärka eleverna i dessa områden som vi har pratat om? (motivation, självförtroende, kunskap och förståelse) Varför/varför inte?
Hur prioriterar du mellan allt man ska hinna med inom idrott och hälsa?
Hur kan man se till att elever som är på olika nivå av förmåga eller utveckling kan få en lagom utmaning?
Finns det utrymme för att låta eleverna hålla på med en aktivitet så pass länge att de hinner lära sig den/blir bättre på den? Brukar du tänka på att ge eleverna utrymme för att utveckla och bli bättre på nya aktiviteter de lärt sig?
Avslutande
Nu har jag ställt de frågor jag hade tänkt. Är det något du skulle vilja tillägga eller något du undrar över? Hur kändes det att bli intervjuad? Har du någon synpunkt på våra frågor? Är det något du skulle vilja fråga mig angående studien? Skulle du vilja ha den färdiga uppsatsen? Tack för din medverkan!
Sonderingsfrågor
Kan du säga något mer om det?
Kan du ge en mer detaljerad beskrivning av...? Vad tänker du om det?
Kan du förklara vad du menar med...? Har jag förstått dig rätt...?
