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I feel free and like me girls affective physical education experience re imagined in virtual reality (7)
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Abstract
I feel free and like me': girls' affective physical education experience re-imagined in virtual reality ANONYMOUS AUTHOR(S) * Fig. 1. From left to right: In order to re-imagine their PE experience, girls worked with us in co-design workshops, customised their own avatars and built their own PE spaces using virtual reality. As part of the creative process, girls designed their own PE kits, which were then worn by their VR avatars. Engaging adolescent girls in physical education (PE) in secondary schools has been a long-standing challenge worldwide, despite numerous research and policy efforts. We investigated this challenge using a new approach based on affect theory and co-design with virtual reality (VR): 42 girls took part in co-design workshops where they re-imagined how their PE lessons could be through virtual fashion design and the SIMS 4 video game. We found that VR co-design gave agency to girls and transformed the way they felt about PE. Allowing girls to design their own virtual PE clothing made them feel more comfortable to do PE, and allowing them to co-design their own virtual PE environment made them feel more able to participate in school PE lessons. Finally, VR co-design also aided their articulation of wants, needs and relationships in ways that would likely not have been achieved using a more conventional methodology.
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Video games have long been considered an effective educational tool. Environmental education studies have found that games positively affect the feeling of nature connectedness, producing pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. With growing urbanization, video games also provide chances to interact with nature. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizon (ACNH) became a household name, with millions of copies sold worldwide. The article used the Bayesian multilevel model to analyze 640 survey responses of ACNH game players from various online communities. The correlations between the perception of limited resources and virtual planting and exploiting behaviors with the varying effect among ethnicities were explored. The findings suggested positive correlations between the perception and in-game actions among all ethnicities, regardless of whether the actions are planting or exploiting. While further evidence is needed, the findings suggest the restraints of game mechanics. To foster a pro-environmental culture, stakeholders can consider video games a novel technological aid to environmental education.
Mainstream school spaces provide significant sensory challenges to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this paper, we provide in-depth qualitative insight of the ‘sensory tactics’ developed by children to navigate neurotypical spaces following transition to secondary school. Informed by work in sensory geography, and de Certeau's ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ concepts, we demonstrate that through muting, filtering and transforming space, children find ways to navigate the sensorially demanding environments of mainstream secondary school, e.g. finding quiet, orderly spaces - albeit in ways that do not entirely negate the sensory challenges the school environment presents. The paper concludes with several recommendations regarding ways that mainstream school spaces can be designed and/or existing spaces altered so as to be more sensitive to the sensory diversity of children with ASD.
From the perspective of Game Localization (Bernal-Merino 2015, O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013), this paper presents a descriptive corpus-assisted study on the language of personality in The Sims 4 (Electronic Arts 2014), as the psychological dimension of this real-life simulation game represents its distinctive feature (Franklin 2014, Electronic Arts 2014a). The elaborate nature of The Sims 4 personality trait system has received academic attention, since its mechanics seem to be based on trait theory (Sloan 2015, 209), “a major approach to the study [and assessment] of human personality” in psychology (Villanueva 2010, vii). Accordingly, this paper analyzes how psychological simulation is worded in game texts and examines the features of The Sims 4 cross-linguistic personality lexicon. The original English trait system is thus compared with the Italian translation in order to explore the linguistic challenges and issues psychological customization poses to localization professionals.
For almost four decades, research within the field of physical education (PE) pedagogy has studied girls’ disengagement. Findings from these studies have highlighted several barriers to engagement such as the kit. The exploration of how PE kits affect young girls has not been widely researched within the social sciences and therefore, a gap in the literature has been identified. This pilot study, which is part of a wider PhD project, seeks to understand how the uniformed body affects girls felt experiences of PE. The kits worn for PE can be viewed as a means to discipline and control the body. Therefore, by giving power and agency back to girls to re-design the materiality of their PE kit, an improvement in engagement within PE may occur. A new materialist co-creative methodology was developed that applied fashion design principles and 3D video gaming to enable girls to re-imagine their school PE kit. Using print design on custom-made content for the SIMS 4 video game, four girls ages 10 -14 re-designed their school kit and wore them virtually in the game. The findings showed that using a co-creative approach, incorporating fashion design and video game avatars, to help facilitate the design of a kit relevant to the girls does have the potential to engage girls within school PE lessons. It is suggested that for more robust and conclusive findings, a larger study should be undertaken in UK secondary schools.
ABSTRACT Customised avatars are a powerful tool to increase identification , engagement and intrinsic motivation in digital games. We investigated the effects of customisation in a self-competitive VR exergame by modelling players and their previous performance in the game with cus-tomised avatars. In a first study we found that, similar to non-exertion games, customisation significantly increased identification and intrinsic motivation, as well as physical performance in the exergame. In a second study we identified a more complex relationship with the customisation style: idealised avatars increased wishful identification but decreased exergame performance compared to realistic avatars. In a third study, we found that 'enhancing' realistic avatars with idealised characteristics increased wishful identification, but did not have any adverse effects. We discuss the findings based on feed-forward and self-determination theory, proposing notions of intrinsic identification (fostering a sense of self) and extrinsic identification (drawing away from the self) to explain the results.
Since the global economic recession, public services in the UK have badly affected by austerity measures. However, whilst public services, including health, defence and the police faced significant cuts to their budgets, Primary Physical Education in England has actually received additional ring-fenced funding through the Physical Education and Sport Premium since 2013. This funding is provided directly to schools, and though the Department for Education provides guidance on how the Premium might be spent, schools effectively have autonomy to spend it in ways that they believe will best meet the needs of their learners and wider stakeholders. Utilising a mixed method approach involving analysing published material on school websites and semi-structured interviews with primary school and local authority staff, the aim of this article is to critically analyse how primary schools across a borough in the North West of England are spending the Premium. Our analysis is underpinned by principles of social justice, which we interpret as a marker for concerns to do with fairness, equality, exclusion, discrimination, power differentials and privilege. We argue that, in large part due to the autonomy of implementation, the Physical Education and Sport Premium has failed to realise its inherent social justice agenda, in large part because investment in PE and school sport is unequal and too heavily dependent on the value placed upon it by individual schools. It is our contention therefore, that equal opportunities will remain unobtainable if the central tenets of the reproduction of privilege are allowed to remain uncontested.
Over the past years, Virtual Archaeology has introduced more experiential elements in virtual reconstructions, therefore going beyond the traditional visualization of 3D architectural models. In the case of dissemination, these experiences equate to a trip in time, in which users witness what the past was like and learn about it. However, due to a lack of explicit theoretical frameworks and/or systematic evaluation focusing on such experiential elements, it is uncertain whether the intended goals are achieved and why. Based on a novel theoretical framework arising from the concept of Cultural Presence, this article will investigate if and how current virtual environments achieve the feeling of traveling to the past. To that end, six different virtual reconstructions of the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey) were built and evaluated in a between-subjects experiment. The results support the role of content meaningfulness, responsive characters, enhanced interaction, and multisensory realism in the achievement of successful Virtual Reality--mediated experiences.
Statement:
This systematic review, conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, is aimed to review current research in virtual reality (VR) for healthcare training, specifically pertaining to nontechnical skills. PsycInfo and Medline databases were queried for relevant articles published through December 2017. Of the 1377 publications identified, 80 were assessed for eligibility and 26 were finally included in the qualitative synthesis. Overall, the use of virtual training for nontechnical skills is recent in healthcare education and has increased since 2010. Screen-based VR simulators or virtual worlds are the most frequently used systems. The nontechnical skills addressed in VR simulation include mainly teamwork, communication, and situation awareness. Most studies evaluate the usability and acceptability of VR simulation, and few studies have measured the effects of VR simulation on nontechnical skills development.
This study investigated whether motivational climate was associated with prosocial and antisocial behavior in youth athletes directly and indirectly via social support (i.e., emotional and esteem support), perspective taking, and moral disengagement. A total of 275 youth team sport players (156 boys and 119 girls) aged 11 to 16 years completed questionnaires assessing the study variables. Structural equation modeling revealed that mastery climate was positively associated with prosocial teammate behavior both directly and indirectly via social support. Mastery climate was also indirectly associated with prosocial opponent behavior via social support and perspective taking. Mastery climate was negatively associated with antisocial behavior toward opponents and teammates indirectly via social support, perspective taking, and moral disengagement. Performance climate was positively associated with antisocial behavior toward teammates directly and indirectly via moral disengagement: It was also indirectly associated with antisocial behavior toward opponents via moral disengagement. Our findings extend understanding about the variables that might explain relationships between motivational climate and moral conduct in youth athletes. Implications for sport practitioners are considered, especially in relation to approaches that could help foster moral character in young people through sport.
How far do adults truly understand youth? How do their conceptions inform interventions into young lives or implicate young people’s experiences?
Centrally exploring adults’ ideas about youth, Youth, Technology, Governance, Experience seeks to tackle these questions. Specifically, this timely volume uses the four central concepts of youth, technology, governance and experience to examine a range of relationships that exist between adults and youth including those within homes and educational institutions, government bureaucracies, online, via media representations and new technologies; and elsewhere in everyday life.
Topics such as media classification, surveillance, sexting, tertiary education, and health provision are approached using a range of disciplines and methods, including survey and ethnographic interviews, action research, policy, archival and textual analysis, and critical theory. The collection’s key concepts – youth, technology, governance, and experience – provide connecting themes across the essays, while also considered on their own terms and with regard to their implications for how we interact with young people. Readers can expect analyses of young people differentiated by gender, class, race, and geography across a range of sites, with attention also given to dominant ideas about and expectations of youth and their varied effects.
https://www.routledge.com/Youth-Technology-Governance-Experience-Adults-Understanding-Young-People/Grealy-Driscoll-Hickey-Moody/p/book/9780815362319
This paper presents an anthropological design fiction envisioning a future hybrid city where 3D virtual city models and physical reality are intertwined seamlessly. The crafted fiction addresses three broad themes. Firstly, it explores how not only digital and physical but also past and present as well as near and distant places might become entangled in such a hybrid city. Secondly, we speculate what it means if the digital traces of a person – perhaps even his/her digitalized body – continue “living” in a hybrid city after s/he has passed away. Thirdly, we raise questions regarding power: who owns the digital city, and who has the right to change it? Lastly, we ponder some sociocultural questions and design ideas opened up by the fiction.
Background
A gender-based disparity in physical activity (PA) among youth, whereby girls are less active than boys is a persistent finding in the literature. A greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying this difference has potential to guide PA intervention strategies.
Methods
Data were collected at age 8 and 12 years (276 boys, 279 girls) from 29 schools as part of the LOOK study. Multilevel linear models were fitted separately for boys and girls to examine effects of individual, family and environmental level correlates on pedometer measured PA. Cardio-respiratory fitness (multi-stage run), percent fat (DEXA), eye-hand coordination (throw and catch test) and perceived competence in physical education (questionnaire) were used as individual level correlates. At the family level, parent’s support and education (questionnaire) were used. School attended and extracurricular sport participation were included as environmental level correlates.
Results
Girls were 19% less active than boys (9420 vs 11360 steps/day, p<0.001, 95%CI [1844, 2626]). Lower PA among girls was associated with weaker influences at the school and family levels and through lower participation in extracurricular sport. School attended explained some of the variation in boys PA (8.4%) but not girls. Girls compared to boys had less favourable individual attributes associated with PA at age 8 years, including 18% lower cardio-respiratory fitness (3.5 vs 4.2, p<0.001, CI [0.5,0.9]), 44% lower eye-hand coordination (11.0 vs 17.3, p<0.001, CI [5.1,9.0]), higher percent body fat (28% vs 23%, p<0.001, CI [3.5,5.7]) and 9% lower perceived competence in physical education (7.7 vs 8.4, p<0.001, CI [0.2,0.9]). Participation in extracurricular sport at either age 8 or 12 years was protective against declines in PA over time among boys but not girls.
Conclusion
Girls PA was less favourably influenced by socio-ecological factors at the individual, family, school and environmental levels. These factors are potentially modifiable suggesting the gap in PA between boys and girls can be reduced. Strategies aiming to increase PA should be multicomponent and take into consideration that pathways to increasing PA are likely to differ among boys and girls.
This article builds upon previous research into the Nintendo Wii game “We Cheer”
through qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of young girls and their playing
experiences. I argue here that this multi-layered approach is important as it allows
for exploration of the nuances between representation and everyday lives, specifically
when analyzing the complexity and contradictions related to the girls’ hetero-sexy
embodiment and the process of becoming female in a (digital) culture still largely
dominated by the sociocultural constitution of slenderness. Throughout the analysis,
I aim to demonstrate the way in which the girls’ engagement with “We Cheer” was
mediated by their own embodied sensemaking and work on the self. As such, I focus
on the partial stories that the girls tell about their own embodied femininities to
advance studies of media reception in ways that are arguably unique to interactive
exer-games such as “We Cheer.”
In this article we take off from critiques of psychological and school bullying typologies as creating problematic binary categories of bully and victim and neglecting sociocultural aspects of gender and sexuality. We review bullying research informed by Judith Butler's theories of discursive performativity, which help us to understand how subjectification works through performative repetitions of heterosexual gender norms. We then build on these insights drawing on the feminist new materialist approach of Karen Barad's posthuman performativity, which we argue enlarges our scope of inquiry in profound ways. Barad's theories suggest we move from psychological models of the inter-personal, and from Butlerian notions of discursive subjectification, to ideas of discursive-material intra-action to consider the more-thanhuman relationalities of bullying. Throughout the article, we demonstrate the approach using examples from qualitative research with teens in the UK and Australia, exploring nonhuman agentic matter such as space, objects and time as shaping the constitution of gender and sexual bullying events. Specifically we examine the discursive-material agential intraactions of skirts and hair through which 'girl' and 'boy' and 'slut' and 'gay' materialise in school spacetimematterings. In our conclusion we briefly suggest how the new materialism helps to shift the frame of attention and responses informing gendered intraactions in schools.
This paper explores social inquiry in terms of the 'research-assemblages' that produce knowledge from events. We use the precepts of new materialism (and specifically DeleuzoGuattarian assemblage ontology) to develop understanding of what happens when social events are researched. From this perspective, research is not at root an enterprise undertaken by human actors, but a machine-like assemblage of things, people, ideas, social collectivities and institutions. During social inquiry, the affect economies of an event-assemblage and a research-assemblage hybridise, generating a third assemblage with its own affective flow. This model of the research-assemblage reveals a micropolitics of social research that suggests a means to interrogate and effectively reverse-engineer different social research methodologies and methods, to analyse what they do, how they work and their micropolitical effects. It also suggests a means to forward-engineer research methods and designs to manipulate the kinds of knowledge produced when events are researched.
Background: There is a significant amount of research which shows a proportion of girls are not engaging with physical education (PE) in school, resulting in a number of relatively inactive girls within the PE class. These girls are often identified in the literature as ‘low active’, ‘hard to reach’ or ‘disengaged’. Reasons for this ‘disengagement’ are often due to a combination of psychological, social and environmental barriers.
The use of virtual reality has its roots in visual communication science but disparate mechanisms and applications set it apart from the many tools of visualization. This paper reviews the use of virtual reality (VR) environments for research and teaching in the context of three disciplines: architecture, landscape architecture and environmental planning. As opposed to other uses of virtual environments, for example, in the health sciences or engineering, simulations using virtual reality theatres or labs in the three fields we explore are used to display inaccessible realities. VR environments are typically used in these fields for planned and designed realities, not yet existent or with nonexistent components. Each field has different reasons for spatial or temporal inaccessibility to reality, prompting the need and eventually the capability to achieve various levels of accuracy in the virtual setting. We describe current VR research opportunities and challenges in each discipline and emphasize what they can gain from sharing virtual reality systems for research and education.
Exercise-based videogames, or exergames, provide a promising and novel way to improve exercise attitudes and behavior among overweight children. These digital interventions often allow for customizations of player characters and weave in narratives and goals. Theoretically, the presence of visual identity cues (e.g., avatars) and social category cues (e.g., stereotypes) within the virtual gaming environment are likely to motivate a player's exercise attitudes and behavior in various ways. This study examined the effects of both visual cues (via the Proteus effect) and social cues (via stereotype threat) on overweight children's exercise attitudes and game performance in a virtual running game.
A 2 (avatar body size: Normal versus overweight)×2 (stereotype threat: Present versus absent) factorial design experiment was conducted with 140 overweight children between 9 to 12 years of age. Dependent variables measured were participants' exercise attitudes, exercise motivation, exercise motivation with regard to the Nintendo(®) (Kyoto, Japan) Wii™, and their in-game performance.
Multivariate analysis of covariance tests showed that overweight children assigned to avatars of normal body size scored significantly better on all four variables compared with those assigned to avatars of large body size, whereas overweight children assigned to a stereotype threat absent condition scored significantly better on three of the four variables compared with those assigned to a stereotype threat present condition.
Using avatars with normal body size and not being subjected to stereotypical messages has the potential to increase the effectiveness of exergames among overweight children. Exergame developers should consider designing avatars that are slim and toned and set "weight neutral" goals and challenges. These may provide more motivation and yield greater attitudinal and behavioral changes among overweight children.
This article describes how two African American adolescent male cousins become co-constructors and negotiators of identity while playing The Sims 2, an online life simulation computer game. Utilising literacy as social practices and multimodal practices, this article produces a framework to establish how adolescents use digital tools to construct their identities, and how identity construction and interactions with these tools extend understandings of literacies, multimodality, and self. Data were collected using ethnographic and multimodal discourse methods and guided by questions: How did adolescents use an online computer game to construct their identities? How might these identity constructions and interactions with digital tools extend their understandings of literacies, multimodality, and self? Analyses demonstrated how the adolescents took on student-centered roles as co-constructors of knowledge and meaning that contribute to the ways they need to be researched and studied in this era. This work also challenges educators to acknowledge how students participate with digital tools in communal spaces that shape how their literacy and identities are constructed, and it adds to the limited representation and investigation of African American family meaning-making and identity via digital tools.
Research suggests that girls are disengaged in physical education due to the ‘traditional’ way that it is taught, i.e. teacher-centred approaches with a primary focus on motor performance. In contrast, Cooperative Learning, a student-centred pedagogy focusing on learning in multiple domains, has had success in engaging girls in physical education. Furthermore, when cooperative group work has been combined with technology, student engagement with learning is heightened. This article discusses the use of Cooperative Learning and video cameras to bring about a positive change to the learning environment for girls who were identified as being disengaged in physical education. Two classes of adolescent girls were taught an eight-lesson unit of Basketball using Cooperative Learning. Students worked in learning teams, participating in different roles, such as a coach or a camerawoman, to help each other learn and to film video clips of their learning. Data collection included a teacher's reflective journal, post-lesson teacher analysis tool, student interviews and the analysis of learning teams' movies. Inductive analysis and constant comparison was used for data analyses. Findings suggest that the role of the coach and the camerawoman was pivotal to girls' engagement. Some girls only ‘fully’ participated in lessons when learning was within the social and cognitive domains, since they could ‘hide behind the camera’ and were not required to participate physically. We controversially suggest that, in order to engage girls in physical education, we may have to temporarily remove the physical domain of learning (at least for some girls) in order to positively affect their longer term engagement in the subject.
Background: Studies on heteronormativity in PE either appear to have explored the experiences of and conditions for non-heterosexual students, or adopt a retrospective point of view. Further, the relation between heteronormativity and movement and how movement activities embody social norms and values related to gender and sexuality has not been explored in depth.Purpose: To explore the relation between movement and heteronormativity in PE as experienced by the students.Participants, setting and research design: The study is based on interviews with 24 students, aged 15 and 16 years and living in a big city area in Sweden. Each student was interviewed on three occasions, immediately following PE lessons visited by the researchers.Data collection: The interviews revolved around: (1) the students' social situation; (2) their sporting habits and interests; (3) their views about PE (aims, content, teaching methods, learning, assessment and grading); (4) their views of girls' and boys' conditions in PE; and (5) their views about body and movement.Data analysis: A discourse analysis was conducted, based on the interview as a whole, namely the interviewer's questions and comments and the interviewees' responses and possible counter-questions. Particular interest was directed towards linguistic regularities relating to norms and ideas about gender and sexuality.Findings: Heteronormativity conditions the way in which girls and boys (feel they can appropriately) engage in a certain movement activity and still be viewed as ‘normal’. In the PE classes we visited, being recognised as a ‘normal’ or straight girl presupposed a feminine appearance, a good coordinative and rhythmic ability, self-confidence in relation to partner dancing, and conversely, a lack of self-confidence and a reluctance to appear aggressive and competitive in connection with ball games. Boys who adopt that position might be apprehended as ‘effeminate’ or ‘poofs’ – unless they have some kind of status marker that can serve as a heterosexual alibi, like being popular and athletic. Being recognised as a ‘normal’ or straight boy presupposed a masculine appearance and confidence, i.e. aggressive and competitive behaviour, in team ball games. Girls who occupy that position might be perceived as ‘butch’ or ‘manly’ (perhaps as lesbians?) if they do not, correspondingly, have some kind of marker that can serve as a heterosexual alibi. This might include having a feminine appearance.Conclusions: Since heteronorms are embodied in and through movement, any attempt to challenge the heteronormative culture of PE teaching would have to carefully consider which kinds of activities to include in the PE curriculum, and to make it possible for the students to move in new ways. Such a strategy would include a critically reflexive approach among PE teachers towards the conventional endeavour to make the teaching ‘work’ without too much emphasis on exploring how students experience different physical activities.
Introduction
Virtual reality (VR) can be extremely useful in simulating nature when physical presence is not possible. Additionally, it allows for environments to be customised (e.g., weather, or topography) and facilitates the design of controlled experimental settings. However, VR can involve the use of expensive equipment and complex software to create highly realistic immersive experiences. But is it necessary for experiences to rival the latest Hollywood blockbuster? This paper explores whether such investment can be valuable in research on nature experiences.
Studies
Two studies were conducted to examine how realism of environmental presentations impact affective responses and participant perceptions. Study One (n = 16) explored perceptions of the same lake presented to participants in the real world, in VR and as a video. Study Two (n = 120) compared participant's affective responses to one of four possible virtual environments differing in level of realism (high or low) and type (natural or built).
Results
Study One showed that experiences of VR presentations fell between real and video presentations. Study Two found that more realistic VR environments evoked more positive affective and serenity responses, as well as a greater sense of presence. In both studies, participants stressed the importance of naturalistic interaction, sensory immersion, and graphical realism in the experiences, which may help explain these effects.
Conclusion
The level of realism that can be attained with VR does impact affective responses and perceptions. Investment in VR for future research can be highly beneficial.
Purpose
The aim of the study was to explore aspects of learning in terms of gain in knowledge, confidence and empathy with immersive virtual reality (VR) from the patient perspective in undergraduate nursing students.
Design/methodology/approach
A pilot study integrating immersive VR experiences during clinical courses was facilitated based on the INACSL (2016) standards for simulation practices with a convenience sample of 165 nursing students in three levels of cohorts, using two different VR scenario simulations. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through pre- and post-surveys.
Findings
Student participants embodied patients with chronic disease using immersive VR. Findings showed substantial gains in most measures of knowledge, confidence and empathy, with slightly less difference seen in lower level nursing students particularly with empathy and understanding.
Research limitations/implications
Embodiment through immersive VR scenarios was shown to increase learner development. The positive findings from the pilot study justified continuance of integration of immersive VR in nursing education, recommending further use and research.
Originality/value
Simulated learning for nursing has known benefits on knowledge and understanding. Immersive VR is gaining recognition within nursing education as a method to enhance cognitive and affective knowledge. This paper hopes to add insights on the impact of immersive VR for student learning and encourage discussion about the future for innovative immersive teaching and learning approaches for experiential learning.
Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of Bourdieu and postfeminism, this article analyses extant tensions between young women’s gendered habitus and the health-related learning spaces of Physical Education (PE) and Instagram. We draw on data from a two-phase qualitative research project with thirty-seven young women (aged 15–17) from three secondary schools in Spain who self-defined as physically active and engaging with exercise content on Instagram. Data obtained through focus groups and semi-structured interviews reveal how these young women’s subjectivities are formed through negotiating the gender ‘rules of the game’ within these key pedagogical fields. Notably, most participants were critical of their learning in PE, which mainly remains a traditional masculine field. By contrast, they valued Instagram as an engaging space in which to learn about fitness to transform their bodies toward the feminine ideal. This involved a constant process of self-optimization, including the development of the ‘right’ mental dispositions, fitting strongly with their gendered habitus. Within this paper, we have developed the concept of ‘postfeminist habitus’ to explain the participants’ engagements with health-related content on Instagram, which through language of choice and empowerment, disciplined the young women to achieve the normative body as a marker of success. We argue that while there are notably different patterns of engagement with PE and Instagram, in both spaces there is evidence of symbolic violence that reproduces the gender order. We conclude by suggesting changes that might make PE a more meaningful and hybrid learning space for young women.
How and when should retailers use 360-virtual reality (VR) versus other media? What role does haptic sensory information play in VR and can consumers actually imagine touch? The aim of this research is to answer these questions by evaluating how presence induced by media (360-VR versus video) leads to heightened attitudes and purchase intentions and how this effect depends on consumer’s knowledge of the product category as well as haptic information. Specifically, 360-VR (versus low presence media) elicits more favorable evaluations (study 1). Yet, in-store, 360-VR results in less favorable responses (study 2). We show that when consumers have high product knowledge, 360-VR decreases consumer responses toward the brand. Alternatively, when consumers have low product knowledge 360-VR enhances consumer responses toward the brand (study 3). Introduction of haptic instructions attenuates the unilateral negative effect of product knowledge (study 4). Importantly, mental imagery underpins these relationships (studies 3 and 4).
A new philosophy of movement that explores the active relation between sensation and thought through the prisms of dance, cinema, art, and new media.
With Relationscapes, Erin Manning offers a new philosophy of movement challenging the idea that movement is simple displacement in space, knowable only in terms of the actual. Exploring the relation between sensation and thought through the prisms of dance, cinema, art, and new media, Manning argues for the intensity of movement. From this idea of intensity—the incipiency at the heart of movement—Manning develops the concept of preacceleration, which makes palpable how movement creates relational intervals out of which displacements take form.
Discussing her theory of incipient movement in terms of dance and relational movement, Manning describes choreographic practices that work to develop with a body in movement rather than simply stabilizing that body into patterns of displacement. She examines the movement-images of Leni Riefenstahl, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Norman McLaren (drawing on Bergson's idea of duration), and explores the dot-paintings of contemporary Australian Aboriginal artists. Turning to language, Manning proposes a theory of prearticulation claiming that language's affective force depends on a concept of thought in motion.
Relationscapes takes a “Whiteheadian perspective,” recognizing Whitehead's importance and his influence on process philosophers of the late twentieth century—Deleuze and Guattari in particular. It will be of special interest to scholars in new media, philosophy, dance studies, film theory, and art history.
New feminist materialism theories potentially offer a foundation for innovative ways to research health-related experiences from a more-than-human perspective. Thus far, however, few researchers have taken up this more-than-human and post-qualitative approach to investigate health topics. In this article, I outline some approaches I have developed. I begin with a brief overview of the central tenets of new feminist materialism scholarship and a discussion of some empirical studies where these perspectives have been employed to address health topics. I then list some key propositions, research questions, and things to think with from the feminist materialism literature that I have put to work as a basis for conducting empirical research and analyzing data. Then follows four examples drawn from my research on digital health, providing instances of how qualitative researchers can take up this approach and what insights can be generated from entering into this kind of “research assemblage.”
This study examined how mechanisms of moral disengagement (MD) were related to students' self-reported misbehaviors. Participants were 282 and 336 high school students enrolled in physical education classes. In Stage 1, results of regression analysis showed that advantageous comparison and non-responsibility positively predicted four misbehaviors (i.e., low engagement, failure to follow directions, poor self-management, and distracting behavior). In Stage 2, results of the structural equation modeling confirmed that advantageous comparison and non-responsibility were the significant predictors of student misbehavior in physical education. It is suggested that prevention and intervention programs should address students' advantageous comparison (e.g., compared to skipping class, it is not a big deal to be shirking in class) and non-responsibility (e.g., no one is taking the class seriously; I am just one of them) to reduce misbehaviors in the physical education context.
Children participation in the design of urban open spaces is a well-known phenomenon, but a gap still remains between theory and practice. In particular, school playgrounds often suffer from standardization of design that fails to reflect the different functions and the different services required to achieve full children development. Starting from these considerations, the paper aims (i) to develop a transferable method to retrofit school playgrounds, building alliances between universities, elementary schools, and the public administration, (ii) to present the main results of this method applied to an Italian school with 288 children (aged 5–10) in a six-month process and (iii) to interpret the previous results in the light of an analytic frame to outline some key finding useful to manage participatory processes to retrofit school playgrounds. The method provides useful considerations on the value offered by collaborative projects between universities and elementary schools. Generally, the case study shows the transferability of the method offering a significant support to playworkers to develop satisfactory, child-friendly design choices. Observing the Italian children's point of view, the paper shows that they identify the school playground with green spaces and traditional play setting, at the same time, they ask for multifunctional school playgrounds that allow for considering school's open spaces as extensions of the classroom.
This paper reports on the responses from adolescent girls to the use of an activist approach (Oliver, K. L., & Kirk, D. (2015). Girls, gender and physical education: An activist approach. London: Routledge) by their teachers over the course of one school year during their core physical education lessons. The study took place in four secondary schools in different areas of Glasgow city. Approximately 110 girls aged 13–14 participated in this study as part of their regular physical education classes. The themes arising from the data were: (1) through variety and choice the girls were opened up to a wider range of possibilities in physical education; (2) relationships between peers (pupil-pupil) and teachers-pupils were central to the girls’ engagement. We conclude that through the use of an activist approach, and in contrast to their experience of traditional, multi-activity physical education, girls responded positively to variety and choice as they co-constructed their physical education programme with their teachers, and the development of better relationships with their teacher and among themselves created a supportive learning environment.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss the rhizome as being "absolutely different from roots and radicles" 6. The rhizome is explained via principles. 1 and 2: connection and heterogeneity.: "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be". Principle 3: "Principle of multiplicity" "There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines". Principle 4: "Principle of asignifying rupture" "There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome." Principles 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: Where traditional thought is 'tracing', a rhizome is a map. Tracing involves laying onto reality the pattern of structure, itself a construct. "The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious". They take the term plateau from Gregory Bateson, it refers to a sustained intensity. "We call a 'plateau' any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome".
"Write with slogans: Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant!"
Background and purpose: The research literature in physical education (PE) is placing a growing focus on the need for research that can illuminate not only the challenges PE faces but also how we can develop PE to meet the needs of all students. The activist approach aims to study future possibilities in PE, and the goal is for all young people to learn to value a physically active life. The purpose of this article is to study how the activist research approach to PE can influence students’ meaningful PE experiences.
The study: The project was conducted in co-ed PE among 15-year-old students (10th graders) in Norway in collaboration with teachers and students at their high school. The research group followed one class of 27 students during one semester of PE. The researchers planned, taught and evaluated the process according to the critical elements of activist research in PE. Data from diverse sources (observations, interviews, student logs, reports, etc.) were collected before, during and after the project.
Findings: The study demonstrates that students’ sense of meaningfulness can be developed by the activist approach. Female students in all groups found PE to be more meaningful during the project than previously. The students who disliked PE prior to the teaching period displayed the greatest improvement in terms of meaningfulness. The study shows how different aspects of the activist approach influence students’ sense of meaningfulness in PE. Creating a safer class environment had an impact on students’ feelings of social inclusion in PE. Broadening students’ perspectives about what is possible for them by introducing new activities had a great impact on students’ mastery, and co-creating the curriculum was important for their feelings of personal relevant learning.
Conclusions: It is our conclusion that involving students in the curriculum-making process is of great importance to their experiences of meaningfulness in PE. Our study shows that to listen to students and broaden students’ understanding of what PE can be has the potential to empower students, and to contribute to meaningful experiences in PE. In contrast to the majority of activist research, our study was conducted in co-ed PE. The need to co-construct the learning environment and question male dominance in PE is urgent in co-ed settings. We believe that co-ed PE can be an important arena for working with gender equality in schools. However, it should not be underestimated how important PE teachers’ roles are. If the teachers are passive, co-ed PE can seriously undermine girls’ experiences of meaningfulness in PE.
In sociological and cultural studies the relationship we have with our clothes has been mostly analyzed in terms of fashion and identity, with a focus on the ways in which we use clothing to represent ourselves to and in the world. The article argues that in all these analyses one important aspect is still missing: the feelings we experience about and in our clothes when we are dressed. It proposes a change of paradigm to find ways to incorporate in our analyses what is here called the “feeling of being dressed.” This change can be performed by transgressing the boundaries of semiotic, structural and sociological explanations and by abandoning the mind‒body dualism which shapes the description of our relationship with clothes as mainly intellectual and our choices of garments as the result of a dialogue within our minds. It then shows how affect studies open up opportunities for the investigation of the body‒clothes assemblage; in particular, the notion of body as a composition of forces and the approach to practices (in this case dressing practices) as ways of becoming are central for this endeavor.
This study examines attributes of virtual human behavior that may increase the plausibility of a simulated crowd and affect the user's experience in Virtual Reality. Purpose-developed experiments in both Immersive and semi-Immersive Virtual Reality systems queried the impact of collision and basic interaction between real-users and the virtual crowd and their effect on the apparent realism and ease of navigation within Virtual Reality (VR). Participants' behavior and subjective measurements indicated that facilitating collision avoidance between the user and the virtual crowd makes the virtual characters, the environment, and the whole Virtual Reality system appear more realistic and lifelike. Adding basic social interaction, such as verbal salutations, gaze, and other gestures by the virtual characters towards the user, further contributes to this effect, with the participants reporting a stronger sense of presence. On the other hand, enabling collision avoidance on its own produces a reduced feeling of comfort and ease of navigation in VR. Objective measurements showed another interesting finding that collision avoidance may reduce the user's performance regarding their primary goal (navigating in VR following someone) and that this performance is further reduced when both collision avoidance and social interaction are facilitated.
A virtual reality physics simulation (VRPS) is an educational tool using a virtual reality interface that brings together a 3D model of real apparatus and a virtual visualization of physical situations in an interactive manner. VRPS enhances students' understanding by providing a degree of reality unattainable in a traditional two-dimensional interface, creating a sensory-rich interactive learning environment. In this paper, we present a computer-based virtual reality simulation that helps students to learn physics concepts such as wave propagation, ray optics, relative velocity, electric machines, etc. at the level of high school or college physics.
How might we understand entanglements of the mind, brain, body and world? And how can we develop creative forms of experimentation to enact these entanglements? In this unique contribution, Blackman focuses upon the affective capacities of bodies, human and non-human as well as addressing the challenges of the affective turn within social sciences. Fresh and convincing, this book uncovers the paradoxes and tensions in work in affect studies by focusing on practices and experiences, including voice hearing, suggestion, hypnosis, telepathy, the placebo effect, rhythm and related phenomena. Questioning the traditional idea of mind over matter, as well as discussing the danger of setting up a false distinction between the two, this book makes for an invaluable addition within cultural theory and the recent turn to affect. In a powerful and engaging matter, Blackman discusses the immaterial body across the neurosciences, physiology, media and cultural studies, body-studies, artwork, performance, psychology and psychoanalysis. Interdisciplinary in its core, this book is a must for everyone seeking a dynamic and thought provoking analysis of culture and communication today.
In this powerfully argued and progressive study, Kimberly Oliver and David Kirk call for a radical reconstruction of the teaching of physical education for girls. Despite forty years of theorization and practical intervention, girls are still disengaging from physical education, dropping out of physical activity, and suffering negative consequences in terms of their health and well-being as a result. This book challenges the conventional narrative that girls are somehow to blame for this disengagement, and instead identifies important new ways of working with girls, developing a new pedagogical model for ‘girl-friendly’ physical education.
The book locates our understanding of the experiences of girls in physical education in the broader context of young people’s multifaceted engagements with popular physical culture. Adopting an activist perspective, it outlines a programme of action informed by principled pragmatism and based on four critical elements: student-centred pedagogy; critical study of embodiment; inquiry-based physical education centred-in-action, and listening and responding to girls over time. It explores the implications of this new thinking for teaching, research, PETE and policy, and outlines a future agenda for work in this area.
Offering a profound theoretical critique of contemporary research and practice, as well as a new programme of action, Girls, Gender and Physical Education is essential reading for all researchers, advanced students and practitioners with an interest in the issues of gender, equity and inclusion in physical education.
The article introduces the special issue on staging atmospheres by surveying the philosophical, political and anthropological literature on atmosphere, and explores the relationship between atmosphere, material culture, subjectivity and affect. Atmosphere seems to occupy one of the classic localities of tensions between matter and the immaterial, the practical and the ideal, and subject and object. In the colloquial language there can, moreover, often seem to be something authentic or genuine about atmosphere, juxtaposing it to staging, which is implied to be something simulated or artificial. Nevertheless, people’s experience of the environment is sought manipulated in a variety of contexts, often without offering a less ‘true’ experience of a situation than if it had not been manipulated by people. In fact, orchestrations of space are often central to sociality, politics and aesthetics. This introduction seeks to outline how a number of scholars have addressed the relationship between staged atmospheres and experience, and thus highlight both the philosophical, social and political aspects of atmospheres.
This essay seeks to give philosophical expression to the vitality, willfullness, and recalcitrance possessed by nonhuman entities and forces. It also considers the ethico-political import of an enhanced awareness of “thing-power.” Drawing from Lucretius, Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and others, it describes a materialism of lively matter, to be placed in conversation with the historical materialism of Marx and the body materialism of feminist and cultural studies. Thing-power materialism is a speculative onto-story, an admittedly presumptuous attempt to depict the nonhumanity that flows around and through humans. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of the ecological implications of thing-power.
Over the past several years, numerous reports have reported data documenting declining participation in physical activity among youth. We argue that the gender, race and social class differences in these data have not been an important consideration, and that understanding the implications of these differences is crucial for improving physical education curriculum. Because schooling should carry the responsibility of educating children to adopt and maintain a physically active lifestyle, the most prominent physical education curriculum in the United States, the sport-based physical education curriculum, requires the reconceptualization of current practice. As a basis for this reconceptualization, we begin by extending the analysis of gender as a unitary category to a dynamic relational analysis of gender, race and social class. Therefore, by using feminism/poststructuralism as a theoretical framework, we deconstruct historically dominant gender, race, and social class discourses around the body in sports and physical education to demonstrate the fluidity and contradictory nature of these categories. Finally, we conclude by highlighting the usefulness of feminism/poststructuralism for investigating racialized masculinities and femininities in future physical education research, and suggest pedagogical approaches that might further reconceptualize today's multi-activity sport-based physical education curricula and pedagogy.
In social constructivist educational theory, the classroom is seen as a community of learners. According to social constructivists, learning occurs through peer interactions, student ownership of the curriculum and educational experiences that are authentic for students. The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers used social constructivist strategies to encourage student construction of knowledge and meanings, and how students constructed knowledge and meanings in two middle school physical education classrooms. A qualitative naturalistic design was used to collect data over a five-month period with two experienced middle school physical education teachers. Data included 11 weeks of observational field notes and interviews with teachers and students. Data were analyzed using cross-case and inductive analysis. Findings indicated that the teachers' strategies created a learning environment in which students actively constructed knowledge and meanings by making connections to their peers and by connecting physical education to their lives, their communities, and the real world. Students shared information, assumed leadership and responsibility, and became decision-makers. By connecting to their peers, students felt supported in their learning. This study offers additional findings in support of social constructivist pedagogy in physical education that encourages individual growth and social awareness in communities of learners.
This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study which aimed to explore young women's perceptions of and attitudes towards involvement in physical activity and physical education (PE). Drawing on group and individual qualitative interviews with 21 15-year-old young women, it explores the nature, purpose and experiences of their physical activity involvement, both in and out of school. It examines how, in both settings, young women make conscious choices about their physical activity involvement. The data showed that although there were qualitative differences between the individual choices of different girls, many of these were made within a negotiation of gender relations. Contrary to much of the recent concern about girls' 'dropout' from physical activity and a perceived disinterest of young women in physical activity and sport, the young women in this study were involved in a range of physical activities outside of school and defined themselves as active. They also appeared to be positively influenced by contemporary discourses about the health benefits of exercise. This was in contrast to their perceptions of how they were defined within and through PE.
The last several decades have witnessed a large increase in the number of girls who participate in sports in the United States. Today an estimated 8 million third- through 12th-grade girls and 12 million boys participate in organized and team sports. While much progress has been made toward achieving gender equity in youth sports, too many girls are being left behind—especially in urban communities. This article reports on some key findings from Go Out and Play: Youth Sports in America (Sabo & Veliz, 2008), a comprehensive study based on two nationwide surveys of youth sport participation in the United States.