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The social ecology of movement, environment
and community (MEC)
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Rosemary Bennett
Monash University (Australia)
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Geraldine Burke
Monash University (Australia)
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Justen O'Connor
Monash University (Australia)
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Terri-Anne Philpott
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The social ecology of movement,
environment and community (MEC)
Phillip Payne (Convenor), Rosemary Bennett, Trent Brown, Geraldine
Burke, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie, Justen O’Connor, Terri-Anne Philpott,
Laura Ward, Brian Wattchow and Wynn Shooter.
AARE Conference
‘Changing Climates: Education for Sustainable Futures’
30 November – 4 December 2008
Table of Contents
Introduction ...4
Paper 1: The concept of movement and its social ecology...5
Paper 2: Environment, place and social ecology in educational practice ...18
Paper 3: The concept of community and its social ecology ...36
Paper 4: A social ecology of movement, environment and community ...47
MEC Members ...57
Additional information about MEC...59
MEC platforms...59
Further information ...61
Key contacts ...62
Introduction
The Movement, Environment and Community (MEC) research group emerged in 2007 as a result of the reconceptualization of our undergraduate programs in Sport and Outdoor Recreation (SOR) and Monash University’s development of the ‘Health, Inclusion and Sustainable Living Precinct’ at the Peninsula Campus. The close relationship between MEC and SOR is an example of ‘research-led-teaching’ and ‘education-led-research’ and is illustrated on the inside back cover.
MEC members are listed on page 57. Members includes academic staff from Sport and Outdoor Recreation, the Faculty of Education and others, including Higher Degree by Research candidates. MEC enjoys close relationships with colleagues in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash’s Tourism Research Institute, Monash Sustainability Institute and the Monash Initiative on Obesity.
The MEC identity, research and teaching are a bold development that combines different theoretical perspectives, pedagogical understandings and approaches to inquiry and methodological development. Our platform is detailed on page 59. Our work has particular relevance to the education sector, including physical, outdoor, health, environmental and experiential educations.
The 2008 AARE conference theme of Changing Climates: Education for Sustainable Futures provides a timely opportunity for MEC researchers to outline a bold, innovative direction we believe is worth pursuing. The following papers focus on the conceptual framing of movement, environment and community and some of the pedagogical issues they imply. Other work currently being undertaken by MEC focuses on the socio-cultural and ecological issues surrounding pedagogy, development and policy and related research challenges and directions.
Associate Professor Phillip Payne
Research Leader, Movement, Environment and Community (MEC).
Paper 1: The concept of movement and its social ecology
*Trent D. Brown and Phillip G. Payne
Introduction
There is a need in educational discourse for the development of qualities and characteristics of the
body in movement that posits a more intrinsic and subjective value of physical activity. In physical
education, sport, outdoor, environmental, health and experiential education such concepts of movement and
alternative pedagogical practices require more earnest theoretical/practical deliberation and discussion.
Movement is basic to bodily experience but the qualities and characteristics of the ‘body moving’ in
environments are not well appreciated in the current education literature and health promotion discourses.
At the root of this lack of understanding is the persistent subordination in the western mindset of the body.
The lack of understanding about the moving body also serves to undermine how ‘movers’ make
meaning of their bodily movements according to the spaces and places of that movement. If so, ‘learning’ in
and through movement, as is demanded in schools and community settings are also undermined. Put
differently, and bluntly, any physical education pedagogy that does not engage seriously with the concept of
movement, its qualities and characteristics in experience diminishes the educational prospects and
pedagogical potential of the field of physical education. But physical education in schools, and
coaching/fitness training in the community, are examples only. The challenge for healthy, sustainable living
lies partially in the promotion of movement experiences in a wide range of human endeavour and, in
schools, in a broad range of curriculum areas.
For the purposes of this paper, the specific challenge for teacher education research is to develop
philosophical, theoretical and empirical understandings about the centrality of movement experiences so that
future educators and professionals concerned about the sustainability of health and wellbeing promotion can
critically examine their current practices and policies. We believe a revitalized notion of movement, and
understanding of the various contexts and environments in which movement occurs, will enable deeper
consideration of how the discourses of physical education, human movement and outdoor education can be
reconceptualized in school-based pedagogies and related community development initiatives in sports and
outdoor recreations.
In this paper, we focus on the qualities and intricacies of movement and therefore their potential
contribution to the education of the practitioner, be it physical/outdoor education teacher, recreation planner
or health promotion professional. Drawing upon the phenomenology of movement in physical education, it
is timely that we extract from that literature the ‘other’ qualities, characteristics and different or ‘wild’
dimensions of movements that escape mention in the dominant physical education discourses.
Our purpose is the revitalisation of movement and movement education which may partially
rhetoric about lifestyle diseases such as the obesity epidemic, and the escalation of diabetes, physical
inactivity and sedentary behaviours and disengagement in schools. The task that we are undertaking in the
Movement, Environment and Community (MEC) research node is to locate the ‘marginalised’ literature
about movement and movement experiences in physical education into a broader, non-reductionist
theoretical framework of social ecology and pedagogical platform of experiential education that informs
pedagogical and curriculum inquiry and critical research development. Notwithstanding the literature about
movement that is readily available in, for example, philosophy, social theory, geography and cognitive
science,1 our initial but limited aim here is to outline a concept of movement and its ‘lived’ experiential and
phenomenological contexts as part of what we believe is a distinctive notions of ‘spatialisation of
movement’ and ‘geography of physical activity.’
That is, our interest in MEC is to locate this ‘geography of physical activity’ within the formulation
of a ‘social ecology’ of movement education and health and wellbeing promotion. In doing so, MEC
researchers aim to make a unique contribution to physical, outdoor, health, environmental and experiential
education discourses. While this paper focuses primarily on the concept of movement within MEC it
gestures to the E- environmental and C – community concepts that our MEC colleagues will address in more
detail in the following papers.
Movement, meaning-making and their concepts
There is renewed interest in the discourse of physical education about the concepts of movement,
movement experiences, meaning and meaning-making as they relate to the pedagogies of the body (Arnold,
1979; Brown, 2008; Kentel & Dobson, 2007; Kretchmar, 2007). While the literature in physical education
has not been abundant, that which has been available for four decades is conceptually rich and has provided
untapped intellectual resources for theoretical development of a phenomenology of movement. This
revitalised interest in ‘meaning in movement’, ‘physical literacy’, ‘movement literacy’, ‘somatic education’
or ‘movement culture’ is partially in response to the lack of understanding of the rich notions of lived bodily
experiences and meaning-making that are absent in the discourses of sport (Kirk, 2003) or fitness and public
health (Trost, 2004).
Scholars working with phenomenological approaches and critical perspectives of physical education
have suggested that this response may also be due to:
1 Meaning and meaning-making in movement draws mainly on concepts from diverse academic fields including
a) research suggesting that students derive little meaning and satisfaction from physical activity during
physical education (Carlson, 1995; Tinning & Fitzclarence, 1992);
b) understanding student motivation to alleviate the so-called childhood obesity and physical inactivity
‘epidemics’ (Kentel & Dobson, 2007; Kretchmar, 2007);
c) humanistic and philosophical interest in elucidating the richer ‘lived experience’ dimensions of
movement (Kleinman, 1979) or to address the importance of movement in self understanding about
what it means to be human;
d) to further elucidate and acknowledge that movement is inextricably linked to the environment through
the ‘body spatialisation’ and ‘geographies of movement;’ and
e) to different layers of communities (school, neighbourhood, town) as the ‘drivers’ of building social
and environmental capital which enables healthy sustainable living through upstream approaches
(Sallis et al., 2006).
To introduce the complexities of the concepts of meaning, meaning-making and lived experience in
‘movement’ we refer readers to publications that might be described as seminal such as Connotations of
Movement in Sport and Dance (Metheny, 1965), Meaning in Movement (Metheny, 1968), Philosophy and
Human Movement (Best, 1978), Sport and the Body: a philosophical symposium (Gerber & Morgan, 1979),
Meaning in Movement, Sport and Physical Education (Arnold, 1979) and Practical Philosophy of Sport and
Physical Activity (Kretchmar, 2005).
In briefly synthesizing these authors, the notion of movement/physical activity/sport as a worthwhile
pursuit in and of itself is ever-present. Additionally, from a phenomenological perspective the personal
associations of distinctive, pleasing and bodily related contexts enable for an increased understanding of
one’s embodied consciousness. There has been tacit recognition in these publications of the now
popularized notions in educational and pedagogical discourses of different ‘ways of knowing’ and ‘authentic
learning’. To highlight more concretely the meaning(s) of movement and meaning-making in physical
education and sport we draw, for illustrative purposes on three meaning-making concepts: a) the denotations
and connotations of movement (Metheny, 1965, 1968); b) the concept of education ‘in’ movement (Arnold,
1979); and c) Kretchmar’s (2000) description of meaning-making, whereby an individual is moved ‘away’,
moved ‘toward’ and moved ‘along’. These scholars’ interpretations of movement and meaning-making
have been chosen based on (i) the word/time limits on this article; (ii) in response to frequency of these
citations within the literature and (iii) as succinct and interpretable approaches in providing descriptions of
the importance of the intrinsic qualities of movement.
Historically, it is likely that van den Berg’s (1952) article on the Human body and the significance
of human movement was the first to highlight the importance of phenomenological concepts as they related
to human movement. This philosophical work draws on early phenomenologists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
and Jean-Paul Sartre. The concepts of (i) landscape of action, (ii) intention of the moving person, and (iii)
the glance of the other are consistently described in various ways by authors such as Metheny (1968),
and Dobson (2007), Quennerstedt (2008) and Brown (2008) who have also contributed to the
phenomenological work and importance of meaning-making within the domain of physical education2. We
wish now to provide a vignette that provides a description of ‘intrinsic qualities’ associated with movement
before examining various descriptions of meaning-making as presented by Metheny, Arnold and Kretchmar.
This was it then. I straddled the saddle, planted my feet on the pedals, Chris steadying me, then a forward thrust and the bike started rolling down the slight incline of Dudley Road on the hump of the camber, gathering speed, Chris running along behind. I knew the set of the hill from the manic descents on the trike, and feel of the pedals under my toes was familiar, too, but suddenly I realized that an entirely new sensation was coursing through me. I was riding free. Balancing unaided. Chris had let go of the saddle and left me to natural instinct and providence. Brakes? Fat chance, but stopping didn’t signify, motion did…the thrill, the exhilaration was unimaginable then, but it has stayed with me ever since…I turned back radiant with glee and rode up to where Chris stood with a big grin on his face, sharing in my triumph. I was a cyclist, a skeddadler (Fife, 2008, p.19).
How likely is it to find these sensibilities mentioned in the official physical education curriculum?
Fife highlighted for us the more pure experience of movements and its spatial and temporal
affordances – hence our enthusiasm for a ‘spatiality of movement’ and ‘geography of physical activity’ as
more primordial/primitive elements that require revitalization in the physical education/sport discourses,
where an instrumental, competitive, performative discourse is unquestionably privileged. For the author,
Graeme, riding a bike for the first time unaided was a lived, felt, sentient, purposive act (Shusterman, 2008).
For Metheny (1968) meaning derives from the denotations, the literal meaning, and connotations, the
personal associations as it has to do with movement, sport and physical activity. Importantly for physical
education teachers it is the connotations of movement forms that provide the richness of meanings, hence the
meaning-making for the individual. In this example Graeme denotatively cycled from point A to point B,
albeit down a road with a hill, but this movement for Graeme at least was connotatively complex. His
narrative description is interesting and tells us something about who he is, what he wishes and hopes for
when cycling and what meaning he attaches to cycling. Clearly the feeling of riding a bicycle unaided is a
lifelong pleasurable, delightful and memorable experience, it was perhaps Graeme’s ‘first rush of
movement’ (Smith, 2007). According to Metheny in Kretchmar (2000) not all connotations are personal or
distinctive, in fact they may be common to a particular time and culture, in other words socio-culturally
constructed. As Roberts (2008) and Ryan and Rossi (2008) and cautioned:
meaning-making that is regarded as exclusively socially constructed does not account for the varied and often contradictory perspectives that an individual simultaneously takes up and rejects, yet theories that consider meaning-making to be based only on individual psychology neglect to explain the influence of the social milieu on any verbal or non verbal interaction. (p. 40)
Whilst a tension between the individual and social appears to exist, for Metheny this was not a
problem for it created opportunity for researchers and practitioners to address the complex meanings of
2
movement between the personal and the cultural. In signalling towards our colleagues presenting ‘The
concept of environment and its social ecology’ (Wattchow, Burke and Cutter-MacKenzie, 2008) and ‘The
concept of community and its social ecology’ (O’Connor, 2008) the cultural connotations of movement, and
if we look broader at the environment and community, contribute to this meaning-making primarily through
reinforced rituals, values, truths that occur in ‘places’ (environment) and shared ‘spaces’ (community) with
family/friends or individuals as members of sporting clubs.
Education ‘in’ movement are those activities of movement/physical activity that are worthwhile in
and of themselves from the perspective of the moving agent. They are important educationally as they allow
the moving agent to actualise themselves in distinctive, pleasing and bodily related contexts as a process of
understanding their own embodied consciousness. These perspectives are subjective and a
‘good-in-themselves’ as well as being ‘good-for-me’. Additionally to further elucidate the meanings in sport,
movement and physical education, Arnold (1979) proposed three subjective movement meaning categories:
primordial meanings, contextual meanings and existential meanings. Primordial meaning, according to
Arnold, relates to how the performer is not only being aware and of experiencing a movement itself, but also
to the subjective attaching some value to it. In other words it is related to kinaesthesis, bodily experience
and self-identity and the experiences that a performer has that are uniquely his/her own and may, or may not,
be able to give voice to, noting the limitations of an overt focus on just the individual at the expense of
cultural understanding. Contextual meaning provides the performer with meanings in movement when
performed in a specific type of movement situation. The example that Arnold uses here is: (a) sports’ skills
as particular instances of contextual meanings, for example the ‘leg glance’ only has meaning in cricket.
Contextual meaning as it relates to sport skills means that techniques need to be acquired, but also the skills
need to be utilised in the appropriate context of the game or movement; and (b) sports as rule-bound social
realities, for example, when playing soccer I learn skills of kicking and trapping. But I also learn the
soccer-bound skills of ‘offside’ and ‘to lay off the ball’. As these rules relate to soccer others that play the game
also agree to abide by them. Whilst this creates common ground, there is some overlap between what I
derive from such contextual meaning as someone else does. Hence contextual meaning is both rule-bound
and social. Finally, existential meanings in movement relate to those individual and personal meanings that
are part of who I am in the world. For Arnold these themes are: (a) the existent as agent, (b) sport as a quest
for authentic experience, and (c) dimensions of existential meaning in sport.
The final interpretation that we wish to draw upon from the physical education literature is the
concepts of being moved ‘away’, ‘toward’ and ‘along’ (Kretchmar, 2000). According to Kretchmar
“meaning can transport individuals away from the literal features of an event – the movements themselves,
their biomechanical requirements, perhaps even the score of a game” (p. 22). This definition highlights how
movement/sport/physical activity becomes meaningful. It does so by moving you away from the mundane
tasks of everyday life, to a place that is uplifting and where positive, joyful, delightful memories come to the
fore. Meaning can also be derived when individuals are drawn toward particulars of movement. The
some they become part of the environment, or piece of equipment they are using. Examples to highlight
being moved toward include rock climbers become part of the rock they are climbing (Csikszentmihalyi,
1977), or rowers toward the water, boat or fellow rowers (Lambert, 1998). We offer caution, especially to
physical educators that may have used or comprehend this concept of meaning-making in movement.
Exercise can at times be detrimental, and some performers that become exercise dependent plausibly do
more harm than good when their meaning-making ‘takes’ over their lives. Finally the third kind of
meaning-making experience is one which Kretchmar described as being moved along. Physical
activity/movement can become very meaningful when it is described as a storyline or narrative in one’s life.
From the performer’s perspective it is viewed as a spiritual and philosophical approach to life which is
clearly at odds with thoughts within the current discourses of physical education about fun, exercise and skill
development as meaningful content. As an example, Kretchmar drew on Henry David Thoreau (1966/1982)
book chapter on thoughts on walking (sauntering as described by Thoreau). Describing it as a fundamental
part of who he was, sharing his hopes, plans and actions. His action of walking, being moved along was an
important part of the meaning-making movement experience of who he was and how it was part of his life’s
narrative.
In summarizing this brief introduction into meaning-making concepts of movement within the
discourses of physical education as presented by Metheny, Arnold and Kretchmar are the personal
associations of distinctive, pleasing and bodily related contexts enabling an increased understanding of one’s
embodied consciousness. Whilst some suggest that this personal phenomenological approach is limited
(Roberts, 2008), it never the less opens up opportunities for physical education teachers and researchers to
understand the important subjective and ‘intrinsic’ qualities of movement of the individuals, that are both
personal and cultural, that are missing from the dominant biophysical sciences model of current physical
education curriculum.
These publications have also tacitly recognised the importance of various educational and
pedagogical discourses of different ‘ways of knowing’ and ‘authentic learning’. However, we wish to go
one step further and highlight that to date there is a limited scholarly insight within the physical education
and movement discourses about what we will refer to as:
• The spatialization of the moving body in time • The geographies of physical activity
That is, the distinctive contribution we seek to forge in MEC relates to the ‘yet-to-be-probed’ notions of how
movement and physical activity, and meaning-making and learning, must also account for the perceptual and
intentional affordances, enablement’s and constraints of the various environments that spatially and
geographically influence the human and social experience of movement.3 As such, our notions of the
3
spatialised body and geography of movement for physical education provides an opportunity for
researchers/scholars to consider both the independent and inter-dependent characteristics of movement,
environment and community when explaining physical education, health education or outdoor and
environmental studies in teacher education or continuing professional development.
We will attempt to explicate such concepts by drawing on the available literature of a
phenomenology of movement primarily through the discourses of physical education pedagogy.
Towards a concept of the spatialisation of the body in movement over time and its geographies of physical activity
The literature in the phenomenology of movement highlights a qualification and rejection of a series
of dualisms in the physical education literature. Clearly, physical education is one of those curriculum fields
where the human ‘body’ is central to the primacy of practice and, by necessity, theorization about it.
However, Whitehead (1990) has cautioned that physical education teachers have a philosophical inability to
articulate the subject’s importance and place in the curriculum;
What they are really so concerned to cite are incapable of articulating, namely the achievement of successful liaison with the world via their embodied dimension; or to be exact, between their motile embodiment and the concrete features of the world (p. 6)
Despite this ongoing philosophical theorising of the body and the more pragmatic pedagogic
encounters in physical education appear to slip back into recreating the mind-body and I-world separations
despite the best efforts of many writers cited above (Connolly, 1995). Some scholars such as Smith (1997)
attempt to address these constant limitations. Drawing on van Manen’s (1986) ‘pedagogical thoughtfulness
and tact’, Smith presents the notion of ‘educating physically’, which refers to the teaching of games, sport
and movements in physical education that is embodied and respects the movement experiences of the child.
Those with an interest in the phenomenology of movement will need to remain vigilant to this
slippage because of the ongoing risk of placing the moving body and movement experiences, and their
study, on the periphery of a reoriented physical education discourse. The ongoing challenge we discern is
that a ‘social ecology of movement’ and its pedagogies beckons. To do this, we must be very attentive to
the notions of the spatialisation of the body and geographies of physical activity.
There are numerous theoretical sources to develop the spatialisation and geographies of movement
(for example Maitland, 1995; Noe, 2004; Weiss & Haber, 1999) and physical activity that lie outside the
nascent but revitalized notion in physical education of a phenomenology of movement (see footnote 1).
And, although, the remit of this paper is to focus only on the discourse of physical education, brief mention
must be made in conclusion of two important notions that highlight the spatialisation of the body in
movement in time. Those notions are ‘body schema’ and ‘intentionality’ and, here, we are indebted to
Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology of perception.
The notions of ‘body schema’ and ‘intentionality’ (and consequently ‘flesh’), effectively point to the
inseparability and connectedness of the body, in movement, in space and time, with the numerous
environments in which movement occurs, is enabled and constrained (built, structured, urban, open, natural,
treed, footpathed, river, wilderness – for example, we move in particular ways in water, in a pool, on a river,
through a wave and so on). For flesh is more than just the sensorimotor surface of the body. It pertains not
only to a depth, whereby ongoing transactions/interactions with the environment occurs simultaneously,
continuously and in reciprocity (e.g. as in visceral exchanges such as breathing), but as an element of Being.
For children their relationship to movement/sport/physical activity, their embodied connection or ‘flesh in
the world’ is primordial and occurs prior to any self-identification (Smith, 2007). Critically, this
‘inseparable’ connection of the moving body and its environments, effectively deconstructs the basic logics
that persist in western thought about the separations of mind and body, and I and world. Merleau-Ponty’s
‘flesh’ metaphorically elaborates the ‘porous like’ transactional relationship between bodies, environments
and natures. They are mutually constitutive in relation to the meaning-making that occurs for the individual
body in sensing and ‘learning’ of the opportunities, affordances and constraints of the environment but also
there are effects on that environment/nature as a recursive consequence of that movement experience.
Smith’s (2007) account of the ‘rush’ of movement is a very useful description of an environmental
affordance and how the flesh acts as a mediator of that rush;
The child is situated gesturally amidst the flesh of the world through movements that reciprocate the appeals of the landscapes, the seascapes, the airscapes and firescapes. The child’s movements flesh out the mimetic impulse to become the Other. In fact, the power of this impulse is the depth of the flesh that is discerned in the motions of child-like connection to the world (p. 59)
It is in environments of landscape, airscape and seascape where ‘lived’ movement/sporting/physical
activity experiences occur in childhood, often through ‘rushes’ of habituated movement such as swimming,
running, walking and dancing. Beyond reducing children’s movement experiences to our own (Smith,
1992), parents/educators/coaches rarely cultivate or understand the importance and meaning-making of such
landscapes, airscapes, seascapes and connection to ‘rushes’ of movement.
Undoubtedly, there is a risk here of simplifying the important concepts of ‘body schema’ and
‘intentionality.’ But that risk is worth taking so the reader can imagine the directions we are taking in our
theorizations of the spatialisation of the body and geographies of physical activity within the broader
theoretical driver of social ecology and pedagogical platform of experiential education in an education
of/for/with movement/physical activity.
‘Body schema’ is an indicator of the primordiality and, often, primacy of certain bodily dispositions
and capacities, characteristics and qualities that ‘permit’ the pre-conscious, perceptual, intuitive, sensory and
environments, spaces and places, either momentarily or for extended durations. For example, we move
(walk) up a long, steep hill in windy weather in a particular way that differs to moving on sand at the beach.
Or, we turn our head when we hear a noise. Or we gesture with our eyes and hands to a colleague when
verbal communication is insufficient. Or children play in secret spots in particular personal, social and
ecological ways that we have forgotten about. The concept of body schema should not be confused with a
term very popular in physical education and health discourses of ‘body image,’ noting the serious debate in
other literatures about the inappropriateness of the misleading confusion surrounding their interchangeable
use, even in philosophy and cognitive science (Carman, 2008; Gallagher, 2005). Body image relates more
to the idea of the attitudes and beliefs we hold about our own bodies, and those of others. Image connotes a
‘set picture’ of the appearance of the body objectified. And, as such, body image and related concerns about
self-esteem have preoccupied many physical and health educators, amongst numerous others, in regard to,
for example, the culture of thinness/fatness, body types and measures and eating disorders, and so on. Body
schema, therefore, is a conception of the dynamic orientation of the body to and in response to the
experienced lifeworld, or ‘lived experience’ while body image is a more reified objectification of the self
and socially conceived body in that socially constructed lifeworld. Both point to vary different orientations
to the ‘environment’ which, in many instances, overlap. For example, we do walk and dress in particular
ways on the beach according to the combination of the affordances/restraints of the sand/water/waves and a
sense of ‘display,’ appearance and performance. We feel the heat of the sand on our feet; many feel the gaze
of the audience. Of course, there are major implications of the differences and overlap between body
schema and body image for movement experience education, meaning-making that, undoubtedly, differ
from conventional views of physical/health and outdoor/wellbeing educations.
(Body) intentionality, therefore, is closely linked to the notion of body schema in that it highlights
the dynamic nature of the spatiality of the body in movement and, more generally, underpins the notion of
the geographies of physical activity as each pertains to an alternative conceptions and constructions of
physical education and embodied/experiential pedagogies. Simply, intentionality highlights the
‘directedness’ of the orientation to move in a particular way in a particular setting in particular conditions.
Intentionality is ‘automatic’ or ‘pre’ conscious but can be ‘learned’ over time. For example, we ‘learn’ how
to walk and choose a route up that steep hill on a windy day that might differ from the route we select on a
calm or wet day. We intuitively know how, when and where to dive through, or over a wave and, in doing
so, reorient that dive according to a sense of its size and power. There are some parallels here with the idea
and practice of game sense, now frequently taught in physical education classes and in pre-service teacher
education. But, again we refer the reader to footnote 2, and how the physical education teacher operates
within the range of pedagogies listed there that are dominant or marginalized.
So, despite the limitations here, the notions of flesh, of schema and intentionality are indicators of
how a phenomenology of movement addresses the a) spatialisation of the body in movement in different
environments and b) geographies of physical activity. They are partially implied, even sometimes directly
included in the physical education discourse. Our reading of the physical education discourse suggests that,
by and large, the mention of spatiality and geography of activity is located in the instrumental and
performative logics/outcomes of that discourse. The phenomenological discourse, and MEC’s distinctive
contribution, aims to ‘open up’ that discourse via a considered view of what is currently excluded and might
need to be re-included, such as the notions of embodied knowing, somatic understanding, ecological
subjectivity, intercorporeality (between bodies), kinaesthetics, somaesthetics and so on.
We reiterate that notions like the spatialisation of the body in movement and geographies of physical
activity are important ingredients of the theory of social ecology and pedagogy of experiential education.
They are important because of the way in which the embodied making of meaning through movement and
physical activity in various environments over times are, indeed, major sources of an expanded notion of
learning which, if so, is part of the legitimation process that physical education has struggled with, for far
too long. Often seen as mere ‘doing’ curriculum areas like physical education and outdoor education that
privilege the moving, active, experiencing body do offer a rich and extensive qualities and characteristics of
meaning and learning that are unable to be offered in the classroom.
The challenge for us and physical education is for physical educators to recognize how the nascent
but revitalizing phenomenology and social ecology of physical education can enhance its endeavours
conceptually and practically in ways that have not been previously envisaged, or only partially so.
Summary
It is clear that those writing in the genre of a phenomenology of movement are committed to how
the moving body (in time/space) is a source, or origin, and reflection of meaning and meaning-making. The
phenomenological discourse shifts our ecological attention to some of the more intrinsic qualities and
characteristics of the body(ies) in movement in time and space. In so doing, at least, a renewed sense of
agency is therefore implied I regard to developing the theory and practice of physical education. We feel
this positive sense of agency fostered by the meaning-making dimensions of movement is probably a
‘primitive’ or ‘primacy’ of practice and, therefore, prerequisite to more earnest accounts of conception and
learning undertaken rationally by the various critical, post-structural and applied-science discourses.
To be sure, movement, both situationally and contextually, is inextricably linked to the affordances,
enablements and constraints of the various environments that spatially and geographically influence the
human and social experience of movement. In addition to the spatialities of movement, their geographies
also shape how communities act as the ‘driver’ of social and environmental capital and their sustainability.
The phenomenological, or ‘micro’ study of, for example, the body schema and image in movement provides
a ‘critical’ window through which the social, cultural and ecological ‘world’ might also be examined.
This social ecology of movement therefore addresses at different levels the relationships between
human, social, built and natural environments – a prerequisite for the promotion of health, wellbeing and
place, will positively deconstruct the disconnects of mind-body, organism-environment, I-we-world and,
inevitably, ontology-epistemology-methodology that, currently, continue to fuel the theory-practice gap in
physical education.
References
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Paper 2: Environment, place and social ecology in educational
practice
Brian Wattchow, Geraldine Burke and Amy Cutter-Mackenzie
Introduction
‘Environment,’ like ‘nature,’ is an ambiguous term because of the many environments that do exist
and the different ways in which they are perceived and socially constructed over time and through space.
Educators must be careful about the way meaning is ascribed to ‘environment’ and ‘nature’ if sustainability
is to remain a plausible proposition. For example, the same school ‘environment’ may simultaneously be
perceived by teachers and students as a sporting arena for testing human physical performance, a landscape
of shapes, light and colours for the art class, or as a ecology in need of examination and management in a
science subject. These examples mark only the beginning of a very long list of the multiple, complex and
even contradictory ways that various pedagogic environments may be viewed and therefore experienced.
Environments can be personal, social, historical, built, natural, tame or wild. The integrity of each
environment warrants study and requires a particular pedagogic response. Educators should be mindful of
the various ways in which teachers and students shape and are shaped by these learning environments
physically, emotionally and intellectually stands to make a significant contribution to the creation of active
communities and the promotion of health, wellbeing and sustainability.
Hence, a 'social ecology' of the complex term ‘environment’ is urgently required to enhance our
pedagogical and research efforts in outdoor, environmental, movement, physical and health educations.
What is needed is a conceptual shift in our thinking and bodily practices towards an ‘ecocentric’ or place
responsive posture; a philosophical frame quite different from the anthropocentrism, or human centredness
of most educational discourses.
In practical terms, a social ecology of the environment, in relation to the study of movement and
community experiences, entails in pedagogical practices a range of human-environment interactions, be it
open-space play, active art projects, walking to school, or outdoor education expeditions. A constant in
these examples is the taking of education away from the environmental constraints of the ‘indoors,’ and its
privileging of mind/learning/knowing, to the environmental enablements of the ‘outdoors’ and body/mind
doing, meaning-making and becoming. A social ecology of these human-environment interactions and
relations address various ‘other’ and ‘wild’ forms of expression and performance - be it strenuous activity in
space, graceful movement in place, or kinaesthetic appreciation over time in different places.
This paper addresses some of the more ‘ecocentric’ and wild, less tamed concerns outlined above
and leaves others to the ‘Movement’ and ‘Community’ papers. Simply, our aim is to outline the major
distinguishing characteristics and dimensions of ‘environment’ so that inquiry of an ecological type can
active and sustainable communities. To ground this in our research efforts, we focus on ‘place’ study - an
important derivation of the nature/environment concepts. We offer vignettes about ‘the experience of river
places in outdoor education, children’s gardens and artistic representations of pedagogies of place. But first,
what do we mean by the term ‘place’?
Place and space
Place, as a concept, has been extensively discussed in the work of humanist geographers such as
Tuan (1975, 1977), Relph (1976, 1985) and Seamon (1979, 1992, 2004). Yet use of word ‘place’, and the
phrase ‘a sense of place,’ has become so commonplace that they stand to have their meaning diminished. At
the heart of this issue is confusion between the concepts of space and place.
The relationship between space and place remains one of the most difficult challenges facing
researchers and practitioners alike. On the one hand there are those who consider that place is ‘made’
through the accumulation of human experience (see for example, Meinig, 1979; Relph, 1976). On the other
there are those who propose that place has its own inherent spirit and meaning waiting to be discovered (see
for example, Park, 1995; Tacey, 1995). Differences between place as culturally constructed space or place
as a site of intrinsic meaning are important to understand because they potentially bear on the ways in which
teachers and participants locate themselves within, move through, and identify themselves with outdoor
environments.
Casey (1996, p. 14) argues that it was the abstract physics of Newton and the critical philosophy of
Kant that has resulted in places becoming “the mere apportionings of space, its compartmentalisations.” In
his argument for a return to place, Casey (1996, p. 20) asks us to avoid the “the high road of modernism …
to reoccupy the lowland of place.” Place can then be considered both pre-modern and post modern; “it
serves to connect these two far sides of modernity” (Casey, 1996, p. 20). Space is abstracted in the mind.
Place is inevitably lived in, first and foremost, through the body.
The New Zealand ecological historian Geoff Park (1995, p. 331) suggests that “any stretch of
country, no matter how pervasive agriculture’s marks, has an indwelling life force, waning or waxing, which
distinguishes if from any other.” Why is it necessary to consider the importance of sense of place and place
attachment in education? Park (1995) answered this question simply and decisively when he wrote, “a sense
of place is a fundamental human need” (p. 320). In his highly influential book Place and Placelessness,
Relph (1976, p. 6) demonstrated how places serve as “sources of security and identity”, but also how the
homogenising influence of modern practices can result in the experience of displacement or rootlessness.
Educating for a responsiveness to place assumes that at least part of education is about preparing people to
“to live and work to sustain the cultural and ecological integrity of the places they inhabit” (Woodhouse &
Place and education
Yet according to David Orr (1992), educators have failed to see much significance in understanding,
or attempting to teach a responsiveness to the particular places where teaching and learning is located. He
explains that “place is nebulous to educators because to a great extent we are deplaced people for whom
immediate places are no longer sources of food, water, livelihood, energy, materials, friends, recreation or
sacred inspiration” (p. 126). The typical curriculum, according to Orr is based upon abstraction, which
disconnects people from “tangible experience, real problems, and the places where we live and work” (p.
126).
Place cannot, like the content of some subjects, be studied at a distance. Rather, place is a lived
phenomenon. Students and teachers both make and are made by the place they live and work within. This
reciprocal relationship – place as lived experience – makes it a compelling and accessible theme for all kinds
of experiential educators. Geography, history, art, environmental science, outdoor education and even health
and physical education can all benefit from a focus on place. But it does require, on the part of educators and
learners, a return to the immediacy of the local – that combination of topography, climate and ecology along
with human activities and their signs, symbols and rituals that gives a place its unique distinctiveness.
Hence, a social ecology of environment as place.
The following vignettes represent some of our attempts to return, with our students and program
participants, to the immediacy of place, to encounter them with mind and body, and to refine pedagogies that
respond to them. Each story gestures towards the potential for educators and learners to make a significant
contribution to the social ecology of their community through carefully developed experiential pedagogies.
A number of pedagogical implications are drawn from each vignette for the reader to consider.
Vignette 1: Creating Connections to place (Geraldine Burke)
A sense of place is a virtual immersion that depends on lived experience and a topographical intimacy that is rare today both in ordinary life and in traditional educational fields…. it demands extensive visual and historical research, a great deal of walking “in the field”, contact with oral tradition, and an intensive knowledge of both local multiculturalism and the broader context of multicentredness.
Lucy Lippard (1997, p. 33)
the best fun, must be somethin! Must be healthy! Sunny days, sunny people, sunny paintin, sunny colours – many sandshoes Mother Earth. 4
Tony Nelson artist statement, Creative Junction Project (2005)
The joint Shire of Yarra Ranges–Vic Health, Creative Junction project sought to rethink the public
space as both an internal and external site for artistic expression (Vic-Health, Mental health and Wellbeing -
Art and Community grant Reference No. 2003-0557). Its priorities were to promote a sense of social
connectedness, economic participation, diversity and freedom from discrimination. It aimed to connect art
and environment to personal, meaningful experience and to develop and express a sense of place through art.
Accordingly the Creative Junction project was inspired by the community’s stories, artwork and living
culture; as well as their connection to the land and to each other.
As Artistic Coordinator, working within a project team, I developed a program of site based events
designed to engage community in situated, embodied art activities exploring local culture with nature, in
nature and about nature. This approach reflected UNESCO’s art education directive that ‘visual arts learning
can commence from the local culture, and progressively introduce learners to other world cultures.’
(UNESCO 2004, p. 43).
The art program aimed to challenge everyday notions of the landscape genre, such that we were
positioned inside its experience rather than onlookers to its view. Inspired by the poetry of Judith Wright we
wanted to express rather than describe place; to adopt a disposition that “…lives through landscape and
event” (Wright, 1961, p. 96). We wanted to expand on western notions of place, to become aware of
Indigenous views of country (Rose, 1996), and to learn to play and create with found materials as a means to
undertake material thinking (Carter, 2004) as arts based research.
Following a literature review, extensive consultation with the community and project team, we
commissioned a series of ‘connector’ artworks. Expressing local knowledge and connecting the community
to place and each other, were viewed as central to the formation of these works. They consisted of:
- A series of community workshops, focusing on nature and art to express ways of knowing;
- Permanent environmental artworks;
- Ephemeral artworks that utilised natural objects from the area as agents for
- Creative connection to local culture and sense of place;
- On going photographic and narrative documentation of the artistic process;
- Creative Junction festival days,
4
- Postcards and interpretive signage that reflected the project aims and allowed for ongoing reference to
the events that surrounded the project.
Fundamental to our immersive art program was a consistent emphasis on walking and talking the land
whereby collecting natural materials and making artworks were seen as combined experiences. Our program
of events invited participants back into nature in ways that encouraged them to look, smell, find, examine
and collect objects from place for use in artistic processes and outcomes, believing, as per Emily Brady
(2003, p. 127) the environmental philosopher, that our sense of place can be influenced by an
“...(A)ppreciation of aesthetic qualities through sensory engagement which is ‘directed to a great degree by
qualities perceived…”. In the process we reframed and revisited place so as to tease out relational aspects
between viewpoints, seeking Indigenous, botanical, historical, artistic, playful and logging perspectives. We
hoped that this capturing of layered experiences would enable us to see, as per (Rogoff, 1995), how we were
connected and involved in each others definition. The place responsive art that emerged from the project
reflected a view of environmental art whereby the individual’s connection to the environment is primary
(Wallis and Kastner, 1998, p. 11) a view that also seeks to relocate the artist and viewer from observer of
nature to participant in it.
To achieve optimum creative engagement we used a developing framework for immersive art
pedagogy (Burke, 2004; 2005; 2007) which sought to link a system’s view of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi,
1996) to a radical/local view of pedagogy (Hedegard and Chaiklin, 2005). This approach promoted local
knowledge/s alongside the discipline knowledge of art within socio-cultural and critical ways of knowing.
The art/research/teaching that became the living inquiry within the Creative Junction project is also
understood through a/r/tography (Irwin, 2004) an arts based approach to research which pays heed to the
in-between (Grosz: 2001) where meanings reside in the simultaneous use of language, images, materials,
situations, space and time (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. xix). In so doing we troubled our awareness and
knowing, so as to embody theory-as-practice-as-process-as-complication. (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. xi).
From this A/r/tographic perspective we no longer understood place as being geographically bound (Doherty,
2004, p. 8). In addition, as per Kwon’s (2002) notion, we came to envision the concept of ‘site’ as a
complex figure in the unstable relationship between location and identity (Irwin and Spinggay: 2008, p.
xxvi).
Meta knowledge of the creative process helped us further develop a creative connection to place and
each other. Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity (1996) enabled us to consider the
cultural/community denomination of creativity and to go beyond an understanding of individual creativity to
one that valued the interrelated sites of creativity; namely the domain, the field and the individual.
Csikszentmihalyi’s attention to the ‘where’ of creativity (1996, p. 27) suggests that creativity does not
happen inside people’s heads, but in the interactions between a person’s thoughts and a socio cultural
context.
In the Creative Junction project the domain was understood through the site of Yarra Junction. The
continues to contain the remnants, past or present, that exist in this place reflecting a diverse continuum of
knowing as explored through stories and artefacts.
The field was perceived as the funding bodies, project management team, selected project artists and
participating teachers from local schools and kindergarten who constituted the primary gatekeepers to the
symbolic knowing of place. This field aimed to further recognise, preserve and remember the culture of this
place and culture generally, as actualised through our visual journaling process, project marketing, publicity
material, scholarly articles, editorials, postcards and brochures that celebrated our project
Individuals participated in art workshops and the making of ephemeral culptures which exposed
them to concepts in the domain and which were documented for possible inclusion in postcards and project
documentation. Further these individuals were mentored through the process by field members, being the
artists, teachers and project team members. As well, community members who did not participate directly in
the project but who received project postcards were further introduced to the domain and the artwork of their
fellow community members through the postcards.
The Creative Junction project continues to inspire my own environmental art investigations within
my PhD and lives on as an introductory experience for pre-service teachers at Monash University involved in
art/place and environment activities. The stories and informing theories behind the Creative Junction project
also have implications for educators and students within a broader context and can be conceptualised through
the following pedagogical applications.
1. Teachers and learners can become active agents in shaping the knowledge, art and narratives of a
given place. Both teachers and learners can harness locally found materials, corresponding art
methods, and relational narratives and associations of place rather than passively delivering ready
made content from other sources. In so doing they are performing a type of Bricolage (Denzin and
Lincoln, 2008) and can in the process become aware of pedagogical approaches that acknowledge
complex connections between identity/ies, expression/s, place/s and power.
2. The outside environment generally lends itself to an experiential use of materials, movement and
situation and can be harnessed by teachers and students as a means to link into the local. In this way
teachers and students can enact a double move (Hedegard and Chaklin, 2005) such that students can
connect their living enquiry (Irwin and De Cosson, 2004) of place and environment with the
discipline knowledge of art, and in turn, teachers can connect their art knowledge to the local findings
of their students.
3. Our daily life has become more inside focused. A cultural transition from the classroom to the
outside learning zone could open up opportunities for art education by utilizing
walking/talking/(environmentally sound)collecting/and making as pedagogical devices that allow us
to create from within the experience of environment and place rather than as mere onlookers to its
4. Creativity can be conceptualised as a personal AND societal pursuit that opens up community
connections between the individual, the field and the domain.
5. A place can be conceptualised as a creative site that can be explored and revealed by the following
phases identified through immersive art pedagogy. (Burke: PhD in progress; 2008).These may entail,
Walking place - as an aesthetic and reflective way of connecting to place;
Wondering place - through tactile engagement with natural materials;
Listening to place and each other - through art and narrative;
Exploring place - through nature;
Expressing place - through art and nature;
Deep learning - in, through and about art and nature;
Wellbeing through aesthetic engagement with place - through art and nature;
Valuing of diversity - through art and nature
Imaginative possibility and enjoyment - through art and nature
Critical awareness of place – through art and narrative
Vignette 2: School Garden Experiences – Fostering Place (Amy Cutter-Mackenzie)
For the past decade gardening programs have become increasingly popular in Australian schools as
teachers seek pedagogical approaches to engage children in experiential learning and work towards tackling
societal concerns such as childhood obesity and environmental sustainability (Miller, 2007). The desire to
enable children to experience ‘slow’, less technologically focused experiences (Payne, 2003; Payne &
Wattchow, 2008) and to address concerns that children are growing up with what Louv (2005) describes as
“Nature Deficit Disorder” are additional drivers that have led teachers and communities to embrace school
gardening programs. Mayer-Smith et al. (2007, p. 85) found that “children’s relationship with the
environment changed and became more personal” over the course of an Intergenerational Landed Learning
Project. They noted that “the majority of children shifted from seeing the environment as an object or a
place, to a view characterized by the interconnectedness of humans and environment” (p.83). With that in
mind, Wake (2008, p. 432) argues that further research is needed with respect to “what children are looking
for in a nature connection, if indeed they are looking” in the context of children’s gardens programs. She
maintains that there is a tendency for adults to romanticize nature and utilize this to legitimize children’s
interactions with nature through garden programs.
While there is a growing body of research focused on the benefits of school gardening programs,
there is a dearth of research about children’s school garden experiences and how these experiences influence
their notions of place. In this vignette I report on children’s gardening experiences. The focus of the
vignette is the Multicultural School Gardens program that was implemented in disadvantaged schools in the
greater metropolitan of Melbourne. Food gardening and cultural diversity are the focus of the program. The
participating schools have high proportions of migrant and refugee families. Alongside the implementation
and teachers) documented their experiences (A. Cutter-Mackenzie, 2007; A. Cutter-Mackenzie, 2008;
2005). Five schools (4 primary schools and 1 secondary school) have participated in the research process
over the two year duration of the project. Students were invited to capture their experiences by keeping a
journal, taking photographs and interviewing students, teachers, parents and community members about their
Multicultural School Gardens experiences. All students and teachers also participated in a focus group
interview to discuss their experiences. What follows is a brief account of one primary school’s experience
identifying the key themes generated through their research.
City Heights Primary School comprises a student body of approximately 90 children who reside in
an estate in the same location as the school (on site). The school has a strong environmental education focus
and established links with the surrounding community. The school’s motivation for joining the program was
driven by a desire to facilitate ‘real life learning’ for children who live in high density apartment
accommodation and have very limited opportunities to garden and engage in outdoor learning. The
environmental education coordinator, a year six teacher, emphasized that experiential learning is a key
pedagogical driver for his school which allowed for the inclusion of the multicultural school gardens
program:
We have changed most of our curriculum to incorporate a hands-on and experiential learning approach. For example, the younger kids do a lot of developmental play rather than formal lessons so the garden program fits into our curriculum quite well.
City Heights Primary School supported their students in designing and constructing their gardens.
Recently Wake (2008) noted that children do not tend to have these opportunities in children’s garden
programs. The process by which this was done for the multicultural school gardens project drew upon the
children’s cultural heritage by involving their parents and grandparents as advisors. Teachers and
community groups were also made available as advisers which together with the children’s parents and
grandparents prompted intergenerational and cultural led learning.
The students’ research indicated that the garden project has had a positive impact on nutritional
knowledge and healthy eating behaviours. One student commented “I learnt that you get stronger and
healthier. I used to eat chips but now when I get hungry I eat a piece of fruit”. Furthermore, the
environmental education coordinator reported a ‘flow-on effect’ as the healthy eating message reached
families, stating that the school had “seen changes in behaviour, especially the kids who were coming in the
morning with a can of Coke for breakfast”. While Ozer (2007) maintains that research must move beyond
reporting the nutritional benefits of children’s garden programs, this finding must not be downplayed given
the harsh reality that an increasingly number of Australian families are adopting the values and culture of a
fast-food society where children are consuming high-calorie, low-nutrition food, doing little exercise and
have limited experiences in outdoor environments. According to the school’s environmental education
