With the Body in School

Author(s):

Jens-Ole Jensen(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 05,

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

316.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Dennis Beach

Contribution

A new school law was implemented in the Danish primary and secondary school system from August 2014. The main purpose of the law is to:

– challenge all pupils to become as skilled as possible,

– lower the consequences of social background in order to achieve better results and

– strengthen the confidence to and the wellbeing in the school.

These objectives should among other initiatives be achieved by a longer and more diversified school day. Movements have been seen as an important tool to create more varied forms of teaching. Research indicates that there is a correlation between physical activity and cognitive learning (Sibley & Etnier 2003). In order to improve the pupils health, cognitive learning and wellbeing all pupils from 0. to 9. grade must have at least 45 minutes of physical activity and movements in average every day. Next to physical education the physical activities and movements should be integrated in the academic subjects as active teaching and brain breaks etc. or as organized activities during the extended school day.

It is obvious that the body at all time has been present physically in the school and it’s also well known for instance from historical studies that the body has been perceived as impulsive, irrational and sinful and therefore should be tamed and civilized (Elias 1994). A recent study in Danish schools shows that it’s still meaningful to analyze norms, discipline and upbringing as civilizing processes (Gillian 2014; Gilliam & Gulløv 2014). The implementation of a new school law which focuses on physical activities and movements actualizes the role of the body. The teachers face a true dilemma. With one hand they must establish a learning environment for a large group of pupils on a limited space. For that reason it has for instance been common that schools have permitted running indoor and each pupil have had to ask the teacher before leaving his seat. With the other hand the teachers must ensure that each pupil is physical active for at least 45 minutes a day. That is not only a matter of changing a few rules and organize the school day in a different way. The new school law also questions norms and social conventions about the body in more general terms. And embodied norm and conventions might be difficult to change (Bourdieu 1977).

In the effort to understand how this change in the school affects the pupils the following research question was constructed. How are pupils bodily present in primary school and how do they experience everyday life in a school with (more) physical activity and movement?

Method

Anthropological fieldwork was carried out in a Danish primary school for approximately 20 days in a period of 3 months (Spradley 1980; Gulløv & Højlund 2003). The researcher was following an age-integrated class with 27 children in 0. to 2. grade. As the ambition was to understand ‘everyday life’ from the pupils perspective the same group of pupils were followed throughout the school day from early morning when they arrived at the school, through the different subjects, breaks, physical activities, lunch breaks and finally during the after school activities in the late afternoon. It is obvious that an adult can’t pretend being a child and for that reason it can be argued that it’s impossible to talk about a child perspective (Sommer et al. 2010). Instead the researcher positioned himself in a role in between the professionals working at the school and the children. The observations were mainly non-participating but at some occasions the researcher was participating in activities and games. The observations were written down as field notes (Emerson et a. 2011) and photos were taken to support the field notes. During the observation a special attention was addressed to bodily communication (Argyle 1988; Gebauer & Wulf 1996) and micro-sociological interactions (Goffman 1963). In the end of the fieldwork 4 semi-structured interviews were conducted in small groups with 2-3 children in each group.

Expected Outcomes

The study shows that the teachers spend a lot of energy to civilize the children’s bodies. Norms and social conventions are taught - on a large scale as rules and on a small scale as corrections of how to sit and how to move around. When it comes to cognitive learning the teachers very often use a recognizing pedagogic approach. But when it comes to bodily learning (civilizing processes) the teachers never recognize the pupils’ bodies. Instead they reprimand the body, correct the body and yells at the body. But there are still a lot of bodily underground activities (Corsaro 1997) going on - sometimes behind the back of the teacher and sometimes in front of the teacher. Especially some of the girls have developed a feeling for the game, an understanding of the minimal accepted modus, noise, intensity and duration of bodily activity which are not being interrupted or punished. The underground activities are not always under the ground. The forbidden bodily activities can be mediated by humor, charm and creative twisting, a glance or a smile showing that the child knows that (s)he is crossing the line. Understanding the bodily rules in the school is not a simple game. The simplest strategy is probably to follow the norms and rules but being able to play the game and sometimes crossing the accepted norms seems to have the advantage that you can distinguish you from the crowd and achieve a privileged position both among the peers and among the teachers.

References

Argyle, M. (1988). Bodily Communication. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Corsaro, W.A. (1997). The sociology of childhood. California: Pine Forge Press. Corsaro, W.A. (2009). Peer Culture. In J. Qvortrup, W.A Corsaro & M.S. Honig (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies, s. 301−315. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Elias, N. (1994). The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell. Emerson, R.M.; Fretz, R.I. & Shaw, L.L. (2011). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. The University of Chicago Press. Gebauer, G. & Wulf, Ch. (1996) Mimesis. Culture, Art, Society. California University Press Gilliam, L. (2014). Narrow social norms in an inclusive school: Values, practices and consequences of the Danish school. In: Senri Ethnological Studies, Vol. 87, p. 38-56. Gilliam, L. & Gulløv, E. (2012). Civiliserende institutioner. Om idealer og distinktioner i opdragelse. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Gilliam, L. & Gulløv, E. (2014). Making Children 'Social': Civilizing Institutions in the Danish Welfare State. In Human Figurations, Vol. 3, Nr. 1, p. 1-15. Goffman, E. (1963): Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. London: Free Press. Gulløv, E. & Højlund, S. (2003). Feltarbejde blandt børn. [Field note among Children] Gyldendal. Sibley, B.A. & Etnier, J.L. (2003). The relationship between physical activity and cognition in children: A meta-analysis. In: Pediatric Exercise Science. 15. Pp. 243-256. Sommer, D.; Samuelsson, I.P. & Hundeide, K. (2010). Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Theory and Practice. Springer. Spradley, J.P. (1980). Participant Observation. Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Author Information

Jens-Ole Jensen (presenting / submitting)

VIA University College

Risskov

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