Embodiment and embodied learning have emerged as significant topics in physical education and sport pedagogy over the last couple of decades. As a consequence, the pedagogical work done on, with and through the body has garnered research interest. A recent review of the literature on pedagogies of embodiment in physical education (Aartun et al., 2020) reported two thematic findings that characterized this literature: (i) enabling critical reflections and (ii) exploring (new) movements. Pedagogies of embodiment thus span the spectrum of pedagogical work concerning embodiment, from critical reflections on the social construction of the body to lived, embodied experiences of movement.

Research taking the latter approach to pedagogies of embodiment has for instance looked into how teachers can help students to notice, pay attention to and language one's own body as means towards developing movement capabilities and how experiences of enjoyment and meaningfulness are connected to movement learning and valuing physical activity (e.g. Lambert, 2020). Also, Aartun and colleagues found that exploring new movements could be a means towards ends such as developing trust within a group, more democratic forms of participation in PE as well as to challeng stereotypical ideas of movement cultures.

Within teacher education, there is a line of research on embodied learning and embodiment that explores how PETE can be conceptualized differently from more traditional and dualistic conceptions of the body in movement. Lambert (2020) advocated a re-conceptualization of PE and PETE by asking what an embodied form of PE and PETE might look like. By drawing on the work of P.J. Arnold, Lambert articulates the core of PE and PETE as "thinking ‘in’ movement (mind); intention ‘in’ movement (body); sensing ‘in’ movement (pleasure); sharing ‘in’ movement (other)" (p. 162). Nyberg, Backman and Larsson (2020) explored the meaning of movement capability for students in PETE and found four qualitatively different ways of experiencing movement capability: being able to move in order to achieve certain purposes, being able to iterate movements, experiencing various degrees of difference and aspects of moving and sensing one's own movement. Thus, both conceptually (Lambert, 2020) and empirically (Nyberg et al., 2020) the notion of exploring movements as a part of PETE have begun to be investigated. The purpose of this studyis to explore how PETE students experience learning new movements and to discuss the implications of these experiences for pedagogies of embodiment in PETE.

The theoretical perspective we draw on is Richard Shusterman's philosophy of somaesthetics, which concerns "the body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning" (Shusterman, 2012, p. 27). In particular, there are two concepts from Shusterman’s rich vein of writing that we tap into, namely pragmatic somaesthetics and _eeling better. More specifically, we are interested in the performative aspect of pragmatic somaesthetics, which “focus primarily on building strength, health, or skill, disciplines such as weightlifting, athletics, and martial arts” (p. 16). Within this category, Shusterman makes a further distinction between practices that are aimed at external appearance, such as the display of strength or skill, and practices that aim at inner experience. The latter concerns the notion of feeling better. The ambiguity of the notion is intended since it covers both the improvement of becoming more acutely perceptive of one’s inner experience of moving as well as heightening our satisfaction with being in movement.

For the purpose of this study, we have followed a group of general teacher education students in a semester long physical education course. While ten students voluntarily agreed to join the project, five students completed all the data generation activities and are included in our data analysis. We have generated and analyzed three different kinds of data material from the students: i) a written story about "a good physical education lesson" from the first day of the semester, ii) a logbook from a project about alternative movement activities, and iii) individual interviews conducted after the semester had ended. The logbook was generated over a period of six weeks where students practised one self-selected alternative movement activity, which was one of the topics that the physical education course covered. During the six weeks, students could choose to explore one activity which they had limited experience with. The students were encouraged to find resources for learning, such as instructional videos, to practice together with other students , and to use video films of their own practicing. The students were also writing a logbook to support and document their learning process. They were given prompts such as how they used video, whether they preferred practising alone or in a group, and questions about the inner experience of movement, their feelings and kinesthetic experiences (Shusterman, 2008). The process of data analysis was guided by three questions concerning (i) what were the students own experiences with and pre-conceived ideas of teaching PE? (ii) how did the students experience working with pedagogies of embodiment through the PETE programme? (iii) what are the implications of these experiences for pedagogies of embodiment in PETE? The first and second author met regularly to discuss their individual interpretation of the data and developed jointly the themes that make up the results of this paper. The third author contributed in the final analysis and discussions related to the third analytical question. The project was guided by the requirements of Norwegian Social Science Data Services as well as the university’s requirements for research ethics and storage of sensitive data. While we acknowledge the challenges of the dual role as both researching and teaching in the program, we also want to point out that the first author, who led the data generation activities, did not have any other role in the course in terms of teaching and assessing the students.

The students' ideas about and experiences with physical education are to some extent fairly traditional in that they emphasis the importance of class management, high levels of activity and enjoyment as characteristics of a good physical education lesson. They are also concerned with issues of inclusiveness. In the analysis, we got interested in how the students used "emotion-words" like fun, motivation and enjoyment. In addition to these positive notions, the students also expressed having experienced taking part in physical education as also being embarrassing, awkward and to some extent frightning. These experiences with physical education serves as an important backdrop to the analysis of the students' experiences with learning a new movement during the physical education course. More specifically, our assumption is that who the students are and what they have experienced prior to entering PETE, influence what they can learn through and about pedagogies of embodiment. We organize this main part of the findings in three topics (this part of the analysis is being carried out at to moment of writing the ECER-abstract): "it is fun and scary", which captures the dual experience of practising a new movement activity. In particular, the social aspect of fear (i.e. the fear of failing in front other students) will be highlighted. Second, "feeling competent" is an important topic in the analysis in the sense that this feeling can be analyzed as a substitute or replacement of learning. Finally, "to see and be seen" is a topic that covers how students experience the use of video filming as a part of their learning process. These findings will be discussed and elaborated on in light of Shusterman's philosophy of somaesthetics.

Aartun, I., Walseth, K., Standal, Ø. F., & Kirk, D. (2022). Pedagogies of embodiment in physical education – a literature review. Sport, Education and Society, 27(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2020.1821182 Lambert, K. (2020). Re-conceptualizing embodied pedagogies in physical education by creating pre-text vignettes to trigger pleasure ‘in’ movement. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 25(2), 154–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2019.1700496 Nyberg, G., Backman, E., & Larsson, H. (2020). Exploring the meaning of movement capability in physical education teacher education through student voices. European Physical Education Review, 26(1), 144–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356336x1984108 Shusterman, R. (2012). Thinking through the body: Essays in somaesthetics. Cambridge University Press.