Decades of previous research has addressed the need for changes in physical education where embodied experiences and learning are emphasized (Wrench and Garrett 2015; Wright 2000). Accordingly, we align with the ongoing call for a ‘corporeal turn’ (Smith 2007, 66) in physical education, towards a more holistic understanding of learning and experience as embodied and emplaced (Pink 2011). The concept of embodiment has roots in phenomenological philosophy. As such, understanding the body as the ground of subjective experiences (Standal 2020) deconstructs the notion of a mind/body divide. The theory of emplaced learning involves considering embodied learning as always embedded in the world around us, which we always interact with (Pink 2011).

Pleasure, enjoyment, and meaningful experiences are significant for the individual’s relationship to their own body and for their desire for further participation in physical activity (Wellard 2012; Beni, Fletcher, and Ní Chróinín 2017). Siedentop considered playful activities as ‘important forms of inherently meaningful human experience’ (1972, 209). The fact that many pupils struggle in ‘gaining a love of movement’ (Pringle 2010, 130) is a reason why further research about what pupils experience as pleasurable and meaningful is needed. Exploring the pupils’ embodied and emplaced experiences may lead to insights around what they learn in physical education. Such insights may contribute to create pedagogies where meaningful and pleasurable learning experiences are educational goals (Lambert 2020; Pringle 2010; Wellard 2012). Building on this, we ask whether a pedagogy that gives room for playfulness may be a starting point for physical education being perceived as more meaningful and pleasurable.

In this presentation I present empirical findings from a sensory ethnography that aims to explore pupils’ playfulness and their pleasurable experiences in physical education. The research question is ‘How do pupils create possibilities for pleasure in physical education by being playful and responsive to their environment, and what opportunities for learning are afforded?’

To interpret how possibilities for pleasure are created, we draw upon phenomenological perspectives on playfulness (Hyland 1977) and affordances (Gibson 1986). Hyland proposes a phenomenological stance on play, which he operationalizes as responsive openness (Hyland 1977). Openness involves being aware of, and open to, the possibilities that arise in your environment. Responsiveness is explained as the ability to act on the possibilities that emerge through the activity. The concept of affordances (Gibson 1986) can be described as how characteristics of the physical environment encourage action. Affordances are understood as the possibilities that emerge from our interaction with our environment, responsive openness can be described as the way in which we respond to such affordances.

Sensory ethnography is a way of doing ethnography ‘that takes as its starting point the multisensoriality of experience, perception, knowing and practice’ (Pink 2015, xi). Sensory ethnography is not a study of the senses, rather what we get access to through studying how and what the participants see, hear, smell, feel and taste. The study occurred in one 10th grade class, for a 5month semester in an urban school in Oslo, Norway. 23 pupils (15 female, 8 males; 14-16 years) participated in the study. Author 1 was a participant observer in all physical education lessons (36 lessons, 54 hours) and collected data via fieldnotes (100 pages) and semi-structured interviews (17 pupils, average 23 minutes per interview). Observation focused on recording the pupils’ action (and inaction), body language, engagement, reactions to sensory perceptions, responses to other’s sensory perceptions, what they seemed to like and dislike. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by Author 1 and a research assistant. The interviews revolved around the participants’ experiences from the activities that Author 1 had participated in. Interviews therefore involved an opportunity to validate the observations and preliminary findings. Author 1 chose to be an active participant observer and to take on the role of a pupil (as best as they could) as an attempt to be as close as possible to the pupils’ embodied and emplaced experiences. To minimize the impact on the research, Author 1 always let pupils take the lead and be the initiators of activity. Author 1 focused on asking open, descriptive questions so that the pupils could decide what they wanted to share. Still, we acknowledge and highlight that no researcher is ever neutral, and the presence is noticed and felt by the participants. During the interpretation process, we have followed what Pink (2021) calls the ethnographic hunch. This can be described as the moments in research when we encounter something ‘that deepens what I think I know, sparks an ethnographic-theoretical dialogue, turns around my thinking, and creates a stand of investigation through my research, analysis, or both’ (Pink 2021, 30). We have combined the meaning making of our ethnographic hunch with an abductive approach to data analysis (Tavory and Timmermans 2014). We alternated between inductively exploring the ethnographic hunches (Pink 2021), inductively and collectively coded the data (Eggebø 2020) and deductively coding the data based on the various theoretical lenses previously presented.

Findings and conclusion During the fieldwork, Author 1 observed that in many lessons, there seemed to be little engagement, motivation, and enjoyment. This awareness sparked a hunch which initiated further investigation of where, when, what, who and why the feeling of indifference occurred. This resulted in the observation of some distinct shifts in the pupils’ moods which appeared occasionally in lessons as glimpses of joy, engagement, and excitement. An abductive analytic process materialized a pattern where the pupils seemed to be bored by many of the teacher-given tasks, and that they experienced (more) pleasure in movement when they themselves actively changed the tasks towards more playful variants. An extract from the field notes may describe such a change: The pupils seemed bored during an outdoor warm up task before parkour. They were supposed to walk on hands and feet, playing Tag, but the effort was low. Suddenly, the energy shifted as they started rolling down a grassy hill. They laughed and ran up to roll again several times. The shifts towards more playful and pleasurable activities did not appear to be the result of the pupils’ mental reflections, considerations, and discussions. Rather, pleasure seemed to emerge because of their playful response to the affordances in the landscape. Thus, new opportunities for embodied and emplaced learning experiences were created. Findings from our study suggest that playfulness may contribute to forming a positive cycle. Playfulness may lead to pleasurable experiences, which can create positive anticipations for future activity. In this way, previous pleasurable experiences may contribute to emplaced learning like movement exploration and skill acquisition. Expanding the range of movements may enable increased awareness of the affordances the environment offers, and thus create new opportunities for playfulness (and pleasure).

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