Dialogical Exchanges: Convention Refugee Youth And Creative Movement Programming (original) (raw)
Related papers
Drumming and dancing: Creative Movement for Convention refugee youth in a physical activity space
Sport, Education and Society, 2019
Convention refugees are individuals who have fled their home countries due to a substantiated fear of persecution. As a consequence, many young Convention refugees are disconnected from their environment as they enter schools and communities and are often misunderstood in their new country due to cultural barriers. Given the universality of human movement, the physical activity setting can be an important space through which acculturation can be fostered. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to capture the nuances and experiences of 17 Convention refugees engaged in a community program. Significant moments, at the point of data saturation, were validated through observations, ethnographic interviews, artifacts and participant observations. The process of data analysis produced four themes: (a) embodied space (b) proxemics, (c) collective sharing (d) rhythm. Through triangulation, the appearances of creative movements were captured in tandem with rhythm, thus recording individual expressions within a collective space [Paulson, S. (2011). The use of ethnography and narrative interviews in a study of ‘cultures of dance’. Journal of health psychology, 16(1), 148–157]. The exploration of cultural and situational frames through drumming and movement can attempt to build an emotional bridge to support acculturation. Creative movement is a culturally relevant way to engage individuals in dialogue by asking them to tell us what they know to be moments of truth [Oliver, K. L. (1998). A journey into narrative analysis: A methodology for discovering meanings. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 17, 244–259]. This collective sharing lends itself to physical activity environments where there are opportunities to foster creativity, encourage intersectional identity, and support Convention refugee acculturation.
Everyday Dance Narratives: Visual Biography and Creative Movement Pedagogies with Refugee Youth
Journal of Dance Education, 2021
This practice-based article illustrates how dance education pedagogies can help refugee youth adjust to new settings. To support refugee youth in narrating aspects of belonging in their everyday lives, this article offers pedagogies for creative movement that unfold through multiple stages. As developed in the first author’s dissertation study and shared here, the teaching exercise includes walk stories, storyboarding, still frames, sequencing, music, props, and dance. The different elements come together into visual autobiographical narrations, or finales of created movement. By creating movement that is meaningful, children and youth are able to shape curricula in relevant ways that respond to and reclaim their lived experiences. Significantly, this pedagogical exercise offers opportunities for children and youth to explore local communities through creative movement.
Autobiographical narrative inquiry into movement and physical education: The beginning of a journey
2014
In this paper we use autobiographical narrative inquiry to examine the temporality, place and sociality of our own diverse 'educative' movement experiences as children, students, and physical education teachers. Through this inquiry we reflect on how these past 'educative' experiences have shaped our pedagogies as physical education teacher educators. We speak to the tension involved in being awake to our own stories that fit neatly into the dominant stories of physical education. Lastly, we illustrate how this inquiry process has helped us to begin to think more deeply about the stories on the margin, and to be attentive to how we might create spaces in our physical education teacher education classes to think about how movement, sport, and physical activity fit into those student's lives and interact with the dominant discourses of physical education. Résumé Nous avons utilisé une approche de recherche d'autobiographie narrative pour examiner la temporalité, le rôle et le caractère social de nos diverses expériences « éducatives » de mouvement comme enfants, élèves et enseignants d'éducation physique. Cette approche nous permet de réfléchir aux répercussions de ces expériences « éducatives » passées sur nos pédagogies de formateurs d'enseignants en éducation physique. Nous abordons les tensions créées par le fait d'être conscients que nos propres histoires s'insèrent très nettement dans les histoires dominantes en éducation physique En dernier lieu, nous expliquons en quoi l'approche de recherche favorise une réflexion profonde sur les histoires marginales. Nous expliquons également comment l'approche nous amène à être plus attentifs à créer des espaces de discussion, dans nos cours de formation des enseignants d'éducation physique, sur la place qu'occupent le mouvement, le sport et l'activité physique dans la vie de nos étudiants et sur les interactions entre ces notions (mouvement, sport et activité physique) et les discours dominants en éducation physique.
Journal of Teaching Physical Education, 2016
Purpose:To explore a conceptual shift from mechanism, the dominant ‘body-as-machine’ (Tinning, 2010) paradigm, to vitalism, the philosophical phenomenological tenets of physical literacy (Whitehead, 2010) upon which the curriculum of physical education in Canada is based, within the context of an alternative physical education program.Method:A motion-sensitive phenomenological approach (Lloyd & Smith, 2006b; 2015), conceptually framed by the Function2Flow (F2F) model, was conducted with a sample of N = 153 students from seven different schools in Ottawa (Canada) who booked the JungleSport climbing program of their own accord. Sources of information included phenomenological observations, small group interviews, and journal entries. Exemplars of two in depth student experiences are featured in this article.Results & Discussion:The phenomenological analysis of the climbing experiences, in addition to the F2F curriculum support tools that were developed, provide practical and philosoph...
2019
As female youth from refugee backgrounds are forced to migrate and resettle, they face unique challenges not often addressed by their host community. Participating in physical activity (PA), however, may pave a pathway to healthy resettlement. Nine Burmese females from refugee backgrounds participated in semistructured interviews and discussed their experiences in sport and physical education and how those experiences relate to their sense of belonging, autonomy, and relationships, as well as their ability to adapt. Participants then completed a photovoice task where they photographed highlights and challenges they have faced in PA. Photographs were analyzed and discussed in a followup interview. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Resulting dimensions such as sport incompetence, growth mindset, importance of autonomy and choice, and desired peer relationships support Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory. Practical implications for PE te...
2010
The purpose of this study was to work with a group of disengaged teenage girls to understand and help them transform their self-identified barriers to their physical education engagement and physical activity participation. This study was premised on a conviction that young people have unique perspectives on learning and life, that their voices warrant not only to be heard but to be acted on, and that these young people (disengaged teenage girls in this case) should be partners in any efforts at reimagining physical education.
Exploring a pedagogy for meaning-making in physical education
European Physical Education Review, 2018
This paper responds to calls for an exploration into pedagogies of meaning within physical education. Developing meaningful educational experiences in physical education for lifelong movement involves supporting students to explore their personal experiences in movement and to use these to derive a greater understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. Following a brief overview of the role of meaning-making in physical education, a case study is offered as a practical example for how reflection can be utilised to explore movement as meaningful. The case study presents a series of steps that provide detail about a meaning-making process undertaken during a physical education class. Data suggest that setting aside time for reflection and the generation of rich movement narratives aligned to a ‘first rush of movement’, can shed light on what students find meaningful ‘in’ movement in ways that link physical education to experiences across varying social and environmental...
Transformative pedagogies for challenging body culture in physical education
2016
Advocacies for forms of critical pedagogy in and through physical education appeared in the 1970s and steadily gained momentum through the 1980s and 1990s, but the translation of this early advocacy into practice that could lead to social change was not easily attained. We provide a brief account of the historical context for this topic, in which we note some of the main theoretical approaches to conceptualising the body, its social construction and the experience of embodiment in physical education. We also consider issues in work on the body in physical education since the 1980s with a particular emphasis on more recent trends. We focus, in particular, on the emerging line of research centred on activist approaches to working with girls in physical education as an example of the successful translation of advocacy into practice that includes pedagogies of embodiment as integral to new forms of physical education. We conclude that the example of activist work with girls in physical ...
Moving Adapted Physical Activity: The Possibilities of Arts-Based Research
Where is the moving body in our written bodies of work? How might we articulate truly unspeakable and deeply moving moments of understanding? In what ways can we reflect and honor the knowledge of those who do not use academic words, English words, or any words at all? How might art move us to answer these questions differently—and more importantly, to ask different questions? These lines of inquiry have driven arts-based research movements within many fields including nursing, medicine, and education. In this article, we explore existing and potential uses of arts in adapted physical activity research and practice. We weave theoretical explora- tion, artistic engagement, and our personal experiences as research- ers, practitioners and disabled movers. We do so in order to demonstrate how artistic epistemologies can enrich and expand our inquiry, understanding, and engagement in adapted physical activity.
Photography as a pedagogical tool for shedding light on ‘bodies-at-risk’ in physical culture
Visual Studies, 2012
In Western countries, given current global public health imperatives around obesity, the lack of engagement with and compliance to normative health-related physical cultures is a concern for young people of ethnic minority backgrounds (particularly females) and low socioeconomic class. These groups represent cohorts of young people more likely to be physically inactive and unhealthy compared to other groups, and thus are framed as 'bodies-at-risk' or portrayed as a 'problem' by neoliberal projects of the body in public health. What remains hidden in the enterprise of the fit body produced by a Western physical culture of healthism, however, is how sport and physical and health education in schools continue to reproduce inequalities of gender and race/ethnicity that heavily bear upon some young people's bodies in local sites. To problematise the body-at-risk discourse, this visual participatory ethnographic research conducted in inner-city, state-funded schools in the Midlands region of the UK, aimed to reveal the visual dimensions of embodiment as expressed by young people of different ethnic backgrounds in the local contexts of their lives. Student-researchers used digital cameras to create visual diaries entitled Moving in My World to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas, and to 'speak for themselves' about their knowledge of their own bodies, sharing their embodiments. What moving in their worlds meant to young people varied significantly based on differences of cultural background, gender negotiations and opportunities for, and choices in, their engagement with physical activity. The student-researchers' visual diaries captured a heterogeneity of meanings about the moving body that young people construct and represent in their creation of the hybrid physical cultures of their daily lives.