Background: Physical education (PE) has been traditionally considered as a practical and 'hands-on' subject in schools, where close proximity and physical contact is common, particularly in Spain which has a high proximity culture. Significantly, the delivery of PE has changed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and this brings significant consequences for preservice PE teachers. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to explore the changes of PE during Covid-19 and the effects on pre-service teachers. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were used to produce data with a group of 12 preservice PE teachers from Spain (four women and eight men) who were undertaking their practicum in PE when the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed in Spain [14 March 2020]. Dredging was used as an analytical technique to identify the relations and affects that comprised assemblages of bodies, things and social formations. Findings: Results suggest that preservice teachers are having difficulties in re-assembling PE in the age of Covid-19, and that this produces the affects of precarity, fear and insecurity. Furthermore, the PE reassemblage also results in a shift of pedagogical affects. The participants particularly struggled to think on a PE assemblage that does not include the affect of physical encounters with their students. The new assemblage of PE also included encounters with digital technologies, which allowed for particular openings and closings for a re-alignment into the shifted PE. Conclusions: Pre-service teachers were unfamiliar with the way the PE assemblage has shifted, and this shifting affected their ability to produce affects in the 'new PE'. The new PE assemblage leads to a significant change in the culture of PE teaching in Spain, where physical contact between teachers and students was previously normal and taken for granted.
The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in brain activity in various types of throwing games by making encephalographic records. Three conditions of throwing games were compared looking for significant differences (simple throwing, throwing to a goal, and simultaneous throwing with another player). After signal processing, power spectral densities were compared through variance analysis (p ≤ 0.001). Significant differences were found especially in high-beta oscillations (22–30 Hz). “Goal” and “Simultaneous” throwing conditions show significantly higher values than those shown for throws without opponent. This can be explained by the higher demand for motor control and the higher arousal in competition situations. On the other hand, the high-beta records of the “Goal” condition are significantly higher than those of the “Simultaneous” throwing, which could be understood from the association of the beta waves with decision-making processes. These results support the difference in brain activity during similar games. This has several implications: opening up a path to study the effects of each specific game on brain activity and calling into question the transfer of research findings on animal play to all types of human play.
Covid-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, and the world has witnessed significant changes since then. Spain has been forced to go into extreme lockdown, cancelling all school classes and outdoor activities for children, which may have significant consequences on young people. This paper explores how young children have experienced lockdown as a consequence of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and what they think about their future lives after Covid-19. Data were collected from 73 students aged from 7 to 9 years old, using participant-produced drawings and short questions with children’s and parents’ descriptive comments. We used a children’s rights perspective and the Freirean approach of a pedagogy of love and hope to analyse the data. Results suggest that participants have been through significant changes in their routines, and that what they miss most from their lives before Covid-19 is playing outdoors with their friends and visiting their grandparents. To our knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind in investigating how the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced the ways that children lived during pandemic and its possible implications for their futures.
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