Environmental attunement in health, sport and physical education

Abstract

This Special Issue on environmental attunement introduces seven papers that engage with a range of different insights and practices of natureculture and embodied connections to place across health, sport and physical education. We have organised the papers into three themes that explore possibilities for: (i) notions of the environment and 'nature' in research and practice; (ii) possibilities and challenges of translating environment, sustainability and 'nature' from policy and curriculum documents into practice; and (iii) philosophical and theoretical links to emplaced and embodied learningpast-present-future. These are by no means exclusive themes and readers will recognise other patterns of theoretical and empirical possibility as well as important geographical and contextual nuances that need to be explored further. Because of this, we hope that this collection inspires further submissions via an extended call for papers that engage with the challenges and the possibilities of how we might approach the complex environmental, ecological, political and cultural factors that shape health, sport and physical education in current times.

Sustainability Awareness of In-Service Physical Education Teachers

“…For example, concerning the environmental dimension, the characteristics of Physical Education facilitate the creation of an ideal context to promote environmental care [19][20][21]. This is achieved through actions such as promoting active commuting to school and working on sports content in natural environments such as orienteering or climbing, complemented by transversal activities in natural environments.…”

Environmental Education in Initial Training: Effects of a Physical Activities and Sports in the Natural Environment Program for Sustainable Development

“…According to these authors, the longer students stay in the natural environment, the greater acquired knowledge and sensitivity to care for the natural environment developed. Likewise, this reasoning can be related to the study by Welch et al (2021) , who detected a difference in students who had taken a subject related to EE as part of the study plan at one of the universities. These students showed greater environmental knowledge, more responsible attitudes toward the environment and a more respectful behavior.…”

“…The authors considered this was a consequence of the fact that the attitude toward the environment depends on feelings and values, as well as factual knowledge. However, other studies challenge this theory, as they show that greater knowledge produces greater interest, so this could generate a change in attitude toward the environment ( Welch et al, 2021 ). It has not been possible to confirm whether these differences based on age, sex or educational profile can be attributed to other factors such as the influence of the educational programs that students had carried out in the previous educational stages, the experiences promoted by the family or their belonging to sports clubs.…”

Assemblage Thinking as Attunement to Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Youth Sport Research

“…Capitalism's immense productivity has self-destruction as its only inevitable outcome and if left unhinged, it will continue to racialise and sexualise to toxifying effects through the justified necessity of doing business (Saldanha, 2020). Youth sport researchers can take active measures to account for capitalism's relentless exploitative tendencies by putting forth transformative formulations of youth sport (e.g., Welch et al, 2021) that resist instant capture from capitalistic forces. For example, researchers should consider youth sport's sizable carbon footprint, as play (e.g., games, tournaments) coalesces actants (e.g., uniforms, equipment, hotels, food, transportation) that produce considerable emissions and increase landfill footprints worldwide (Thorpe et al, 2021).…”