The Importance of Physical Activity in the Normative Development of Mental Body Representations during Adolescence.

How Three Adolescent Girls Used Martial Arts to Make Meaning in a Pandemic

“…At first glance, a martial arts studio might seem an odd place to look at literacies and meaning making, particularly when one considers that most researchers of martial arts have used quantitative methods to understand ways that such training can improve the health and well‐being of youth (Majed et al, 2021; Mirucka & Kisielewska, 2019; Rassovsky et al (2019); Ruiz‐Ariza et al, 2021); provide behavioral rehabilitation for youth deemed “at risk” (Lafuente et al, 2021; Lotfian et al, 2011; Twemlow & Sacco, 1998; Zivin et al, 2001); and enhance the self‐esteem and self‐regulation skills of young people (Goldsmith, 2013; Kurian et al, 1994; Nakonechnyi & Galan, 2017; Weiser et al, 1995). Yet, as the “terrain of communication changes in profound ways” (Jewitt, 2008, p. 241), it behooves us to see how that profundity is enacted in spaces where adolescents are “saturated with affect and emotion” (Leander & Boldt, 2012, p. 22) as they engage in embodied, multimodal orchestrations of literacies that are both received and transformed, sometimes all at once.…”