The Use of Alternative Texts in Physical Education

Abstract

Body and mind must be seen as inseparable in physical education; movement and activity as well as thinking and feeling should be part of students' lives. By expanding the definition of text to include a variety of printed, visual, oral, electronic, and other types of texts, physical education teachers can incorporate literacy activities to enhance affective and cognitive transactions during physical education. These activities can also make connections to other subject areas, thereby promoting learning and making movement a meaningful part of daily living. In addition, these tenets of content literacy contribute to making physical education a mindful (thinking) and feeling discipline as well as an active living one. Under the umbrella of a content literacy philosophy, this article presents examples of several alternative texts (i.e., poetry, sculpture, picture) to use in physical education. It then discusses the use of such alternative texts and appropriate teaching strategies for building body image, providing outdoor education, and promoting the study of physical exertion.

The art of embodiment: auto-ethnographic portraits of two women's surgical traumas

“…Using the art of body biography (O'Donnell-Allen & Smagorinsky 1999; Underwood 1987), a visual and written life-size embodied portrait illustrating aspects of an individual's life, they work together and apart re-enacting past traumas into the currents of their present lives. These biographies, which feature embodied portrayals of their traumatic events, composed in variegations of mixed media, poetry and prose, find theoretical and practical support in the research of arts-based proponents (Rosenblatt 1986;Marlett & Gordon 2004;Sullivan 2000) and the psycho-educational work of Alfred Adler. As Maxine Greene (1991: 28) so aptly conveys, one vital way to understand the experience of an individual 'is to transmute it into some kind of content and to give that content form'.…”

“…Encouraged by McQuaide (1996) who believes that traumas are both crises and opportunities, we work in and around the visual and poetic openings of auto-ethnographic texts of our embodied stories. A collective of arts-based pioneers (Cowan & Albers 2006;Eisner 1992;Greene 1995;Marlett & Gordon 2004;Sullivan 2000) paves our way into an interpersonal context of inquiry given form by the bodywork of Underwood (1987) and O'Donnell-Allen & Smagorinsky (1999). As Rosenblatt (1970: 168) states, 'Many of the subtler potentialities of human feelings and behavior that could have been given common utterance in no other way are revealed and embodied in artistic form.…”

Inquiring Into the Possibilities of Multimodal Novel Study: Teacher Candidates Respond to Whirligig With Resolution Scrapbooks

“…Novels can play an important role in helping adolescents navigate the intense dramatic process of growing up (Brown, Higgins, & Paulsen, ; Eckstein, Rasmussen, & Wittschen, ). Pertinent research literature has recognized the value of using multiple modes of expressions to enhance and extend ways of teaching fiction in the secondary school English curriculum (Leland & Harste, ; Marlett & Gordon, ; Orzulak, ).…”