Active children and quiet bodies wanted!

Active children and quiet bodies wanted! A new school law was implemented in the Danish primary and secondary school system from August 2014. The main purpose of the law is to: – challenge all pupils to become as skilled as possible, – lower the consequences of social background in order to achieve better results and – strengthen the confidence to and the wellbeing in the school. These objectives should among other initiatives be achieved by a longer and more diversified school day. Physical activities and movements have been seen as an important tool to create more varied forms of teaching. Research indicates that there is a correlation between physical activity and cognitive learning. In order to improve the pupils’ health, cognitive learning and wellbeing all pupils from grade 0-9 must have at least 45 minutes of physical activity and movements in average every day. Next to physical education the physical activities and movements should be integrated in the academic subjects as active teaching and brain breaks etc. or as organized activities during the extended school day. By doing fieldwork and interviewing pupils from grade 0-2 the study investigate how these changes are experienced from a child perspective (Sommer et al. 2010). The presentation will focus on the pupils lived bodily experiences with bodily activities within the school in order to produce knowledge on increased physical activity and movements’ contribution to the pupils’ wellbeing. The analyses indicates that even the teachers do a lot of effort to civilize their bodies the pupils don’t care and know how to avoid troubles – at least most of the times. References Elias, N. (1994). The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell. Sommer, D.; Samuelsson, I.P. & Hundeide, K. (2010). Child Perspectives and Children’s Perspectives in Theory and Practice. Springer.