Movement Freedom and how it may be taught in Physical Education (PE)

As part of his proposal for a "more aggressive approach for imbuing physical education (PE) with meaning", Kretchmar (2000, 24) suggests "[a] new appreciation for the value of freedom". He clarifies that PE must provide students the liberty to be “an author rather than a reactor”, because such liberty accompanies many of the most meaningful experiences that human beings have. Student's movement freedom thus seems to be an important issue if students are to find PE activities personally meaningful.
Therefore, with this study, we are interested in examining methods of teaching toward movement freedom.
In our examination, we draw on Gert Biesta’s concepts of subjectification and world-centered-education (2020; 2022). With his concept of subjectification, Biesta suggests that the student’s freedom is an existential matter and about having the possibility of embracing or resisting what the teacher and the teachings are trying to offer the students. Thus, emancipatory teaching is about giving the students a chance at existing as subjects, but also denying them the satisfaction of being mere passive recipients of the teaching content. Furthermore, Biesta suggests that emancipatory teaching should be world-centered rather than student-centered or curriculum-centered. Accordingly, such teachings should take place in what Biesta calls “the difficult middle ground” (Biesta, 2020, p. 98), i.e. the delicate balancing act between pushing for one's initiatives to come through and at the same time adapting to the initiatives of others and the world. In this perspective, freedom is not only a matter of getting what you want, but also about being giving the unexpected, being surprised and being exposed to what the world has to offer (Biesta, 2021,97)
Biesta suggests that emancipatory teaching is not first and foremost achieved via instructions and explanations, but a matter of pointing (Biesta, 2021, 75-82), touching and sensing (Biesta, 2021,94-95). However, Biesta's general educational considerations only provide brief descriptions of how emancipatory teaching may be based on the direct sensorial ‘dialogue’ between the participants’ bodies that is prior to their reflection and conscious control. We suggest that further references to the role of the body subject and intersubjectivity are needed particularly when examining and trying to understand the possibilities for student freedom in connection with PE.
The enactive approach (De Jaegher & Di Paolo 2007; Fuchs & De Jaegher 2009) to intersubjectivity shows that interactions between humans may be co-regulated at the level of interaction dynamics which therefore takes on an autonomous organization, without the autonomy of the individuals participating in the interaction is destroyed in the process (De Jaegher & Di Paolo 2007, p. 493). In this way, a necessary tension between the individual participants on the one hand and the interaction as a process on the other is highlighted. Based on we would like to discuss how the enactive approach may help further developing our understanding of how dialogues of movements in-betweens PE-educators and students may summon students to voluntarily opening up to the world of PE.