ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an exposition and critique of constructivist and situated approaches to movement learning. It also provides an introduction to cultural and historical activity theory and its possible uses in physical education research on learning. Constructivist and situated approaches seek to move beyond individualist and decontextualized forms of learning that seem to be promoted by physical education-as-sports-techniques, i.e. a molecuralized approach to the acquisition of skill in physical education, where a complex movement is broken into smaller and smaller parts, the techniques taught and practised separately and then (ideally) re-assembled. In contrast, constructivist approaches emphasise the agentic nature of movement learning, as an active process of making sense of new experiences in a way that is transformative of previous experiences rather than additive. Situated approaches show that learner engagement with new movements takes place in and is constituted by a number of contexts, such as the immediate physical-perceptual environment, but also in the social-interactive and institutional-cultural dimensions of context. Situated learning is also understood according to Lave & Wenger’s ground-breaking work on legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice (CoP). The chapter concludes with a brief account of activity theory and provides an illustration of its key features applied to an Activist approach to working with adolescent girls.
