ABSTRACT
The chapter clarifies how a transactional approach can inform movement learning analyses by providing a specific view of the relationship between bodies and environments. By emphasising classical pragmatism’s central ideas of experience (radical empiricism) and learning (the process of inquiry) two transactional principles are presented and discussed. Methodological challenges, such as how to deal with the individual and social as simultaneous and mutual, and how to handle learning as practical and embodied are discussed through previous empirical research. In doing so, the chapter explains how movement can be understood in term of what stands fast for participants in movement, which gaps they experience when they move, and what it means to create relations between old and new experiences. Through the use of the concepts stand fast, gap, and relation empirical research has gained detailed descriptions of movement learning, for example, how pupils navigate spatial-temporal conditions through movement, how pupils establish and maintain habits, the use aesthetic judgements to make sense of movement, or how young sailors gain balance and manoeuvrability in dinghy sailing. The chapter also highlights how transactional models can be used by practitioners in order to observe, understand and discuss ongoing movement learning in their own or others’ practices. These types of analyses can help learners to identify certain gaps, privilege specific standing fast moments and recognize when and which relations fulfil certain purposes.
