Joy, fear and resignation: investigating emotions in physical education using a symbolic interactionist approach

Emotional dimensions of physical education have garnered attention fromscholars in the last two decades. Many scholars claim that emotionssignificantly affect learning and that positive emotions such as joy andpleasure are necessary for continued participation in movementactivities beyond the classroom. Much of the existing literature,however, is based on the idea that emotions comprise internal mentalstates that are retrospectively oriented. In the current paper, we workwith alternative principles that can create new understandings of theaffective dimensions of PE and specifically, movement learning. We drawon symbolic interactionist principles, framing emotions as multimodalcommunicative resources that are performed in social contexts. Fromthis perspective, we demonstrate how emotions: (1) can be investigatedas part of the production of broader sequences of pedagogical actionand (2) relate to issues of knowledge, identity and authority. We presentobservational material generated with PE teacher education students asthey develop movement capability. We focus on three interactionalepisodes in which fear, joy and resignation are performed by studentsinteracting with either peers or an observing researcher. In each case,we demonstrate how emotions: affiliate or dis-affiliate the actor with themovement knowledge in focus, index an institutionally recognizableidentity and influence the subsequent actions of the participants in theinteractional sequence. The key thesis developed in the paper is that assymbolic resources, emotions have important consequences for actorswithin movement learning environments. The paper is concluded withreflections on the implications of the approach for practitioners alongwith a consideration of questions in need of further scientific attention.