Exploring the pedagogical potential of re-conceptualising physical activity as an eventful process of ecological sensibility

At a time of global destabilisation, educational fields are called to rethink how physical activity can contribute to sustainable and ecologically just futures. New materialist perspectives to education acknowledge that human activity is co-emergent with its spatio-temporal milieux and help us to conceive sustainability as an evolving practice of becoming active in the world. From a socio-pedagogical standpoint, this view foregrounds learning as an embodied, relational and ethical process, where being active means engaging with the world’s ecological complexity. This article explores how these philosophical ideas can enrich the aims and practices of social pedagogy, particularly in nurturing young people’s ecological sensibility and collective responsibility. The concepts of physical activity and sustainability are ‘plugged in’ with new materialist ideas to reconfigure our thinking about physical activity as an eventful process of ecological sensibility. In doing so, social pedagogy is positioned as a field that can cultivate young people’s ‘response-ability’ through experiential, affective and community-based engagements with physical activity. The article first introduces process ontology as a foundational idea for rethinking relations occurring between as well as within complex, more-than-human systems. It then examines physical activity as a socio-pedagogical event of relational coexistence, finally presenting the concept of aesthetic sustainability to explore how time and tradition can function as pedagogical resources that can connect cultural continuity with ecological becoming. Ultimately, this article invites educators and social pedagogues to foster practices that expand youth and community capacities for sustainable, embodied and affectively attuned ways of living.