Analysing students’ experience of bodily learning – an autoethnographic study of the challenges and opportunities in researching bodily learning in own teaching practice1

Abstract

This article explores the challenges and opportunities in trying to capture students’ experience of bodily learning based on own teaching practice in teacher education. Applying a sensory autoethnographic approach, I study my bodily and emotional experience during the analytical process investigating my students’ experience of bodily learning as part of their education in becoming teachers of physical education. I ask the following research questions: What was my bodily and emotional perception of analysing the students’ experience of bodily learning? How can these bodily and emotional experiences illuminate the challenges and opportunities in researching students’ experience of bodily learning in own teaching practice? In analysing the reflection notes through the concepts of embodied affectivity, embodied interaffectivity and body memory, this study shows that analysing students’ experience of bodily learning from own teaching practice illuminates various dilemmas. First, my body memories of being in the same situation the students referred to, reactivated my memories of being the teacher educator in the same situation. Second, conducting a thematic analysis excluded dimensions of the students’ experience of bodily learning. Third, a shared emotional approach enabled me to capture the students’ experience of bodily learning in my own teaching practice.