To Örebro University

Historically, physical education (PE) has embraced practices that promise an idealized scenario in terms of e.g moral and aesthetic development, and the building of national identity as in Ling gymnastics, or a healthy and fit population seeking to achieve national health objectives through exercise oriented programs (Kirk 2010, Tinning 2011). As Kirk and Tinning highlight, these practices are ideological and this presentation seeks to further explore the ideological workings of PE  with a particular focus on a more recent ‘seductive’ practice  – physical literacy.

In the presentation we draw on Glynos’s (2008) and Mårdh’s (2019) work on logics and ideology to explore the case of physical literacy, and to consider  what an approach that interrogates social,political and fantasmatic logics might reveal about PE practice. 

We begin with a brief overview of dominant PE practices, identifying the manner in which the logics of each practice has resulted in roads to closure and a movement towards ideology. Following this, we focus on physical literacy to investigate how this emerging practice might represent yet another road to closure. Here we provide illustrations from across the PE and sport community to identify the social and political logics that underpin this practice.

Specifically employing Glynos’ (2008) notion of beatific and horrific narratives , we then explore the sport, public health, and educative fantasmatic logics of physical literacy to reveal the shared ideological workings of this collection. Together, the logics show the increasing seduction of physical literacy and its operation as an all-inclusive grand narrative. In conclusion we discuss what is promised in the name of physical literacy and how its ever-expanding purview involves an over-investment in its beatific narratives regarding the physically literate citizen which, potentially, closes down opportunities to engage critically with this recent development in PE policy and practice.