To Örebro University

Introduction: Exergames inspire participants to be physically active in order to play. Several scholars pay attention to that the games have become popular among young people and may lead to an attractive alternative for promoting a healthy, active lifestyles, not at least in school (Gao et al 2013, Ennis 2013). In Sweden, PE should offer a variety of movement activities and movement qualities. Interesting to explore is then if exergames can be seen as a teaching resource to learn different movement’s qualities?

Research question: With a new artifact that has been introduced in PE and new policy documents emphasising development of different movement qualities, this paper aims to explore students’ movement qualities when they use exergames in PE with support of Laban´s movement analysis (LMA) and socio-cultural learning theory.

Method: The empirical data include video-recordings from three PE lessons. The games offered were of three different characters, and the recorded material for this study includes a total of 24 events of sports games, fitness games and dance games. In the study, we are inspired by the LMA framework and explore students’ movement qualities on the basis of four aspects; body, - effort - space and relations. Further, with socio-cultural learning theory, recognition of artifacts, other people and the offered content of the exergames are also involved in the analysis. The learning explored is therefore about aspects where the game, the player and the social environment interact in learning of different movement qualities.

Results and discussion: Our findings show that exergames are creating opportunities for PE teachers and students to pay attention to different movement qualities. When comparing the three games both similarities and differences in movement qualities emerge in relation to the learning of movement qualities that occurs in the interaction between the game, the learner and the learning environment. In PE the player is accordingly involved in a complex context of movement qualities, interacting with the game and with other student.