‘I play on a club team': examining the development of the physically active habitus in early primary education

Abstract

The drop off in physical activity (PA) for children has led to an increased focus on their PA engagement, due to the poor health outcomes often linked to this decline. Subsequently, stakeholders, across a variety of fields, have problematised and intervened in activity settings to address this decline. Many of these studies acknowledge high levels of activity in the primary years and tend to prioritise their efforts on the adolescent years. An important limitation in these studies is that they greatly overlook how a decline might also be related to children’s physical engagement in early childhood. To gain more insight on the role that early PA engagement may play in long-term PA participation, this paper examines early physical engagement through a focus on year one/ two students across three PA spaces–the home, the physical education (PE) class and the playground. Data was collected through a range of ethnographic and child-centred methods and examined using a Bourdieusian lens. This analysis shows that engagement in PA starts as a confluence between the physically active habitus, sport-focused PE and the sportised playground, which produces different patterns of engagement. This paper offers an in-depth examination of this process across the three spaces and identifies how these outcomes become habitualised over the course of primary school, which may play a role in affecting long-term participation. The paper concludes with a call for a more democratised approach to early primary PE, along with accompanying changes to the playground.