Teachers’ expanding roles and tasks : integrating embodied and arts-based language pedagogies in physical education for cultural and linguistic awareness

Abstract

Developing linguistically and culturally aware pedagogies is essential in increasingly diverse countries, such as Finland, thus needing more attention in teachers’ preservice education. This article focuses on physical education (PE) students’ views on their future profession and how these views may expand toward cultural and linguistic awareness. In addition, it explores how Finnish as a second language (F2L) teachers view their roles and tasks and how they apply embodied and arts-based pedagogies in their language classes. The notion of expanding professionalism is a central concept in this study. It entails attending to teachers’ social responsibilities. In addition, the theoretical framework includes a discussion of embodied pedagogy and language as a multimodal phenomenon. The context is a mandatory equality course in a PE teacher program at a Finnish university. The course included fieldwork where the PE students practiced embodied and arts-based language pedagogies. Drawing mainly from approaches to performative writing, the authors approach the research material and present their findings in narrative form. Based on the study, both PE students and F2L teachers appear to be aware of the need to expand their professional competences and consider embodied and arts-based approaches to be important in teaching language. However, future teachers need courage and skill in embodied and multimodal pedagogies. Moreover, they expressed an awareness of teachers’ social responsibilities within the increasingly complex societal situation. The authors conclude that embodied and arts-based approaches are key to developing culturally and linguistically aware PE. Such approaches have great potential for educating all future teachers.