De senaste tio åren har bjudit på ett nästan omåttligt intresse för mindfulness och idrott. Trenden har medfört en mängd skilda användningar av begreppet och ett ökat behov av att få överblick och kunna analysera mindfulnesstrender inom idrottsområdet. I detta sammanhang har olika kunskapsöversikter slagit fast att både experimentella studier och observationsstudier visar på tydliga resultat att mindfulness underlättar för idrottsutövare att prestera bättre, minska ångest och negativa tankar samt att åtnjuta erfarenheter i termer av flow.

Den här forskningsöversikten fokuserar den forskning som uttryckligen använder begreppen mindfulness och idrott (sport). Sökresultatet inkluderar 396 publikationer (peer review-artiklar, böcker, bokkapitel). Mindfulnessforskningen handlar här om prestation och mentala förmågor (det idrottspsykologiska området) samt kroppslighet och subjektiva erfarenheter (det idrottspedagogiska området). Det kan ses i kontrast till hur vi religionshistoriskt kan följa mindfulnessforskningen i relation till nyandlighet och kommersialism och utbildningsvetenskapligt i relation till mental (elev)hälsa. 

Forskningsfältet har expanderade stadigt mellan åren 2006 och 2016 och därefter exponentiellt. Kunskapsöversikter rapporterar även att det skett en utveckling av studierna från 2017 och att senare årens studier uppmät högre kvalitet i forskningsdesign och resultat. För idrottspsykologin har mindfulnessforskningen inneburit att disciplinen rört sig från traditionella psykologiska modeller som bygger på att idrottare upparbetar personlig kontroll över psykologiska processer, till mindfulnessinfluerade modeller som bygger på att psykologiska processer måste mötas med acceptans och ödmjukhet.

Det är svårt att dra några slutsatser om eventuella skillnader mellan individuell idrott och lagidrott när det gäller mental hälsa och mindfulnessbaserade program. Studier visar även att det existerar individuella skillnader i mindfulnessattityd och att dessa påverkar utövares förmåga att ta till sig olika program för mental träning. Sådana resultat kan exempelvis hjälpa idrottspsykologer med att anpassa olika program för mental träning. Forskningen har även identifierat olika mindfulnessprofiler vilket har potentialen att vägleda insatser och program för mental träning inom idrott.

Då resultaten från meta-analyser visar för stor spridning i design och urval för att kunna fastställa någon kvantitativ syntes av samlade resultat är det vanligt med narrativa synteser. Därtill efterfrågas fler randomiserade kontrollgruppsstudier som fokuserar mental hälsa hos en bred population av idrottsutövare och inte bara elitutövare. Likaså existerar det få studier med ett uttalat syfte att förbättra de vetenskapliga metoderna som används. Då fältet nu uppvisar en exponentiell ökning av forskning blir den här utmaningen extra viktig att lösa. De publiceras väldigt många studier men de genomförs på sätt som gör det omöjligt att ackumulera kunskap. Kunskapen kan sägas bli bredare men inte djupare.

Slutligen har det uppmärksammats att mindfulness i första hand används för att hantera tränares och utövares tankar, känslor och beteende medan forskningen i mindre utsträckning undersökt potentialen för att främja goda idrottskulturer och motverka rasism, mobbning och sexuella trackaserier. 

Physical contact between adults and children in educational setting has been a well debated subject in research over the past 20 years. Although physical contact is often regarded as an important pedagogical tool, it has given rise to an increased awareness amongst sports coaches, physical education and preschool teachers about the possible negative consequences of its use in these settings. The aim of this article is to map the current literature on physical contact in physical education, sports coaching and the preschool and identify research gaps by means of a scoping review, i.e. after 20 years of research in the field of intergenerational touch what can be said to be known in the field and what possible gaps are there in the research? The research questions are: (i) Which journals, countries, settings, theories and methods are represented in the research field? (ii) Which central themes and knowledge gaps can be identified? The results show that the research field has expanded significantly in the last 20 years, both in terms of the number of published articles, the number of countries represented in the research and the number of journals in which articles on the topic have been published. The central themes identified in the articles included in the review cover the following topics: fears related to physical contact, resistance, cultural differences, the functions and needs of physical contact and the professional identity of sports coaches, physical education and preschool teachers. It is concluded that studies that could lead the research field forward would ideally focus on intersectionality, or how practitioners’ fears of physical contact impact their pedagogical work with students.

This paper provides in-depth knowledge into young girls’ learning processes in relation to physical activity, diet/nutrition and body image. Data were generated from interviews with 49 girls (age 13–15) in England. The practical epistemological analysis technique was used to explore young people as both producers and consumers, or prosumers, of content and knowledge. The data illustrate that adolescent girls navigate two interrelated health-related paradoxes within publicly private spaces: (i) skinny fat and (ii) naturally fake. Skinny fat refers to how participation in social media represents a continuous struggle of becoming skinny, but at the same time not trying too hard to become too skinny. Naturally fake refers to how having a ‘natural’ look is highly valued, but equally, it is acceptable to be ‘fake’. Overall, adolescent girls are competent users of social media, who are able to navigate the complexity of the medium and its contents. At the same time, the adolescent girls sometimes found themselves, unintentionally, exposed to risks (e.g. bullying or body dysmorphia), particularly when social media was experienced publicly in a temporal order, connected to the past or present, and without control of potential future effects and impacts. Relevant adults should acknowledge young people’s vast competence of life on social media and further empower young people to self-regulate their learning through social media, and in ways that help them to learn from experiences about their health and bodies to shape future actions. 

Research has pursued salutogenic and narrative approaches to deal with questions about how everyday settings are constitutive for different health practices. Healthy behavior is not a distinguishable action, but a chain of activities, often embedded in other social practices. In this article, we have endeavored to describe such a chain of activities guided by the salutogenic claim of exploring the good living argued by McCuaig and Quennerstedt. We use biographical material written by Karl Ove Knausgaard who has created a life story entitled My Struggle. The novel is selected upon an approach influenced by Brinkmann who stresses that literature can be seen as a qualitative social inquiry in which the novelist is an expert in transforming personal life experiences into common human expressions of life. The study illustrates how research with a broader notion of health can convey experiences of health, thereby complementing (and sometimes challenging) public health evidence. 

This chapter introduces a model - situated artistic relation (SAR) - that facilitate analyses of pupils’ artistic expressions. The model draws on Dewey’s transactional learning theory and is here used to analyse audio-video data of a gymnastics lesson in physical education. It explores movement learning as it goes from an instrumental learning of a body technique to an artistic expression through a body technique. Pupils often develop their expression while occupied by sustained expressive work in the educational activity. The analysis identifies transactional details of such sustained expressive work in regard to (i) the pupils’ creation of an anticipated vision of a performance, (ii) how the pupils make use of different physical materials (bodies, equipment) to express their meaning, and (iii) how the pupils make judgements about their progress of working with the material. Through these three analytical steps the SAR model contributes knowledge to how pupils (a) stage a specific environment out of the embodied material circumstances and (b) coordinate the staged environment in relation to a purpose and perform bodily movements based on that coordination. This knowledge can help practitioners to observe the contrasting movement environments in which physical education place pupils, the means that these promote and how artistic expressions unfold, or are prevented from unfolding.

Background: While studies of teaching frequently preserve an interest in teacher–pupil encounters that take place in certain spots, this article shows how teachers’ can be understood as in-path instructors, which is significant for student-based learning. This complements studies that have mainly focused on teachers instructional work taking place at certain spots.

Purpose: The purpose is to describe how a PE teacher’s rhythmic labouring of the diverse settings in the gym creates a learning environment. By examining emplacement (spatial) and empacement (temporal) as important aspects of how learning environments are constituted, this article contributes a framework for studying and analysing a teacher’s work from a moving vantage point.

Conclusions: Based on a video ethnographic approach and using a wearable camera attached to the teacher’s chest, the analysis of a station-wise lesson show how the teacher frequently covers a large part of the room and creates a web of educational challenges and possibilities. These brief encounters are identified as important tools that support each pupil’s rhythm and engagement in the learning activities and maintain the corporate rhythm of a class. Furthermore, by analysing the teacher’s temporal and spatial walking technique, which helps the pupils to transit between and accomplish practical exercises, the article highlights how the teacher’s ability to support pupils’ progression partly builds on a regional knowledge that is cultivated by the array of encounters