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Greg Spencer Profile picture
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23 Jan, 10 tweets, 8 min read
1/n How come we still have academics sustaining narratives of #obesity rather than of how real people find value & meaning in everyday lives? Revisit @whatsthepont on @tobyjlowe / @snowded & accept criticising "neoliberal" does not make things progressive!
whatsthepont.blog/2019/05/19/cam…
New out 🤯 A review which says lots about the academic context in which it was written - with its embedded behaviorist fixations on just implementing *better* - with complete disregard for the unintended consequences of treating "agency" as a dirty word 👇
cam.ac.uk/research/news/…
In all #becausehuman fields, we see justifiable professional kick-back at reductionist agendas driven by a focus on #obesity & nonsensical CMO guidance of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day for healthy growth and development 👇
What's fundamentally missing is not just a respect for complexity. It's respect for Homo-Narrans - for the ordinary, everyday story-telling folk all around us whose aspirations & dispositions provide the context in which we find meaning, purpose & value 👇
community.ukcoaching.org/spaces/48/coac…
We don't need spurious arguments against initiatives... but let's consider ethics & unintended consequences - on which, see @snowded (especially around epistemic justice) #becausehuman
cognitive-edge.com/physical-apori…
cognitive-edge.com/intire-of-it-s…
cognitive-edge.com/musings-on-pel…
cognitive-edge.com/diversity-cohe…
Remember @ChristianSeelos? - "Please, don't make systems work for people, because this is [...] everything that's wrong with the sector. Making stuff work for others. Help people discover & steer and own their own pathways for a change" 😍 @NewSystemAlly
What helps people find pleasure and/or meaning in movement? How have any of us come to find pastimes which form major stablising influences in our lives in ways which sustain our physically-active lifestyles?
singleblade.co.uk/2020/09/12/tra…
If we're evaluating initiatives... can we be sensitive to what's found meaningful & significant in ordinary lives? Yesterday, @marcoAdelgadoF raised questions about our assumptions about play - reminding us to focus on the "anthro" in Anthro-Complexity? 👇
Societal outcomes "emerge through the dynamic and unpredictable interaction of biological factors, personal decision making, multiple service agency interventions, & broader social determinants" - @tobyjlowe & a very different @SystemsHuman approach!
reader.health.org.uk/a-recipe-for-a…
Summary - we need to get beyond a fixation on #obesity - that's not a problem which needs medicalising, it's a symptom of deeper-lying systematic issues. Also - if progressives on the left aren't uncomfortable with "compliance" then we're in real trouble!
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1352989…

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More from @SingleBlade1

Greg Spencer Profile picture
18 Jan
What does it take to sustain screwiness in the way the world works? Mostly, it's just good people, trying their best to get us to a better place... within constraints which pretty much preclude us actually getting anywhere! A case in point with @JamesRRudd
mdpi.com/2227-9067/8/1/…
These authors come across as hugely committed to something we might all agree upon: improving young people's experiences of physical education through better school-based-interventions. Sounds great? Agreed, & pretty much everything about their study models best practice 🥳 Article: "Effect of Linear and Nonlinear Pedagogy Physi
Sadly, established "best practice" involves further embedding the medicalisation of PE as if it should be about the potential contribution of physical activity to everything from quality of life, self-perception & cognition to the likelyhood of becoming healthy & active adults 🤯 Increased physical activity (PA) in children is associated w
Read 18 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
15 Jan
"Riding bikes give you a way of seeing & acting in our environment in creative ways. Always looking to progress and push skills & boundaries. Skateboarders will know this feeling too. You never see a city the same again" - perception @michaelthaber blog 👇
"In BMX there is a ever moving boundary of things that have been done. Not only by you, but by anyone. Once you know something has been done it opens possibilities [...] Just knowing someone has done something similar changes what you think can be done 👇
mikehaber.co/2020/11/21/bmx/
"...people employing security guards to do their job are thinking they are setting up governing constraints. But often these become enabling constraints, creating the pressure & opportunity to get things done" & "stuff gets done when security turn up" 👇
Read 6 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
4 Jan
"What follows [is] a protest against psychologistic approaches to ‘grounded cognition’ [that] effectively put the ground inside the brain, leaving individuals stranded in an unspecified ‘environment’ which is invoked
merely for the purposes of [the body]"
quote.ucsd.edu/sed/files/2014… It has been conventional in...
"What distinguishes the expert from the novice, then, is not that the mind of the former is more richly furnished with content [but] a greater sensitivity to cues in the environment & a greater capacity to respond to these cues with judgement and precision" - not representatons! Image
"For the ground of knowing – or, if we must use the term, of cognition – is not an internal neural substrate that resembles the ground outside but the very ground we walk, where earth & sky are tempered in the ongoing production of life" - the walker is "thinking in movement" 👇 For the ground of knowing –...
Read 17 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
31 Dec 20
This matters 👇 It starts with worries about talk of pre-pubescent children "using the quasi-mythopoetic terms" ‘elite’ and ‘international’ & addresses growing tendencies to view youth athletes as "commodities" - well done @andykirkland71 & @markstkhlm 👀
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… The authors may well be studying phenomena within an environ
Argument: "There Is No Such Thing as an International Elite Under-9 Soccer Player" 💪

Their reference to "commodification" links to the biggest of all for me: talk of "producing" athletes / players 😡

Language matters.

We never (ever) "make" (anything) out of young people! How Elite Athletes Are Made
We need to see this through to its logical conclusion... which is that "talent pathways" are NOT production lines.

What/how we write reflects convention... so let's get beyond criticism of individual contributors - it's CONVENTIONAL to write like this 👇

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1339945…
Read 4 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
31 Dec 20
"Where old-school conspiracists amassed what looked a lot like evidence; the new school’s calling cards are repetition and weaponized equivocation [...] if you don’t even pretend to have evidence, there’s nothing for your opponent to debunk" @rachelefraser cambridgereview.cargo.site/Dr-Rachel-Fras…
"Michael Gove’s infamous remark that ‘the British people have had enough of experts’ [...] has been a boon for reactionary technocrats eager to pathologise an ignorant public and impose elite gatekeeping on social media.

C.f. "the spectre of rule by experts" - a serious concern? The new conspiraicism’s attitude to expertise
Cassam's prescription sounds depressingly familiar:

1. Arguments & evidence;

2. Critical thinking skills & intellectual virtues;

3. Unmasking the propagandistic nature of conspiracy theories;

Reminiscent of this paper from coach development world...

journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/…
Read 6 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
28 Dec 20
How do we connect sense-makers around:

1. A common respect for the voices of young people;

2. The diverse experiences of those who have spent their lives helping others find meaning in movement?

As @ImSporticus notes, this CSJ paper is not the answer!

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1343452…
Does school-based sport have a place? Of course! For some, school sport will be a way of becoming entangled in the lives of others in ways which will lead to a pastime becoming a valued, stabilising influence throughout life. That's awesome! #becausehuman
But as @ImSporticus notes, it's not "sport" that has the impact. That's down to "good people intentionally designing positive experiences through sport" - which is not the same thing!

Ideal: those involved co-creating the positive experiences! #ownership

Sports charity Made by Sports found that children and young
Read 15 tweets

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