Reclaiming Movement: Physical Education as a Space for Corporeality, Social Justice, and Ecological Wellbeing in a Hyperconnected World

Dancing, moving through a natural setting, taking part in sport, enjoying a walk in a park, or simply playing as part of the intelligent use of leisure time: these are actions that define us as human beings. They connect us to a community, let us inhabit our own corporeality, and let us feel, in the broadest and most pedagogical sense of the word.Within Physical Education, these are everyday actions. Yet they are rarely valued as a space where practices central to who we are as a species can still be sustained. Regardless of country or curriculum, this subject has the potential to respond directly to the excessive use of screens, the mental health consequences of bullying, the steady erosion of motor skills, and the disconnection from lived reality driven by social media.As a species, we have lost certain physical conditions tied to the shrinking of natural spaces and the comforts of modern life. The postmodern moment holds both tension and opportunity for this discipline. It calls for moving motor action beyond the classical mind body dualism, and for asking what Physical Education is meant to achieve: what critical terrain must this pedagogical field navigate so that the living body regains the place it has always held, one that is now somewhat dormant, absorbed into the complexity of the AI revolution and the algorithms that increasingly govern it and deepen our dependence on technology.In a liquid society that treats exercise as a tool for communication and virtual visibility, school Physical Education remains one of the few territories where students can reconnect with uncertainty and step out of the isolation created by social networks. Even where curricula stay standardized and governed by rigid, parametric logics, this space still holds room for difference, plurality, and the diverse identities present within it.Physical Education generates social transformation. It is no longer simply a space for organic training; it holds real potential to shift trajectories of marginalization toward equity and to reduce inequality among populations pushed to the margins. It also connects to the Sustainable Development Goals, helping students understand that an active, healthy life is inseparable from the ecosystems we move through, and that the decline of human physical capacity is partly a consequence of the environments we inhabit.At a moment when aging populations and sedentary lifestyles place a growing, sustained burden on public health systems, Physical Education must become a space where human motor activity is examined from every possible angle and understood as an active social construction that enables sociocultural adaptability. It can bring together physical activity, recreation, psychoeducational support, and respect for the ecosystem, not by rejecting artificial intelligence, technology, economic models, training, or sport, but by recognizing that certain spaces must be protected as humanizing environments: places that nurture social, sensitive, ecological, inclusive, and motorically active bodies, valued not as advertising constructs but as active bodies working to sustain us as a species.Research, in its fullest range of forms, can help build other ways of understanding Physical Education: as an opportunity to explore, through its own political dimensions, notions of social justice within these environments, working toward an understanding of motor action grounded in meaning, relevance, and significance. Some contributions may draw on classical performance perspectives, held to a critical, non normative standard that links physical capacity to the shifting demands of social, cultural, academic, or professional life, focusing not on deficit but on curricular opportunity. Others may examine personal trajectories and their ties to social, anthropological, and cultural dimensions, dissent, intersectional perspectives, and multidimensional, co-created frameworks that help Physical Education, alongside other fields and contexts, build better relationships and solve everyday problems. What unites these directions is a shift away from viewing Physical Education as a space of control, demand, and performance narrative, toward a genuine study of the human and its adaptive impact in a landscape marked by individualism and detachment.We invite researchers to submit contributions on corporeality and the political dimensions of the body within Physical Education, curriculum, subjectivities, and the role of motor activity as a space for awareness, quality of life, health, and human wellbeing. We also welcome work on ecosystemic wellbeing, the decline of physical capacity linked to excessive screen use, standardized testing, school bullying, the loss of uncertainty through the overuse of technology in motor learning, and the impact of urban planning on human movement, viewed through the lens of capacity involution. Finally, studies exploring how Physical Education can serve as a refuge for authenticity and difference, amid growing visibility of dissent, intersectionality, and social justice, are equally welcome. Topic editors: Roberto Lagos-Hernández, Felipe Caamaño-Navarrete, Andrés Godoy, Mikel Pérez-Gutiérrez, Carlos Arriagada-Hernández Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84910/reclaiming-movement-physical-education-as-a-space-for-corporeality-social-justice-and-ecological-wellbeing-in-a-hyperconnected-world