'What it was in my eyes': picturing youths' embodiment in 'real' spaces

Current global educational trends towards homogenisation and deterritorialisation have resulted in limited attention to the multiple and contradictory ways youths frame, construct and view their physicalities. The purpose of this research was to explore the ways in which young people of different ethnicities in two urban schools engaged with physical culture in their everyday lives. To investigate youths' embodiments, researchers employed a qualitative visual methodology with secondary school students. By giving the participants digital cameras, the researchers explored the ways young people pictured and created their body-selves in 'real spaces'. Data was collected from multiple sources: field notes, interviews and visual Moving in My World diaries, which participants created to represent their emplaced body experiences. Findings shed light on the multiple ways young people engaged in visual and verbal meaning-making about their physicalities based on the range of resources, opportunities, and/or constraints existing in the material contexts available to them. While students envisioned themselves as physically active and as creative of their body-selves, most girls' visual diaries pictured recreational bodies in gender-segregated, shielded spaces, whereas most boys' visual diaries presented sporting bodies in public performances. Our discussion raises critical questions about 'real' opportunities for young people's moving bodies in the localities of their everyday lives.