At a time of environmental destabilisation, education and social pedagogy are increasingly called on to cultivate ecological sensibility through practices that connect learners ethically and affectively with the living world (Haraway, 2016; Rodrigues and Payne, 2017; Thorburn et al., 2019). Ecological sensibility refers to individuals’ and communities’ capability to interact with the more-than-human elements of the environment in ways that ethically, politically and morally guarantee the sustenance of preferable living conditions (Lysaker, 2020). From a socio-pedagogical viewpoint,1 sensibility is not only a heightened kind of cognitive awareness but also an embodied capacity that can be nurtured through everyday relational encounters and events of community participation (Cameron, 2020; Moss and Petrie, 2019). Among these, community-based physical activity projects/events, such as school gardens, outdoor learning initiatives and intergenerational walking groups, invite individuals to become knowing/moving bodies, or what Bresler (2004) calls bodies at work, and to attune to context through experiences that are simultaneously individual, social and physical/biological (Grosz, 2008). The changes that may take place in such exchanges will shape the way different bodies, such as physical bodies, natural bodies or bodies of experience and thought, will form sustainable relations and will generate awareness of ecological interdependence (Massumi, 2004).

For this reason, researchers have explored the pedagogical potential of physical activity as/for sustainability within various contexts related to education, such as physical education (Lundvall and Fröberg, 2023; Olive and Enright, 2021), sport (Bácsné-Bába et al., 2021; Thurm et al., 2024), outdoor/nature activities (Dyment and Potter, 2015; Stangierska et al., 2023), early childhood education (Vanderloo et al., 2015), eco-motricity interventions (Pazos-Couto et al., 2021), eco-wellness projects (Kim et al., 2023) and environmental awareness initiatives (Portela-Pino et al., 2021). Furthermore, the restorative impact of the environment has been highlighted in studies focusing on landscapes with a healing potential (Jansen et al., 2017) or eco-friendly initiatives designed for health promotion and environmental justice (Friel et al., 2011; Nayna Schwerdtle et al., 2020).

Considering today’s planetary crisis, the above suppositions invoke critique from scholars drawing on new materialist theoretical frameworks (Colebrook, 2019). New materialist scholars call for a decentring of the human in the study of physical activity (Brice and Thorpe, 2021; Chappell, 2024; Fullagar, 2017; Mannion, 2019) and a focusing of the human–nature interaction in its complexity, receptivity and violability, beyond ‘human–environment’ distinctions. From a new materialist perspective, human activity can be seen as the relational entanglement of all entities, which continually shape and reshape one another as they come together within their shared ecological systems, such organisms, materials and environments (Ingold and Palsson, 2013). Similarly, physical activity is perceived not as a fixed human act of biological significance, but instead as an evolving process attuned to natural rhythms and collective transformations of various systems (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994; Norton, 2009; Salonen et al., 2024). Such a perspective acknowledges the interconnectedness between humans and the rest of nature during different forms of physical activity, such as running, walking or training, as well as the multiplicity of their liaisons, unity and symbiosis as they become a systemic whole (Agyeman et al., 2003; Deleuze and Parnet, 2007; Folke et al., 2016; Thorburn et al., 2019). From a socio-pedagogical standpoint, this view underscores how physical activity can cultivate sustainable ways of knowing and being – Indigenous, embodied or affective – that can emerge through the connections the living world affords (Lysaker, 2020). In doing so, it provides new pedagogical insights for fostering ecological sensibility, particularly within youth education, while also extending to intergenerational and community-based contexts where physical activity can become a shared means of nurturing collective responsibility and ecological awareness.

New materialist ideas, increasingly adopted in fitness (Brice and Thorpe, 2021), sport (King and Weedon, 2021; Thorpe et al., 2021) or outdoor education (Gough, 2016), seek to challenge ‘stewardship’ or ‘paternalistic’ notions in the study of physical activity, such as exercise prescription, step-count goals and behaviour change interventions that promote outdoor movement. Both from a new materialist and a socio-pedagogical standpoint, such notions reinforce an instrumental idea of the body as something that must be managed effectively, rather than lived holistically. Instrumental ideas of the living body are grounded in hylomorphic perspectives that assume a disconnection between humans and the natural-material world (Corradini, 2019). The term hylomorphism, originating from the Greek hyle (matter) and morphe (form), rests on the assumption that matter is passive and receives form imposed by human intention or design (Corradini, 2019). What this means is that human agency is shaping or controlling inert matter (namely, the body), a view that privileges notions of body mastery and performance over relational becoming. For instance, studies adopting a hylomorphic approach to human movement define physical activity as ‘any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles (matter) that results in energy expenditure (form/human intention)’ (Caspersen et al., 1985, p. 126). Such a perspective reduces body movement to quantifiable outcomes, such as daily steps, intensity levels or caloric expenditure, rather than recognising it as a relational and ecological process of interaction. As a result, only health-orientated and measurable forms of physical activity are legitimised as bodily movement produced for energy expenditure, what Ingold (2021) refers to as ‘that thing’, while affective, communal and contextually embedded forms of being active in the community remain ecologically and pedagogically invisible.

New materialist scholars argue that people, places and materials are entangled and co-emergent through their relational encounters, which means that human activity and environmental processes unfold together (rather than separately) in self-creative, fluid and unpredictable ways (Ingold and Palsson, 2013). Such relations do not occur within a pre-existing space such as a green park or an outdoor space, but rather they create and transform in-between spaces, always shaping new conditions of coexistence between human and non-human life forms (Vetlesen, 2015). The deeper this sense of coexistence, the greater the agency that will be attributed to the in-between spaces and the more likely physical activity will become an emergent and transformative event (Brice and Thorpe, 2021; King and Weedon, 2021). From a socio-pedagogical perspective, this view is rather valuable since it shifts attention from physical activity as a set of individual skills, performances or intentions towards processes of relational engagement that connect individuals to their socio-material and ecological communities. Furthermore, it positions ecological sensibility as a present and lived capacity of attunement to the world, enabling learners to actualise sustainable ways of active living by becoming responsive to the spaces they inhabit and co-create.

With the above in mind, the aim of the present article is to explore the pedagogical potential of re-conceptualising physical activity as a relational process of ecological sensibility, one through which more-than-human spaces of coexistence are continually produced. Following Colebrook’s (2017) call for education scholars to imagine futures distinct from what we already are, the concepts of physical activity and sustainability are unpacked and ‘plugged in’ with new materialist ideas to reconfigure our understanding of physical activity as an eventful, affective and pedagogically meaningful process of ecological attunement.

To achieve this aim, the article is divided into three sections. The first section introduces process ontology as an idea that could provide a foundation for conceptually re-orientating educational thought towards the world of relations within complex and more-than-human systems. The second section examines physical activity through a socio-pedagogical lens, conceptualising it as a process-becoming event of relational coexistence. The third section discusses the concept of aesthetic sustainability, highlighting how affect-based and experiential pedagogical perspectives can deepen educators’ understanding of movement, embodiment and sustainability. The article concludes by offering suggestions for future pedagogical work that can nurture ecological sensibility and response-ability (Barad, 2007) across youth and community-based contexts.

Within traditional, hylomorphic approaches, materials and/or bodies are often viewed as passive entities awaiting human action, as if transformation, growth and/or learning occur only through hierarchical or pre-determined structures (Simondon, 1958). In the study of complex systems, such as human development, social relationships or environmental interactions, this way of thinking reflects a prevailing teleological mindset, in which human actions are seen as shaping the world from above rather than emerging with it or being shaped by it. Drawing on new materialist thought, such understandings become insufficient. New materialists adopt a process ontology perspective on the study of complex systems, one which emphasises that humans, environments and materials are continuously co-creating one another through dynamic and reciprocal relationships (Haraway, 2016; Ingold, 2011).

From this perspective, physical activity is conceived as part of a living process during which complex systems – ecological, social, geographical – generate their own flows, rhythms and patterns of interaction and dynamically affect each other’s change (Ergin and Ergin, 2017; Markula, 2023; Schoon and Van Der Leeuw, 2015). This view invites educators and practitioners to see the different forms of interaction that are produced during physical activity as emergent and relational rather than as managed, planned or evaluated. For example, during a community walking project, spontaneous conversations, sensory experiences and shared reflections between participants and their surroundings can generate unplanned conversations about care, place and interdependence. These forms of learning or meaning making would be lost if physical activity was reduced to measurable outcomes such as a walk to lose weight or the completion of daily step goals.

Extending these perspectives, the concept of process ontology (or ontology of becoming) offers a generative framework for understanding physical activity as a relational and pedagogically meaningful event (Cooke et al., 2016; De la Cadena, 2015; Jacobson et al., 2011; Nicholson and Dupré, 2018). Process ontologies suggest that reality is constituted through dynamic and continuously unfolding processes and events, whose interplay produces diverse states of becoming (Deleuze, 1994; Deleuze and Guattari, 1994). These processes and/or events arise from the interactions of multiple forces occurring at a social, material, ecological or affective level, forming relationships that are fluid, interdependent and constantly evolving rather than fixed or isolated. It is their dynamism that produces a pluralism of states with no sharp boundaries, as each moment or action becomes meaningful only through its entanglement within a wider network of relationships and events (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994).

Within the event of physical activity, a process ontology perspective could help us trace the numerous interconnected processes – biological, technology enhanced or emotional – that unfold between bodies, materials and environments as they interact and co-shape one another. For example, the environment – natural and built – can be both a precondition and a limitation for physical activity. Green landscapes may invite exploration, play and reflection, while landslides, pollution or urban infrastructure may restrict movement and alter physical engagement. Within such a complex and evolving system various resources and material affordances will shape opportunities for interaction among the entities that compose it. Thus, the idea that physical activity can be studied or explored as a representation of ‘that thing’ (namely, bodily movement produced for energy expenditure) cannot be supported.

Adopting a process ontology perspective on the study of physical activity allows us to move beyond commodified, context-free and ahistorical models of human–environment interaction, opening new ways of thinking about learning via and within movement as co-emergent processes. This perspective, already influential in fields such as biology (Nicholson and Dupré, 2018), anthropology (De la Cadena, 2015), human geography (Stark, 2017), sustainability research (Cooke et al., 2016), philosophy (Thiele, 2016) and education (Honan, 2015; Thompson, 2020), provides a conceptual foundation for reimagining physical activity beyond notions of what counts/the amount of physical activity, towards an exploration of what it could mean for humans and environments to continuously affect one another during physical activity. From a social pedagogical perspective, this shift invites educators and practitioners to ask how we might live better with physical activity and more precisely how physical activity can become a site of relational, ecological and ethical learning within communities. This question forms the basis for the discussion that follows, where the pedagogical connotations of a process ontology approach to physical activity are further explored.

Be(com)ing physically active within the environment, any kind of environment, is a shared process; it does not belong solely to the individual. Humans and the environment(s) coexist through continuous exchanges of energy, affect and transformation, always emerging into new configurations of experience and meaning (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994). In educational terms, this means that being physically active, whether walking through a park, climbing a tree or commuting to work, becomes an act of entanglement with one’s surroundings, one that shapes expression or action (Bresler, 2004). A simple stone, a tree, a valley, a road, a runner, a morning fog, a child walking to school, all can be understood as part of the same living network of mutual influence (de Block and Vicenzotti, 2018). Their emergent bio-complexity is a living system always in flux, and thus it cannot be described or apprehended though static representations or meanings (Clarke and McPhie, 2014). Such a perspective encourages social educators/pedagogues to view physical activity as an evolving possibility space, within which individuals learn to engage bodily and relationally with their environments, discovering ethically responsive and ecologically sensible ways of being-with others and the material world.

By envisioning physical activity as a possibility space, our attention shifts towards the relationships taking place when individual (biological, physical, psychological and so on), geographical (outdoor/indoor environment) or socio-political (culture, economy and so on) systems come together (Salonen et al., 2024). The interaction of these systems can be ‘neither one nor two [types/sorts], nor the relation of the two; it [is] the in-between’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 323). This betweenness forms a dynamic field of interaction and transformation, where learning arises through attunement to the spatial, temporal and ecological dimensions of physical activity (Salonen et al., 2023). Thus, if the cultivation of ecological sensibility is a pedagogical goal, then educators and pedagogues need to support young people and communities in experiencing physical activity as an event of awakening, exploration and adaptation in these in-between spaces (Co-building a New Eco-Social World: Leaving No One Behind, 2022).

Derived from the Greek word αἴσθησις (aisthesis) (which has the meaning of sensibility, sentience and perception), sensibility can be understood as an aesthetic and embodied form of experience. Sensibility manifests itself as a qualitative and aesthetic responsiveness to the world that is reconfigured when the doors of perception stay open to relational encounters (Ingold, 2021, p. 326): perception not only of things in themselves (for example, the peace of natural scenery), but of things-in-phenomena (for example, physical activity as co-constitution and intra-action) (Barad, 2007). Even though materials and things may not be biologically alive, they possess ‘thing-power’ which is a capacity to animate, affect and participate in the world’s becoming (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010). From a socio-pedagogical perspective, this means that places, spaces and contexts (that is, natural, built, social) are entangled with human activities, relationships and material objects, forming a system that is constantly in motion and transformation (Gough, 2016; Mannion, 2019). The inseparable unity of these entanglements will ultimately influence how individuals and communities are enabled or constrained in their capacity to become or remain physically active (de Block and Vicenzotti, 2018).

Considering the above, it becomes relevant to ask, how might we re-conceptualise physical activity as a process of sustainable becoming within contemporary educational contexts? To address this question in the following paragraphs, I introduce aesthetic sustainability as a concept that offers a pathway beyond hylomorphic understandings of sustainability, enabling a process-orientated and pedagogically grounded perspective in the study of physical activity as a living form of relational practice. Through this lens, both physical activity and sustainability are understood not as fixed goals or measurable outcomes, but as embodied, affective and aesthetic dimensions of educational experience that unfold through ongoing interactions between people, environments and communities.

Informed by new materialist ideas of entanglement and becoming, aesthetic sustainability offers an innovative framework for understanding how physical activity can cultivate ecological sensibility within the scope of social pedagogy. Its main idea is the opening of perception towards ‘more-than-human systems of “pulsating aesthetics”’, whose inhabitants are ‘treading their own paths through the meshwork [and thereby contributing] to [their] ever-evolving weave’ (Ingold, 2011, p. 71).

Rather than viewing sustainability as a learning goal/outcome or an educational policy target, aesthetic sustainability foregrounds the lived, sensory and affective interactions via which people and communities co-create sustainable relations with their environments. This perspective allocates pedagogical and ecological agency to the in-between spaces of human–environment interaction and is deeply compatible with social pedagogy’s focus on Haltung, relationships, reflection and culture (Eichsteller and Holthoff, 2012). In these in-between spaces, humans become co-negotiators with material and non-human elements in shaping the conditions of physically active living. Such negotiations are visible in socio-pedagogical and community practices where, for example, parks are re-built to support intergenerational interaction, urban infrastructures are reconstructed to support movement and ecological balance, trees and gardens are vegetated to balance heat indexes, or old railways are turned into walking and cycling routes to invite affective encounters with place. These examples illustrate how aesthetic sustainability can transform physical activity into a ‘decentered task-space’ (Jeong et al., 2021), where learning, negotiation and care can emerge as a collective process, one that reconfigures how communities can learn to live, move and sustain together. Furthermore, they extend social pedagogy’s concern for relational, ethical and embodied learning into the ecological domain, aligning directly with the aims of an eco-social pedagogy.

The adoption of aesthetic sustainability for the study of physical activity introduces an innovative pedagogical lens that challenges established assumptions about both physical activity (that is, as a form of exercise pursued for health or performance) and sustainability (that is, romanticised notions emphasising the moral imperative to do less harm to the environment). Aesthetic sustainability departs from these idealised assumptions and foregrounds equity and justice of embodied experiences as fundamental to our capacity to live sustainably. Since sustainability is an evolving happening that is largely connected with experience, a lack of physical activity or the offering of inequitable forms of physical activity may create imbalances in the more-than-human system. When access to meaningful experiences is limited, or when these experiences occur within marginalising or unsupportive settings, significant imbalances may emerge and disrupt both human and more-than-human systems of physical activity. For instance, being active within polluted or overbuilt urban environments may create an imbalance regarding what is realised as a healthy lifestyle. Similarly, the exposure of vulnerable populations (for example, low-income or ethnic minority groups) to harmful environmental conditions underscores the need to embed social and environmental justice perspectives within pedagogical and community-based programmes that frame physical activity as a pathway to sustainability (Hawes et al., 2019; Taylor et al., 2006).

We all know that previous generations have inhabited the environment and have left their ecological traces in terms of the ways they lived within the system (for example, wars, rising sea level, gobal warming or technological advancements). This is a challenge that newer generations seek to resolve when engaging with physical activity for sustainability. However, such a challenge cannot be addressed only with changes in human actions (for example, active transportation, tree planting for preserving physical activity and preventing health inequities) (Lanza et al., 2021; Ross et al., 2019), or through the dissemination of guidelines and best practices for ecologically aware forms of physical activity (Woods et al., 2022; World Health Organization, 2018). The reorientation towards aesthetic sustainability expands the above efforts at a socio-pedagogical level. Its difference lies in the fact that it encourages educators to move beyond prescriptive models or policy guidelines and embrace action that fosters relational, ethical and ecological forms of learning by using physical activity as a site for nurturing ecological sensitivity and collective well-being. Given that the aesthetic always has the meaning of sensational attunement (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994), the concept of aesthetic sustainability affords understandings of sustainability as the reticular messiness, temporality, growability and open-endedness of the more-than-human relations, that ‘run perpendicularly to localizable relations’ (Ingold, 2011, p. 83).

Thus, in the context of ecological and pedagogical reflection, the key question for sustainability may not have to do with what we want the future to look like or what potential that future may hold for physically active living; instead, the question shifts to which aspects of more-than-human relationships we aim to sustain and cultivate through the processual, eventful nature of physical activity. To answer this question, I introduce two key concepts below: (a) time and (b) tradition as concepts related to the re-conceptualisation of physical activity as/for aesthetic sustainability. Both concepts extend the conceptual and practical boundaries of engagement within human–environment systems, offering a pedagogically innovative vocabulary that can accommodate sustainability in all its evolving and relational arrangements.

What are the implications of the above discussion for educational policy and pedagogical practice seeking to develop ecological perspectives on the study of physical activity? Significant attention has been paid in later years to the design and implementation of curriculum-based interventions that could promote sustainable physical activity behaviours in children and youth (Barton et al., 2016; Bentsen et al., 2022; Bucht et al., 2022; Kimiecik et al., 2019; Kracht et al., 2024; Santos-Pastor et al., 2022; Tomayko et al., 2017; Wells et al., 2023). Based on biomedical evidence and/or performance/behaviour-related findings, these studies produce knowledge and guidelines concerning the value of physical activity for sustainable living. Despite the value of such evidence, there are key shortcomings in the way policy and physical activity curriculum models/frameworks are applied in practice in a contextually relevant way. Because scientific perspectives have often been privileged over socio-pedagogical ones (Barker-Ruchti and Barker, 2017), there remains uncertainty about how best to design and deliver curricula that strengthen the social dimensions of physical activity and foster ecological sensibility among youth and communities. Recognising these limitations, scholars agree that a renewal of established practices requires cultivating learners’ perception, sensibility and embodied awareness (Barker-Ruchti and Barker, 2017; Fullagar, 2019; Lupton, 2019). That would mean engagement with the socio-affective and embodied dimensions of learning that connect movement, environment and social life.

Affect refers to a sentimental (cognitive) and an embodied (emotional) sensation and helps us balance our ways of being with our ways of living (Singh, 2018; Welch et al., 2021, 2023). The affective associations that we develop with more-than-human elements during the event of physical activity (for example, viewing landscapes, breathing air pollution) make us embody physical activity as an intense experience. Plants, animals, abiotic/physical elements and landscapes produce signs (visual, auditory, tactile). These material signs create aesthetic ‘corridors of disorientating effects and affects’ (Wallin, 2014, p. 152) that may take us elsewhere, as part of our relationship with the world (Marenko, 2010). Even when the emotions or tactile adaptations of physical activity have passed, our affective associations continue to produce feelings of (ir)relevance which reflect not only individual moods or embodied states (for example, exhaustion or enjoyment), but also material forms and patterns of (dis)connection (that is, memories, smells, environmental sounds).

An affect-based perspective offers a pedagogically rich alternative to resource-based views of physical activity (for example, commodification of fitness and health for sustainable living) (Ergene et al., 2018; Gren and Huijbens, 2012; Guia and Jamal, 2020), or to hylomorphic understandings that frame activity as a means to an end (that is, we stay active so that we can be healthy), since it focuses on physical activity as an unfolding process that creates multiple aesthetic and experiential opportunities for attunement (Fullagar, 2017; Merewether, 2018; Thorpe et al., 2021). This perspective also invites social educators and pedagogues to notice how relationships between humans and non-human entities (for example, plants, insects, running trails, fitness wearables) come together or pull apart (Barad, 2007) to (un)make liveable assemblages during moments of physical engagement. Further, it recognises that nature, landscapes and the material world are not complementary to physical activity but active participants in shaping learning, well-being and ecological awareness. In this sense, physical activity is studied as an ‘earthly business’ (Gren and Huijbens, 2012, p. 156) that requires the sustainment of relations at its core. In a similar vein, ecological sensibility is conceptualised as the ongoing ebb and flow of affective forces that can become agential with the power to ‘kick back’ at any time (Barad, 2007).

As Wallin (2014) suggests ‘the disidentification of the world as given’ (p. 152) can take us elsewhere, if we are willing to create more-than-human inceptions of ecological understandings. That is the reason why reimagining physical activity through aesthetic sustainability and affect could offer new directions for social pedagogy. By referring to social pedagogy as a relational and ethical form of educational practice, we perceive the turn towards affect as socio-pedagogical, emphasising its socially and ecologically embedded nature, one that could explore how learning unfolds through interactions occurring among people, places and materials within communities. Similarly, the term ‘more-than-human’ can expand this description to include animals, technologies and landscapes as agents that co-shape youth learning and experience (Barad, 2007; Ingold, 2011). Grounded in these descriptions, aesthetic sustainability invites social pedagogues and educators to rethink physical activity not as a human-centred pursuit, but as a co-creative, relational and ecological practice, during which both humans and the rest of nature become interdependent (Morgan et al., 2023). This reorientation opens three key pedagogical directions for future practice in social pedagogy:

As affective experiences exert stronger influence on our behaviour than merely cognitive or rational ones (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994), we need to relate to the affective content of physical activity as lived and not merely as learned experience. The more affective our associations to the lived experience of physical activity are, the easier it is afterwards to find meaning in physical activity as an ecologically sensible habit and to un-think tacit assumptions (Haraway, 2016). The arguments raised here invite social educators/pedagogues and scholars in similar fields to engage with physical activity through a process ontology perspective and to examine how the affective and aesthetic dimensions of body movement can contribute to more sustainable human–environment interactions. The goal for teachers and educators, then, would be to empower young people to act and reflect with their head, heart and hands, so they have multiple opportunities to expand their capacities for critical, embodied and caring engagement within the more-than-human systems that co-shape their lives and communities.