Two Cheers for Physical Literacy: Reconsidering the Whiteheadian Account Through Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Abstract

Physical literacy has become influential across education, sport, health, and recreation. Yet the field contains multiple definitions and distinct traditions rather than a single agreed position. One especially influential strand is the Whiteheadian account, the philosophically oriented tradition associated with the British philosopher and physical educationalist Margaret Whitehead and extended through allied writers and institutional work. Whitehead did not invent the term physical literacy, which has a longer history, but she provided its most influential contemporary philosophical reconstruction and helped shape its current international meaning. The Whiteheadian account has been important because it rejects narrow mind–body separation and offers a holistic, lifespan-oriented account of movement, meaning, and human flourishing. The argument advanced here is that the Whiteheadian account is non-dualist in declaration but not always in operation. Its explicit commitment to monism and lived embodiment is not always matched by its practical grammar, in which bodily competence, bodily participation, and visible movement often carry more pedagogical and evaluative weight than minded engagement as a process of learning. Radical embodied cognitive science, especially radical enactivism, offers additional conceptual resources for developing a more explicitly relational account of learning and physical literacy because it begins with situated organism–environment engagement rather than with the later integration of bodily and mental domains. The article concludes by proposing a more relational, process-oriented, and pedagogically robust understanding of physical literacy.

1. Introduction

Physical literacy now occupies a prominent place in international discussions of physical education, physical activity, sport, recreation, and health. Its uptake has been rapid, and the concept now appears in research, policy, advocacy, and curriculum development across many countries (Carl et al., 2026; E. J. Durden-Myers, 2024; Jurbala, 2015; Qian et al., 2025). Yet this growing interest has not produced conceptual stability. The literature continues to describe physical literacy as ambiguous, contested, and marked by definitional plurality rather than settled consensus (Bailey, 2020; Bailey et al., 2023; Edwards et al., 2017; Shearer et al., 2018). It is therefore misleading to speak of “the” physical literacy position as though a single shared doctrine already existed.

This diversity extends beyond minor differences in wording. Published definitions attribute different content, purposes, and theoretical commitments to physical literacy. An international analysis identified 43 discrete definitions containing 14 themes organised across physical, psychosocial, cognitive, and integrated-development domains. Broadly, the literature includes philosophically holistic or Whiteheadian accounts; movement-skills-led accounts; multifactorial accounts combining physical, psychological, cognitive, and social attributes; and health- or participation-oriented formulations. These families overlap, but they are not interchangeable. A definition centred on fundamental movement skills, for example, does not describe precisely the same phenomenon as a Whiteheadian account encompassing motivation, confidence, competence, knowledge, understanding, valuing, and lifelong responsibility. It is therefore misleading to treat physical literacy as a single settled position. The present article focuses on the Whiteheadian tradition because it offers the field’s most influential explicit philosophical account of embodiment and non-dualism.

Definitions of physical literacy also perform different kinds of work. Some stipulate how the term will be used within a particular programme or study. Others attempt to describe established usage. Still others are programmatic, expressing what physical literacy ought to mean and what educational or social purposes it should serve. A definition adopted for a specific policy or assessment context should not automatically be treated as the universally correct meaning of the concept. The Whiteheadian definition is considered here as an influential philosophical and programmatic account, rather than as an uncontested definition of physical literacy.

This point matters because discussion of physical literacy often proceeds as though definitional disagreement is either insignificant or a temporary inconvenience. Several book-length treatments imply that the field is characterised by strong consensus (e.g., L. Durden-Myers, 2026; Whitehead, 2010, 2019). It is not. Reviewers have identified multiple themes and meta-themes in contemporary definitions (Bailey et al., 2023; Edwards et al., 2017), which suggests contestation shaped by networks of actors who assemble and defend different versions of what physical literacy should mean (Lounsbery & McKenzie, 2015; Lundvall, 2015; Young et al., 2023). The field is plural not only in wording, but also in ontology, educational purpose, and policy ambition (Quennerstedt et al., 2021).

The purpose of this article is to examine whether the Whiteheadian tradition’s explicit commitment to non-dualism is consistently sustained in its accounts of learning and in its later pedagogical and research applications. The guiding question is as follows: To what extent does the Whiteheadian tradition sustain its commitment to non-dualism in its accounts of learning and in its subsequent pedagogical and research applications, and what additional conceptual resources might radical embodied cognitive science offer for its further development?

The argument is not that Whitehead’s original work should have supplied a complete cognitive-scientific theory of learning or a fully operational model. It concerns the ways in which the wider Whiteheadian tradition has subsequently been developed and applied. The Whiteheadian account has made an important contribution. It challenged the historically low status accorded to movement in education. It resisted the reduction in physical education to sport preparation or fitness training. It also foregrounded embodiment, motivation, confidence, knowledge, understanding, and lifelong engagement (Donaldson et al., 2022; Whitehead, 2010, 2019). The argument of this article, however, is that the Whiteheadian account is non-dualist in declaration but not always in operation. This is a cautious claim. It does not suggest that Whitehead or later Whiteheadian writers simply lapse into classical Cartesianism. It suggests instead that the practical grammar of the account does not always match its philosophical aspiration. Bodily competence, bodily participation, and visible movement often become the most concrete sites of intervention and evaluation, while minded engagement is affirmed in principle but less fully theorised as a process of learning (Edwards et al., 2017, 2018; Qian et al., 2025).

To address that tension, the present attempt brings the Whiteheadian account into dialogue with radical embodied cognitive science, especially radical enactivism. Radical embodied cognitive science is a family of approaches in cognitive science that treats cognition as arising through embodied interaction with the world rather than through inner symbolic representations alone (Chemero, 2009; Hutto & Myin, 2013). Radical enactivism makes the stronger claim that basic minded activity can be understood without assuming content-bearing internal representations (Hutto & Myin, 2013). The value of this framework for the present discussion is that it does not merely declare the unity of body and mind. It begins from organism–environment engagement and therefore offers a more robust basis for understanding learning, movement, and physical literacy.

The analysis is conceptual rather than empirical. It does not test an intervention or demonstrate the effectiveness of a particular pedagogical model. Its primary focus is physical education and other movement-related educational settings, including sport, recreation, and physical-activity learning. Although the argument may have wider educational relevance, the article does not attempt to provide a general theory of all education.

We first examine the philosophical strengths of the Whiteheadian tradition and the difficulties that arise in some later operationalisations. We then introduce radical embodied cognitive science and consider its implications for physical literacy, pedagogy, and future research.

2. The Whiteheadian Account of Physical Literacy

An immediate historical clarification is necessary. Margaret Whitehead did not invent the term physical literacy. Earlier use of the term in the first half of the twentieth century is documented by Bailey (2020). E. J. Durden-Myers et al. (2022), drawing on Cairney et al. (2019b), similarly trace earlier and sporadic uses of the term across the twentieth century, with associations ranging from health and fitness to movement, communication, and later more holistic educational concerns. Whitehead’s importance lies not in coining the term, but in giving it its most influential contemporary philosophical formulation.

Whitehead’s reconstruction of physical literacy is both conceptual and philosophical. In “Physical Literacy: Throughout the Lifecourse” (Whitehead, 2010), the first book-length treatment of the contemporary concept, physical literacy is described in terms of motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding and is presented as relevant to maintaining physical activity throughout life. The structure of that volume reveals that the concept is intended as more than a label for movement skill. It is organised around monism, existentialism, phenomenology, motivation, quality of life, physical competence, the environment, sense of self, relationships with others, knowledge and understanding, pedagogy, curriculum, childhood, ageing, and inclusion (Whitehead, 2010). This indicates a broad educational and philosophical orientation rather than a narrow behavioural construct.

Whitehead’s philosophical foundations are explicit. She grounds her account in monism, existentialism, and phenomenology (Whitehead, 2001, 2007, 2010), with each tradition selected for its capacity to hold body and mind together rather than fracture them. Monism treats the person as an indivisible whole; existentialism foregrounds lived existence, self-making, and the understanding that human beings become who they are through action and commitment. Phenomenology, meanwhile, commits to describing experience as it is lived from the inside, resisting any premature reduction to external measurement or abstract theory.

Central to Whitehead’s phenomenological commitments is the influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose work insists that the body is not an object the subject happens to inhabit but the very medium through which the world is encountered and made meaningful. For Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962), perception is always already embodied: we do not first think and then act; rather, we orient ourselves through a bodily intentionality that precedes reflective consciousness. Whitehead draws on this insight to argue that physical practices—movement, effort, sensation—are not merely physiological events but modes of being-in-the-world that shape identity and self-understanding (Whitehead, 2007, 2010, 2019). Where Cartesian frameworks sever experience into mental and physical registers, the phenomenological tradition Whitehead inherits from Merleau-Ponty refuses that division at the outset, making it a more adequate basis for theorising human embodiment.

Whitehead argues that the term literacy was chosen deliberately. Alternatives such as competence, ability, and skill were considered, but rejected because they placed too much emphasis on pure physicality, object-like function, or the body as a machine. They therefore risked perpetuating dualistic understandings (E. J. Durden-Myers et al., 2022; Whitehead, 2013a, 2013b). In Whitehead’s view, literacy was preferable because it could signal a richer account of human embodiment, interaction, and meaning. This argument is reaffirmed by E. J. Durden-Myers et al. (2022), who defend literacy as the most appropriate term when understood as productive and meaningful interaction with, in, and through the world.

The Whiteheadian account has also become institutional rather than merely author-centred. Whitehead’s (2010) volume already showed that the account was elaborated through a network of contributors working on selfhood, childhood, ageing, pedagogy, curriculum, and inclusion. Later work by Pot et al. (2018), E. J. Durden-Myers et al. (2018, 2022) extends the account from philosophy to practice and from principle to policy. Physical literacy is further situated by Green et al. (2018) within educational journeys and pedagogical settings. The Whiteheadian account is, therefore, not a static statement. It functions as an evolving tradition.

3. The Strengths of the Whiteheadian Account

The Whiteheadian account made a substantial intervention in physical education and allied fields. Donaldson et al. (2022), while arguing for a more scientific grounding than Whitehead herself, confirm that her project emerged from dissatisfaction with the low status of physical activity in education and with dualist thinking that treated the body as a mere vessel for thought. Their paper is instructive because even a sympathetic scientific revision begins by acknowledging the force of Whitehead’s original criticism. Whitehead (2010) offered a philosophical defence of movement as educationally significant in its own right and not merely as a support for cognitive or health-related outcomes.

The Whiteheadian account also offers a broader alternative to movement-skills reductionism. Edwards et al. (2017) found that the Whiteheadian conceptualisation covers a wider range of movement types and psychosocial attributes than the long-term athlete development model. They also noted that most peer-reviewed conceptual papers in their review adopted a Whiteheadian definition. They further concluded that the Whiteheadian account was the only clearly articulated philosophical approach represented in the literature they reviewed. Its breadth and explicitness help to explain its influence.

A further strength is its normative ambition. A normative concept does not simply describe what is the case. It expresses a view about what matters, what should be valued, or what counts as a better way of living or educating. Whitehead’s account links movement to quality of life, self-expression, self-confidence, relationships, and lifelong participation, rather than treating physical activity simply as a health input or technical performance domain (Whitehead, 2007, 2010, 2019; cf. Cairney et al., 2019a). Physical literacy is similarly treated by E. J. Durden-Myers et al. (2022) as a mode of productive and meaningful interaction through which individuals connect with themselves, others, and the world.

Finally, the account is also educationally significant because it resists purely instrumental arguments. An instrumental argument treats movement as valuable mainly because it produces something else, such as better fitness, better behaviour, or better health scores. Whitehead’s account does not deny such outcomes, but it places stronger emphasis on movement as part of living well (Whitehead, 2010). That shift matters because it gives physical education a rationale that is not exhausted by public health or sport performance.

4. Non-Dualist in Declaration, Not Always in Operation

The Whiteheadian account is clearly non-dualist in declaration. Whitehead’s writings are persistently monistic. Later discussions also describe monism and embodiment as foundational assumptions of the account (Donaldson et al., 2022; Edwards et al., 2017; Whitehead, 2007, 2010, 2019). At the level of explicit principle, the position is clear.

The difficulty arises in operation. Edwards et al. (2017) argue that the combination of phenomenology, existentialism, and monism is challenging for practitioners and researchers to access, operationalise, and apply. They add that these assumptions require further articulation and better communication if they are to connect successfully with research and practice. This finding is important because it suggests that the problem is not merely one of external misunderstanding. The Whiteheadian philosophy itself is difficult to translate into widely usable pedagogical and research forms.

That difficulty is not trivial. Edwards et al. (2017) also argue that the pedagogy implied by the Whiteheadian account should focus on the whole person, individualised learning, ipsative evaluation, and contextualised real-world experiences rather than abstract drills. Yet the later literature surrounding physical literacy often moves towards models that are more comfortable with a focus on products or outcomes, isolated movement assessment, or broad attribute lists than with thick accounts of learning processes (Edwards et al., 2018; Young et al., 2020a, 2020b).

This point is made even more directly by E. J. Durden-Myers et al. (2022) in their discussion of literacy. They identify debate over whether physical literacy should be understood as process or product. Product-focused approaches in schooling are noted for a narrow focus on objectively assessed motor skills or fitness outcomes and away from student learning. They also warn that terms such as “physically literate individuals” can encourage a finished-product view, whereas Whitehead argues that physical literacy should be understood as an ongoing lifelong process or journey (Whitehead, 2010, 2013a; E. J. Durden-Myers et al., 2022).

Bailey (2020) sharpens the issue from another direction. He argues that Whitehead and those who follow her are right to insist on the importance of philosophy and right to resist body–mind splitting. However, he argues that they have not justified why monism, phenomenology, and existentialism should be treated as the only acceptable philosophy of physical literacy (Bailey, 2020). He further warns against arguments that use initial philosophical assumptions to rule out competitors before empirical and conceptual debate has properly occurred. The Whiteheadian account is therefore philosophically ambitious but not philosophically settled.

A further sign of tension appears in the diversity of current physical literacy discourse. Bailey et al. (2023) show that Whitehead’s account has had significant influence on multifactorial definitions that stress motivation, confidence, physical competence, understanding, and knowledge, as well as on the metaphor of physical literacy as a lifelong journey. Yet they also show that fewer than half of the accounts in their analysis could be described as Whiteheadian in a strong philosophical sense. The Whiteheadian account is influential, but it is often invoked more loosely than its advocates might wish.

These strands of evidence support the central claim of this paper. The Whiteheadian tradition is explicitly non-dualist in its philosophical commitments, but some of its later pedagogical, evaluative, and research forms do not consistently sustain those commitments. In practice, bodily competence, participation, and visible performance may receive greater attention because they are easier to describe, teach, and measure, while the relational processes through which meaning and learning develop remain less clearly articulated. The tension therefore lies not in Whitehead’s declared philosophy itself, but in how the wider tradition has sometimes been translated into research and practice.

5. Learning, Embodiment, and Context

Whitehead’s work provides a powerful account of why embodiment matters and why movement has educational significance. Her primary project, however, was not to develop a complete cognitive-scientific theory of learning. When the Whiteheadian tradition is extended into pedagogy, assessment, and research, a more explicit account is needed of how learning unfolds as a situated, whole-person process. Ecological and anthropological work on enskilment offers useful resources for developing such an account. Woods et al. (2021), drawing on Ingold’s (2000) anthropological work, contrast a Cartesian model of education as the transmission of rules or programmes into a passive mind with an ecological model in which learning is inseparable from doing and place. From this perspective, learning does not involve transmitting an already established body of knowledge into the mind, but a progressively deepening embodied and embedded attentiveness.

This contrast shifts the problem. The issue is no longer how bodily and mental domains are to be integrated after the fact. It becomes a question of how individuals become more capable of meaningful engagement in context. Enskilment, on this view, means becoming more responsive to the relevant features of a taskscape, that is, the structured field of tasks, relations, rhythms, and possibilities within which activity takes place (Woods et al., 2021). This account of learning is more processual and more relational than most operational uses of physical literacy.

The Whiteheadian literature itself contains substantial resources for moving in this relational direction. E. J. Durden-Myers et al. (2022), for example, argue that literacy within physical literacy should be understood as productive and meaningful interaction with, in, and through the world. Their discussion also demonstrates the difficulty of preserving this richer understanding across curricula, assessment practices, and public language, particularly where older meanings of literacy and product-oriented educational habits remain influential. The issue, therefore, is not that Whitehead’s philosophy lacks a relational orientation. The Whiteheadian tradition contains substantial resources for a relational theory of learning, but these resources have not always been preserved consistently in subsequent curricula, assessments, research, and public language.

6. Radical Embodied Cognitive Science as an Alternative Framework

Radical embodied cognitive science offers additional conceptual resources for making the relational character of cognition and learning more explicit. Rather than beginning with separate bodily and mental domains that must later be integrated, it explains cognition through ongoing embodied engagement between organism and environment. Hutto and Myin (2013) argue that fundamental forms of cognition are non-contentful. This means that basic cognition does not require internal states with truth conditions or symbolic content to guide intelligent, world-directed activity. Organisms can respond selectively and adaptively to their environments through embodied interaction alone. This matters especially for physical literacy because it removes the need to begin from a model in which cognition is internal, the body is external, and education consists of integrating domains. If basic minded activity is already organism–environment engagement, then movement, perception, responsiveness, and sense-making are not separate layers that are later combined. They are aspects of the same process from the outset. Radical enactivism therefore makes the relational commitment more explicit at the level of cognitive explanation because it refuses the initial partition at the level of explanation. Thus said, the key move here is that cognition is better understood as organism–environment engagement rather than inner representation.

The broader ecological literature helps to refine this claim. Segundo-Ortin et al. (2019) argue that ecological psychology is already sufficiently anti-representational and does not require rectification. That debate is useful here because the present argument does not require a choice between ecological psychology and radical enactivism as rival camps. It requires only recognition that a stronger anti-representational, organism–environment framework is available and that such a framework is more coherent than a model built on later domain integration.

The educational significance of this move is already visible in enactivist work in education. Recent theoretical work argues that educational theory has long been dominated by representational assumptions and that embodied, enactive, and ecological approaches provide a better account of learning as dynamic interaction rather than inner storage and retrieval (Abrahamson, 2024; Abrahamson & Lindgren, 2014; Macrine & Fugate, 2022). Radical embodied cognitive science is therefore more than a philosophical import. It is already part of educational theory.

The distance between the Whiteheadian phenomenological tradition and radical enactivism is real and worth making explicit before attempting a reframing. The two traditions operate at different explanatory levels rather than offering directly competing answers to the same question. Merleau-Ponty’s achievement—and Whitehead’s debt to it—was to establish that lived experience is irreducibly bodily: perception is not the mind’s interpretation of data delivered by a passive body, but a mode of engagement in which the body is already oriented, already intentional, already world-directed. That move is powerful. It refuses dualism at the level of description. Its primary contribution is phenomenological: it describes the structure and meaning of lived embodied experience. It takes the first-person perspective of the lived body as its primary register and asks how experience is structured from the inside. Radical enactivism addresses a different explanatory question. It asks not how experience is structured but whether basic cognition requires any inner, content-bearing states at all. Its claim—that fundamental minded activity can be accounted for without positing representations—operates at the level of cognitive architecture rather than phenomenological description. This is not a rejection of Merleau-Ponty; rather, radical enactivism offers a more explicit constraint on explanations that divide cognition into separate bodily and mental components before attempting to integrate them.

That distinction matters for what follows. The Whiteheadian account, grounded as it is in the phenomenological tradition, can in principle affirm bodily intentionality and nevertheless, in practice, treat movement competence and psychological attributes as separable layers that education must bring together. Radical enactivism forecloses that move at the level of theory: if cognition just is understood as organism–environment engagement, then there is no prior partition to overcome and no integration to perform after the fact. What is genuinely new in the proposed reframing is therefore not a further insistence on holism—the Whiteheadian account already insists on that—but a shift in the kind of work the theoretical framework is asked to do. Where the phenomenological tradition enriches our description of what embodied experience is like, radical enactivism constrains how learning and movement can coherently be explained. Together they provide stronger grounds for reconstructing physical literacy than either offers alone.

7. Reframing Physical Literacy

The Whiteheadian account should not be discarded. Its strongest insights can be extended by making the relational character of cognition, learning, and movement more explicit. These insights include the claims that movement matters for human flourishing, that physical literacy develops throughout life, that it is relevant to everyone, and that physical education should not be reduced to sport training, fitness, or narrow competence development. These commitments remain central to the account developed here.

Further development is needed in the account’s explanatory architecture. The present article proposes that physical literacy may be understood less as a bundle of integrated attributes and more as a situated and evolving capacity for meaningful engagement with movement and physical activity. This reformulation preserves the Whiteheadian emphasis on meaning, relationships, flourishing, and lifelong participation, while shifting attention from the integration of separate domains towards an ongoing relational process. It therefore extends rather than rejects the Whiteheadian project.

On this reframing, bodily competence remains important, but not as the primary empirical indicator of the concept. It becomes one expression of a broader capacity that includes perception, valuation, affect, interpretation, and situated responsiveness. Knowledge and understanding also remain important, but not as detached inner possessions. They become dimensions of ongoing engagement (Ennis, 2015). This is a more coherent way of realising the Whiteheadian aspiration to non-dualism.

A revised definition consistent with the argument of this paper would therefore be the following: physical literacy is a lifelong and evolving capacity to perceive, value, understand, and respond meaningfully to movement-related possibilities, demands, and constraints across diverse life contexts (Cairney et al., 2019a; Woods et al., 2021). This capacity is enacted through changing relations among the individual, other people, activities, tasks, and environments, rather than possessed as a fixed collection of separate attributes. The formulation retains the Whiteheadian concern with meaning, flourishing, and lifelong participation (Whitehead, 2010, 2019), but shifts the conceptual centre from the possession of attributes towards the enactment of relationships.

It shares with multifactorial definitions the recognition that physical literacy cannot be reduced to motor skill alone (Bailey et al., 2023; Edwards et al., 2017). It differs in emphasis by treating motivation, confidence, competence, knowledge, and understanding as dimensions of an ongoing relational process rather than as wholly discrete attributes to be accumulated. Compared with movement-skills-led accounts, it does not treat bodily competence as the sole or primary expression of physical literacy, although competence remains an important form of situated responsiveness. Compared with health-pragmatic accounts, it treats meaning and engagement as constitutive features of physical literacy rather than merely as means of producing physical-activity or health outcomes.

8. Pedagogical Implications

The pedagogical consequence of this argument is that education should be understood less as transmission and more as guided engagement. Woods et al. (2021) describe education in terms of leading attention outwards towards environmental features, affordances, and possibilities for action, rather than imparting content into a passive mind. An affordance is an opportunity for action offered by the environment relative to the abilities of the organism. A Whiteheadian account informed by radical embodied cognitive science would therefore shift emphasis from building a set of measurable attributes to designing environments in which learners develop meaningful, context-sensitive, and increasingly self-regulated relationships with movement (Carl et al., 2025).

This does not mean that competence, knowledge, or confidence disappear. It means that they are pursued differently. Competence would be understood not as the reproduction of movement form alone, but as flexible and context-sensitive responsiveness. Knowledge would be understood not only as verbal information about movement, but also as practical understanding expressed in action. Confidence would be understood not merely as internal belief, but as felt capability developed through meaningful support and successful engagement in context.

The same shift has implications across the lifecourse. In early childhood, it would mean foregrounding exploration, movement-rich environments, and varied forms of supported participation rather than premature narrowing to formal skill instruction alone. In later childhood and adolescence, it would mean designing tasks and environments that allow learners to perceive differences, make judgements, and respond meaningfully to changing situations. In adulthood and later life, it would mean preserving relevance, meaning, adaptability, and inclusion rather than equating physical literacy with athletic competence or youthful performance norms. These implications are already broadly consistent with the Whiteheadian ambition, but they become clearer and more coherent within an ecological-enactive frame.

9. Research Implications

This argument also changes research priorities. Recent Whiteheadian work already calls for assessment and empirical research aligned with the concept’s philosophical underpinnings (E. J. Durden-Myers, 2024). Edwards et al. (2017) earlier argued that the Whiteheadian assumptions require further articulation and better communication if they are to be operationalised successfully. Taken together, these sources imply that the research problem is not merely technical. It is conceptual and methodological (Carl et al., 2026).

The key issue is therefore not measurement, but measurement that substitutes what is easiest to observe for what is theoretically central. Product-focused assessment narrows physical literacy towards isolated skill and performance measures (E. J. Durden-Myers et al., 2022; Young et al., 2020b). Process-sensitive research would instead examine how relationships with movement develop, how experiences are interpreted, how environments shape engagement, and how participation changes over time. This would support greater use of longitudinal, qualitative, design-based, and mixed-method work. For example, longitudinal ethnographic studies in school and community settings could examine how learners’ relationships with movement develop across time, places, and social contexts. Design-based intervention studies could test how affordance-rich learning environments support exploration, judgement, confidence, and participation. Micro-analytic video studies could examine how teachers guide attention, how learners perceive movement possibilities, and how action becomes more responsive to context. These examples would operationalise an ecological–enactive orientation without reducing physical literacy to isolated movement skills or fitness scores.

The Whiteheadian account was right to insist that embodiment matters and that physical education requires a richer rationale. Its next step should be to strengthen its theory of learning and research so that its non-dualist declaration is matched more fully in operation. Radical embodied cognitive science provides one promising route for doing so.

10. Conclusions

The Whiteheadian account occupies a distinctive place within physical literacy scholarship. Whitehead did not invent the term physical literacy, but she gave it its most influential contemporary philosophical form and helped establish it as a serious educational and policy idea. The account deserves credit for rejecting narrow dualism, resisting movement-skills reductionism, and linking movement to flourishing, quality of life, and lifelong participation. At the same time, the wider physical literacy literature remains diverse. It contains competing definitions, purposes, and philosophical commitments rather than a settled consensus.

This analysis focused on the Whiteheadian strand of physical literacy rather than offering an exhaustive comparison of all existing models. It has also been conceptual rather than empirical. Its aim has been to reopen debate about how physical literacy should be conceptualised, investigated, and operationalised. This matters because the argument is not that other accounts are irrelevant, or that the Whiteheadian account should be rejected. The argument is that one influential strand requires closer scrutiny if its philosophical commitments are to be realised in pedagogy, research, and policy.

The central claim has been that the Whiteheadian account is non-dualist in declaration, but not always in operation. Its commitment to monism and embodiment is genuine. Yet its practical grammar often gives greater weight to bodily competence, participation, and visible movement than to minded engagement as a process of learning. This tension matters because rejecting dualism in principle is not the same as overcoming dualistic habits in theory, pedagogy, and research. A focus on embodiment does not, by itself, resolve the problem inherited from the Cartesian split. It can relocate priority to the body while leaving the deeper structure of separation intact.

Radical embodied cognitive science offers a constructive way forward. By treating cognition as situated organism–environment engagement rather than internal representation, it provides a stronger basis for understanding movement, learning, and physical literacy. The issue is not whether cognition occurs in the mind or the body. The issue is whether cognition emerges through ongoing engagement between organism and environment. On this view, movement is not the outward expression of an already formed mind. Nor should the body simply replace the mind as the centre of explanation. Movement is part of the dynamic organisation of perception, action, meaning, and learning in context.

Relocating physical literacy within an organism–environment framework allows it to be understood as a lifelong, evolving capacity for meaningful, embodied engagement with movement and physical activity. This shifts the concept away from a bundle of integrated attributes and towards a relational process. The reframing preserves the Whiteheadian concern with meaning, flourishing, and lifelong participation. It also offers a more coherent way of aligning theory, pedagogy, and research with non-dualist commitments.

The result is not a rejection of the Whiteheadian project. It is a reconstruction of its strongest ambitions on firmer ground. Influential ideas should remain open to criticism, revision, and reconstruction. Critique prevents conceptual closure from being mistaken for conceptual clarity. It allows assumptions to be tested rather than protected. It also keeps open the possibility that an established idea may be defended through close questioning. Physical literacy currently displays many features of a developing field in which competing frameworks coexist and no single paradigm has achieved general agreement. In such circumstances, questioning assumptions is not a sign of disloyalty to the field. It is an essential scholarly and professional practice.

If physical literacy is to fulfil its promise as a guiding idea for education, health, and sport, its philosophical foundations and operationalisations must remain open to reconstruction rather than insulated from challenge. An organism–environment account does not resolve all outstanding questions. It does, however, offer a productive starting point for rethinking how movement, learning, and flourishing are related in research, policy, and practice. The task now is to develop empirical, pedagogical, and curricular work that takes this starting point seriously. Such work should test and refine physical literacy in ways that matter both to theorists and to those who work with learners in everyday settings.