About
What does one learn by cycling? This will be the starting point that will lead us to explore the potentialities of velomobility in response to the global challenge of education.
In other countries, cycling uses have been framed under ecological perspectives [1] associated with Do It Yourself ethos [2][3] as well as with the emancipation of minority groups [4][5][6][7], highlighting its valorization for personal development, emancipation and the (re)evolution of cities as renovated places for encounter and humanity [8]. In Portugal, there has been focus on analysing the propensity of use, influencing factors of modal shift [9], barriers and motivators for modal choice, user profiles [10] and lifestyles [a]. The educational perspective has been neglected. BiPEDAL will cover that gap, by exploring the educative potential of cycling uses, for the individual and for the collectives and contexts where he/she participates, based on the conceptualization of Educating Cities and on the theories of velomobility in context of automobility[4].
Therefore, it is relevant to know such potential, cross educative domains - formal, non-formal and informal, and cross disciplinary areas of education - physical, social, inclusive, linguistic and artistic.
By the educational potential of velomobility we mean the possibilities of learning - in an integrated sense of cognition, perception and movement; and of biopsychosocial development - based on the awareness of humans as corporal beings - that the utilitarian and recreational use of cycles can provoke or emphasize in the subjects. Thus, we are interested in the learning developed from the use of the cycle, considering it as a means of experiencing reality, construction of knowledge, self-knowledge, critical questioning, and personal and social transformation.
BiPEDAL - an acronym that symbolizes our human condition seen through a concept of culture that integrates nature - is based on a holistic, humanistic and critical conception of education, bringing together a multidisciplinary team with training in these different areas and experience in the three educational spheres. We are united by the following goal:
To understand and promote velomobility as means to integral and integrated development of people and communities, favouring the inclusive co-construction of educating cities.
With BiPEDAL, we will: 1) identify cultural barriers to the utilitarian and recreational uses of cycles; 2) analyse the representations and practices that highlight the relations between cycling uses and learning, biopsychosocial development, civic participation and the inclusion of people with disabilities in urban areas; 3) broadcast these connections in order to promote the use of cycles.
Based on action-research [11], it will have an exploratory stage in the educative context of the promoter organization, hence in order to investigate and act simultaneously, researchers should, firstly, apply reflection and promote change in their own concrete action contexts. Another phase of more extensive research will be focused in diverse social contexts and groups, in order to amplify the understanding on representations and practices that constitute cultural barriers or motivators of the educative potential of velomobility.
In the first stage, with students of several Graduate Degrees and of the Master on Heritage, Arts and Cultural Tourism, we will undertake focus groups; audio-script-visual-itineraries, experienced in loco; a velomobility meeting between cyclists, cycling promotion groups and the academic community, and educative projects within the master programme.
In the second phase, we will collect songs that represent velomobility; mapp representations and practices of the population of Porto Metropolitan Area through a questionnaire that will allow us to understand what associations are made between cycling and learning and which are the groups that highlight it more.
Through interviews, we will explore the representations and practices related with velomobility, from diverse groups: i) cyclists - developing in depth analysis of their experiences and reflections; ii) elderly people that are former cyclists - with the intention of finding lessons from the past, regarding active mobility; iii) people with disabilities - with focus on the specific factors that may drive them towards or away from cycles; iv) representatives of educative organizations, municipal representatives and members of the Portuguese Territorial Network of Educating Cities. The analysis of the representations and positions of the last groups will be particularly articulated, with the purpose of understanding the concepts of Educating Cities that are defended and operationalized by them, and what place do they assume in the co-construction of these cities and, particularly in the promotion of velomobility.
To know the educative potential of velomobility will lead us to a holistic, collective, inclusive and spatial practice of education. BiPEDAL will start by innovating pedagogical practices, articulating professors and students from different areas in a transversal subject, favouring experiential learning [12] outside the «four walls» .This experience will foster the development of pedagogical strategies that can be adapted in the future, to the same or other educational contexts. The conclusions of data collection with these several groups of people and organizational representatives will give ground to the definition of a list of recommendations to change educational, organizational and public policies and practices. The cyclist songbook and the ethnographic film with scenes from several moments throughout the action-research are products that will spread the impact of the project among the general public."
Project ID: inED/2020/2