Towards a new frontier in understanding the contextual influences on paediatric inactivity

Abstract

Has your research ever caused you to be confronted with adversity or to traverse risky and unsettling terrain? Perhaps this is not dissimilar to an adventurer or explorer on a journey fraught with dangers and inherent risks forging a path through unexplored territory. This chapter shares with you my journey as an early career researcher through a critical juncture of research that until recently predominantly favored a scientific model that viewed the problem of paediatric inactivity from the outside in (not dissimilar to that of spending millions discovering another star in a far away galaxy). I share my journey thus far through the troubling terrain of exploring the relatively uncharted territory of adopting a humanistic approach to exploring this phenomenon (sitting on top of another undiscovered world beneath our feet). Often a solo researcher, I see myself as an 'active agent' on this journey with many parallels to that of an explorer. My intentional use of 'active exploration metaphors' should both exhaust the reader and help to create a feeling of troubling, not unlike the road I have traversed thus far. In sharing this journey with the reader, I hope that they may also identify or see themselves in some of my adventures and may relate to similar experiences or feelings. The chapter concludes with the sharing of my current position on this journey - that of traversing the terrain with more conviction in my step and strength in my position. I present an alternative approach to exploring this phenomenon as well as a range of counternarratives. This journey has enabled me to move towards a stronger, more empowering position where the dominant discourse can be challenged and where there is the potential to transform and thereby create new and more enabling research terrain to help understand the problem of paediatric inactivity.