Sustainable Mobility Literacy in Physical Education: A Photovoice and Co-Design Approach to Climate- and Spatial-Just School Mobility

Résumé

Physical Education (PE) can play a key role in supporting lifelong movement, health, and well-being while shaping how young people experience safety, dignity, and belonging in and through space. Adolescence is a critical period for forming physical activity habits, yet inactivity remains high and unevenly distributed. At the same time, international health, education, and sustainability agendas call for school-based, multi-sector action that supports everyday movement, including walking and cycling. School routes and school-edge mobility spaces, however, are often uneven, climate-stressed, and socially contested. Conditions such as traffic danger, poor route legibility, heat, rain, ice, smoke, surveillance, and exclusion can constrain low-carbon mobility and daily physical activity, especially for students facing intersecting inequalities.

This article proposes sustainable mobility literacy as a PE-relevant competence linking physical literacy, health promotion, meaningful learning, and sustainability. Sustainable mobility literacy includes confidence, decision-making, risk-awareness, peer support, self-advocacy, and the ability to read environments critically for safety, comfort, and belonging. To operationalize this idea, this paper outlines a youth-centered photovoice-to-co-design pathway in which students document barriers and support, co-analyze spatial and emotional patterns, and develop low-cost, temporary micro-interventions for trial with schools and community partners. A simple prioritization process and lightweight evaluation approach are included to support feasibility in school contexts. The paper offers a practical, transferable blueprint for translating PE learning into place-based improvements that foster safer, more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable everyday movement.