Enacting a pedagogy of love in a physical education teacher education critical service-learning program: insights from visual ethnography

Background Service-Learning (SL) is a pedagogical approach that combines academic learning with community engagement. In Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE), research on SL often focuses on preservice teachers’ technical skills and social responsibility, while affective experiences and the perspectives of other participants remain largely unexplored. This study examines these aspects, to show how approaching SL through a pedagogy of love, emphasizing care and affective engagement, can support socially inclusive and emotionally attuned educational practices.Purpose The study explored the lived experiences and affective responses of participants in a Critical Service-Learning (CSL) course-based programme within initial PETE in collaboration with a Special Education Center (SEC). By involving preservice Physical Education (PE) teachers, children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), SEC staff, and the children’s families, the programme sought to promote social inclusion.Methods Visual ethnography was employed to align with the study’s objectives, collecting data through photographs, field journals, group reflections, and focus groups. The analysis integrated narrative and visual within a holistic, non-linear framework. The researchers’ positionality was addressed. The lead researcher combined an etic academic viewpoint with an emic perspective as a parent, managed through ongoing reflexivity, while the rest of the research team contributed their expertise in qualitative research.Findings A descriptive presentation of eight sets of photographs and participants’ accounts is shared in the Findings section, enabling an integrated understanding of visual and narrative data. These findings are then explored in the Discussion section, where they are interpreted through the theoretical framework of a pedagogy of love, organized around four thematic dimensions: preservice teachers’ pedagogical and relational learning, their emotional challenges, their growth through care, and community members’ experiences of joy and discovery. SL enhanced empathy, ethical awareness, and professional commitment among the preservice teachers. Children showed increased motivation, while staff and families recognized strategies that challenged traditional learner-teacher roles. PE became a space for inclusion, shared affective learning, and social justice, all guided by a pedagogy of love that fostered transformative emotional, ethical, and relational development across the community.Impact statement This study highlights how SL in PETE can support preservice teachers’ relational sensitivity, ethical awareness, and professional growth, while fostering inclusion, engagement, and meaningful learning for children with SEN, aligned with a pedagogy of love. By attending to affective dimensions and the experiences of the different groups, the findings extend understanding of the relational and emotional dimensions of SL, often overlooked in previous research.