The System 3 Method: integrating intuition, reason and creative metacognition for deep learning.

Physical inactivity remains a major global health concern. Large proportions of children, adolescents, and adults do not meet recommended physical activity levels, with implications for noncommunicable disease, mental health, social participation, and overall wellbeing across the lifecourse (–). These concerns are also reflected in broader global agendas, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which foreground health and wellbeing, quality education, gender equality, reduced inequalities, and sustainable communities as interconnected societal priorities (). Physical inactivity is therefore not only an individual behavioural issue; it is also shaped by social, educational, environmental, and policy conditions that influence whether people have meaningful opportunities to participate in movement (). In this context, physical literacy offers a useful framework for understanding how people develop and sustain meaningful relationships with movement. Whitehead defines physical literacy as “the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life” (). This definition positions physical literacy as more than physical activity volume or motor performance alone. It foregrounds how people come to value, interpret, and take responsibility for movement across changing life circumstances. Although the philosophical roots of physical literacy remain important, the present paper focuses less on re-establishing those foundations and more on clarifying how physical education may support the patterns through which physical literacy is sustained across the lifecourse. Viewed in this way, physical literacy is best understood as relational and ongoing rather than as a fixed possession or end-state (, ). Its development unfolds across the lifecourse through what might be termed a movement biography: the accumulated experiences, opportunities, relationships, expectations, and constraints that sediment over time and shape future engagement (, ). Yet despite physical literacy's emphasis on lifelong engagement, an important question remains underdeveloped: how does a relationship with movement become sufficiently patterned, resilient, and personally meaningful to endure across changing contexts, transitions, interruptions, and life stages (, )? Much of the literature has focused on domains, philosophical foundations, and assessment, while comparatively less attention has been given to the patterns of thinking, feeling, relating and acting that help people continue to choose, prioritise, and return to movement in everyday life. Here, a habit-informed perspective offers a useful conceptual entry point. Drawing on Dewey (), Lally et al. (), and Wood and Rünger (), habits can be understood as patterned ways of thinking and acting that become stabilised through repetition and context. In this paper, however, habit is not treated as mindless routine or as a purely behaviourist mechanism. Rather, it is used to name the recurring, embodied, and socially shaped patterns of thinking, feeling, relating, and acting through which people come to approach movement, for example by noticing movement opportunities, protecting time for activity, seeking meaningful challenge, or responding to disruption with adaptation rather than withdrawal. Framing physical literacy in these terms helps shift the discussion from what physical literacy includes to how it is lived and sustained, opening a different set of questions about how movement-related orientations are formed, maintained, and pedagogically supported across the lifecourse. Throughout the paper, therefore, habit is used to illuminate processes of stabilisation, while recurring patterns of thinking, feeling, relating and acting describe how physical literacy is lived, sustained, and renewed across time.