Reframing physical literacy for lifelong movement and societal wellbeing: a habit-informed perspective

Physical inactivity remains a persistent global challenge with implications for physical, cognitive, emotional, and social wellbeing across the lifecourse. Physical literacy has become an influential framework for understanding lifelong engagement in movement, yet less attention has been given to how such engagement becomes sustained, interrupted, and renewed in everyday life. This conceptual paper develops a habit-informed perspective on physical literacy by examining the recurring patterns through which people come to notice, value, prioritise, and return to movement across contexts and life stages. Drawing on habit theory, identity-based motivation, and physical literacy scholarship, the paper argues that sustained engagement in movement depends not only on capability, knowledge, or motivation, but also on repeated ways of thinking, feeling, relating, and acting. Stephen Covey's Seven Habits are used as a heuristic scaffold for naming pedagogically relevant patterns, including agency, purpose, prioritisation, inclusive participation, empathy, collaboration, and renewal. The paper further situates physical literacy as relevant to the Inner Development Goals and selected United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by showing how physical education may support inner capacities and broader societal aims related to health, education, equity, and sustainable communities. Physical literacy is therefore reframed as a context-sensitive relationship with movement that is shaped by biography, social relationships, access, opportunity, and repeated educational experiences. Implications are outlined for physical education pedagogy, curriculum, and research, with emphasis on supporting lifelong movement in ways that are meaningful, inclusive, and socially responsive.