In order to understand and discuss differences in Physical Education (PE) cultures between countries as well as between schools and activities, it is important to take contextual aspects of the didactical situation into account. This paper takes its starting point in a Swedish didactics of physical education research tradition and shows how a combination of Bourdieu's logic of practice and Dewey's idea of ends-in-view is used to take the similarities and differences in PE cultures into account without ignoring individual and social aspects of learning. The paper illustrates the approach using Swedish PE as an example to show how what appears to look the same can be understood and discussed as something quite different.